A Deadly Tradeoff
Is Captain Chirps swapping reduced lethality for greater communicability?
Remember the particulars of the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic:
If H5N1 avian influenza were "only" as virulent as its Spanish cousin, multiply all those figures by a factor of three. Then assume that its lethality rate drops from 52% (not a statistically credible percentage because the sample population is far too small) to, say, 10%. Take your product from above and multiply it by three again. Now we arrive at around 300 million deaths worldwide, and five million fatalities in the United States.
Yes, I know, a lot of scoffers are calling Captain Chirps another SARS or Legionnaire's Disease. Our society has become so crisis-happy that the public stopped listening to the ubiquitous chicken littles a long time ago, and not without good reason.
But remember the end of the story of the boy who cried wolf. What if, just suppose, that the wolf has taken the form of a chicken? Isn't it better to be as prepared as possible?
Better, in this case, to be a live worrywart than a dead skeptic, it seems to me.
Remember the particulars of the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic:
Estimates vary from 20 to 50 million deaths, but most searchers agree on a total number of victims of about 30 million. This was a far larger death toll than the 11 million deaths caused by the war. Beyond Europe, this epidemic caused a hecatomb. In India there were 21 million patients of which 6 million died, in Japan 246,000 deaths, in Canada 43,000 deaths, in Great Britain 250,000 deaths, and in the United States there were 550,000 deaths. Of a world population of 1.9 billion inhabitants, 950 million people were sickened.
If H5N1 avian influenza were "only" as virulent as its Spanish cousin, multiply all those figures by a factor of three. Then assume that its lethality rate drops from 52% (not a statistically credible percentage because the sample population is far too small) to, say, 10%. Take your product from above and multiply it by three again. Now we arrive at around 300 million deaths worldwide, and five million fatalities in the United States.
Yes, I know, a lot of scoffers are calling Captain Chirps another SARS or Legionnaire's Disease. Our society has become so crisis-happy that the public stopped listening to the ubiquitous chicken littles a long time ago, and not without good reason.
But remember the end of the story of the boy who cried wolf. What if, just suppose, that the wolf has taken the form of a chicken? Isn't it better to be as prepared as possible?
Better, in this case, to be a live worrywart than a dead skeptic, it seems to me.
posted by JASmius at 11:14 AM
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