October 13, 2004

Interesting Flu statistics

Corsair at The Rational Pirate links to a Center for Disease Control graph that shows the current crop of doomsayers to be somewhat in error. bq. Interesting Experiment Coming Up Every year we are assured that the apocalypse is coming if we don't all get our flu shots. I almost never get the shot. In fact, I think I have only every had 2 or 3 in my whole life. Yet here I still am! bq. This year it turns out that only half of the dose of flu vaccine that the US was planning on having will be available. It will be interesting to see if the rest of us die. A lot of people are saying that since last year we had a major FLU epidemic and lots and lots of people died that we will have a similar one this year. The graph from the CDC shows that after the initial spike early on (which was high enough to qualify as an epidemic) the death rate dropped to well below the normal baseline. The spike last year was much less than the one in 2000 -- short memory span I guess. Posted by DaveH at October 13, 2004 10:29 PM