Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Putting it into Perspective

The population of the world is 6,776,304,630.

The number of people sickened with pneumonia in Mexico is 1,995 (of which 152 have died), and none of these illnesses have been confirmed as being caused by "swine flu."

50 cases of swine flu have been confirmed in the US, and no one has died as a result of the illness.

Confirmed cases of swine flu elsewhere:

Canada - 6
New Zealand - 11
Spain - 2
Israel - 1

for a total of 70 confirmed cases, or .00000001033 of the total world population.

Would the media please shut the hell up.

11 comments:

Pastor Larry said...

You know they are NOT going to shut up till it is driven into the ground or something else comes along.

yackydoodle said...

of course, another way to look at those sorts of stats is that if 10% of the population are either idiots or assholes there are over 677 million of them in the world...twice the population of the US......(and many of them live in either LA or NYC)

MauritaMason said...

yacky, as my dad used to quote, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Still, I can't seem to help myself.

Anonymous said...

Whatever happened to washing hands and general hygiene which I find most people DON'T practice? The media is so desperate.

Dorrie said...

the hype about it is everywhere. Remember the mad cow scare? and the bird flu? ok, they shouldn't be ignored, but this panic making is too much.

I just had a fever yesterday, got up to 102°... first thought of course was the swine flu, though quite unlikely. Today, I'm back to normal... luckily I don't panic easy.

Marchelle said...

87% of all statistics are made up. I read that somewhere on the internet, so it also must be true.

And can I just say, SARS was a way cooler name for an epidemic.

What a stupid name... Swine Flu...

Anonymous said...

Yes, it's boring now isn't it? I've got more chance of winning the lottery than getting it. It's a slight outbreak on a par with a party coming down with food poisoning!

Oh, just noticed, that you have my blog listed at the side as Cashier Closed still!

Hope things are good where you are; still one of my favourite blogs - I like that you don't just go on about floral dresses & wallpaper like some womens do! (and I'm VERY picky!)

MauritaMason said...

wildstorm - YES to hand washing!

Dorrie, glad you're feeling better.

Marchelle, yes. If I had to choose a pandemic virus, it would definitely be SARS.

Miss M, brilliant analogy, the food poisoning thing. Also, thank you for continuing to read me. I don't know why anyone does.

MauritaMason said...

Oh, and Pastor Larry! (sorry) I'm definitely hoping something will distract them soon.

Fijufic said...

Mexicans in general don't have access to good medical care like many of these other places.

I'm sick of the media. Bring back OJ or turn it off....They are scratching the bottom here...

www.cdc.gov has the best reports anyhow for this swine flu. I'm always suspicious of any news show so close to Oprah or Maury Povich.

Michael barnes said...

Also the World Health Organisation has only said

"The United States Government has reported 64 laboratory confirmed human cases, with no deaths. Mexico has reported 26 confirmed human cases of infection including seven deaths".

Which is not quite in the same league as is being reported in the larger media outlets.