similar flus have been horrific in the past. Particularly the 1918 pandemic flu, which was an extremely virulent strain of H1N1 flu. But, no one knows for sure.
The casualty figures for the 1918 swine flu were estimated to be between 50 million and 100 million souls worldwide. That’s about seven times as many people as died in WWI, which had just recently ended, and about 3% of the world population in 1918, and between 10% and 20% of those infected by that flu.
Some communities were almost completely wiped out by that flu. In Samoa, 90% of the population was infected. 30% of the adult men, 22% of the adult women, and 10% of the children died.
That’s bad.
Again, this H1N1 probably won’t be that bad, but it is not possible to know. The problem is that it takes many months to produce and test a specific flu vaccine, and even longer to vaccinate the public. Public Health authorities can’t wait to see what might happen, because then it is already too late to consider vaccination.
We are fortunate to live in an age where vaccines have been perfected to the point where they can wipe out diseases and save much suffering at minimal risk. When was the last time you worried about your children getting Polio or Smallpox, both very deadly diseases?
Even the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine was inocculated into 40 million people. Of those, an infinitessimal number got Guillain-Barre syndrome, somewhere in the range of 4000 – That’s about one illness per MILLION people vaccinated. Of those, only about 25 died from the syndrome.
Compare this to the potential danger of any flu, and especially to the statistics above for the H1N1 epidemic of 1918.