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THE SCIENCE OF COUNTING FLU DEATHS
Helen Branswell, Canadian Press - We're told seasonal flu kills between 4,000 to 8,000 Canadians and between 250,000 and 500,000 people worldwide each year. Yet as of late last week, seven months into this outbreak, H1N1 had killed 161 Canadians and an estimated 6,260 people around the globe.
Critics of Canada's pandemic response point to the discrepancy between those sets of numbers and question the full court press.
But the thing is, as tempting as it is to compare those two sets of figures and conclude that H1N1 is much ado about nada, you can't do it. Those two sets of numbers count different things, experts say.
"You might as well compare the number of flu deaths with the number of Subarus sold in Canada," says Jordan Ellenberg, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin who explained the problem in an article published online in Slate Magazine earlier this year.
"If you want to compare the number of confirmed deaths to seasonal flu to the number of confirmed deaths from H1N1, OK, you can do that," he says in an interview. "But what you can't do is compare the number of certified deaths on one side to the best estimate of the full number of deaths on the other side."
Confirmed H1N1 death tallies capture the blessedly few times someone who caught this bug died from it after testing positive for it. The seasonal flu numbers are estimates, mathematical calculations aimed at capturing all the deaths influenza had a hand in.
The frequent attempts to equate the two are driving Dr. Kumanan Wilson bonkers.
Wilson is an expert in public health policy as well as an internal medicine physician at the Ottawa Health Research Institute. He readily admits he never sees anyone die of seasonal flu - a common claim that drives infectious diseases experts crazy.
Wilson is, however, seeing the destructive power of this strain of influenza.
"Nobody has seen a flu season like this on the ground level," he says. "If you talk to any frontline worker, they've never seen anything like this. And we keep getting told this is nothing."
"Emergs (emergency departments) are filled. All the children's hospitals are filled. Family docs I talk to say 'Oh my God, I've never seen so many flu cases."'
Wilson says it is "disingenuous" to criticize the response to this pandemic by comparing the low death toll to the substantially higher estimates of seasonal flu deaths. "I feel it under plays the significance of this."
Critics of Canada's pandemic response point to the discrepancy between those sets of numbers and question the full court press.
But the thing is, as tempting as it is to compare those two sets of figures and conclude that H1N1 is much ado about nada, you can't do it. Those two sets of numbers count different things, experts say.
"You might as well compare the number of flu deaths with the number of Subarus sold in Canada," says Jordan Ellenberg, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin who explained the problem in an article published online in Slate Magazine earlier this year.
"If you want to compare the number of confirmed deaths to seasonal flu to the number of confirmed deaths from H1N1, OK, you can do that," he says in an interview. "But what you can't do is compare the number of certified deaths on one side to the best estimate of the full number of deaths on the other side."
Confirmed H1N1 death tallies capture the blessedly few times someone who caught this bug died from it after testing positive for it. The seasonal flu numbers are estimates, mathematical calculations aimed at capturing all the deaths influenza had a hand in.
The frequent attempts to equate the two are driving Dr. Kumanan Wilson bonkers.
Wilson is an expert in public health policy as well as an internal medicine physician at the Ottawa Health Research Institute. He readily admits he never sees anyone die of seasonal flu - a common claim that drives infectious diseases experts crazy.
Wilson is, however, seeing the destructive power of this strain of influenza.
"Nobody has seen a flu season like this on the ground level," he says. "If you talk to any frontline worker, they've never seen anything like this. And we keep getting told this is nothing."
"Emergs (emergency departments) are filled. All the children's hospitals are filled. Family docs I talk to say 'Oh my God, I've never seen so many flu cases."'
Wilson says it is "disingenuous" to criticize the response to this pandemic by comparing the low death toll to the substantially higher estimates of seasonal flu deaths. "I feel it under plays the significance of this."
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