Swine Flu

It is easily explainable -- if you live in a large city you are more likely to be exposed to both human-transmitted disease and Democrats -- but mildly amusing that the CDC's swine flu map closely resembles the Red-Blue maps.

The published to-date US fatality rate is 0.57% with high state-by-state variance (stdev of 0.52%). On the high end New York has a 2% mortality rate, Wisconsin with far more cases has a 0.07% rate. This divergence could reflect factors like differing virus strains, demographics and, perhaps, the method for counting cases (perhaps people in New York are less likely to get diagnosed than people in Wisconsin).

According to published reports, British Health planners are expecting a much lower mortality rate, expecting it to range from 0.1% to 0.36%. They expect between 19,000 and 65,000 deaths assuming 30% of the population of 61 million fall ill.

One strong argument in favor of a nationalized medical regime is the potential for more organized data collection and more data-driven medical decision making. Unfortunately, in Britain, at least, that potential is unfulfilled:

The CMO needs to remedy data deficiences over swine flu

What is the death rate from HINI flu likely to be? ...it is vital to know as accurately as we can how many are likely to die of it.

But it’s no good asking the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson. Radio 4’s Today programme tried doing that this morning, and was fobbed off with a series of claims about how difficult it was to make such a forecast, and how wide was the area of uncertainty... Sir Liam would have been better employed remedying the deficiencies in the UK data that are the basis of the uncertainty.

Why, for example, did the capable Imperial College team have to rely on data from the US Centers for Disease Control, rather than the UK’s Health Protection Agency?
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The only way to get a grip on what is happening with H1N1 is to use statistical science properly, not to mock its uncertainties in radio interviews. If statistical science does not underpin the Government’s estimate of 100,000 H1N1 cases per day by the end of August 2009, what does?
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If statistical science does not underlie the UK’s planned locations for 500 Tamiflu collection points, what does?
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(Conflict of interest: Sheila Bird serves on UK’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Advisory Committee, which has not met since swine flu reached the UK.)