"H5N1 could be more widespread in humans"

elbows wrote: I mean looking at 1918, what was the deathrate, something like 1%? Its bad, and this one could be worse, but its the fear and the sickness that causes at least as much of the problems during the actual pandemic.

The 1918 US death toll was approx 2.25%.  The World death rate was approx 6%.  Infection rates are said to have been as high as 50%.

I have worked up a spreadsheet comparing the 1918 infection rate/mortality rates vs world and US population at that time and applied the same figures to todays' world and US population.  The number of fatalities using 1918 figures against todays population is very large. 

I also included a range of infectious rates from 15 to 35% vs todays US population with a variable mortality rate - the numbers, again, are very large.  Shockingly large, especially if you move to 50% infection and 50% mortality: 1 in 5 people or appoximately 1.25 BILLION people. 

This reflects the numbers that health officials were quietly talking about  a year ago, before this all really hit the fan in September.

Lastly, just for fun, I plugged in the "Official" CDC expectations of 15 - 35% infection rate with a death toll of 87,000 - 207,000.  That makes the mortality rate from between .08% to .46%.   OR an infection rate of only 1% with between 3% and 7% mortality. 

I can upload the XL file if there is a way to do so, if anybody would like to play the "plug in the numbers" game for themselves.  It's very basic and not at all scientific, compared to the actual calculations that specialists use, but it helps put things in perspective.

Thank you, Bannor.  The CDC is publicly, grossly underestimating the potential infection rates and mortality rates based on numbers from the 1918 flu.  It frustrates me when I see these qouted all the time, like their numbers mean something.   Anyone who can do math can figure out that the CDC numbers don't add up....Geez!  You'd think journalists would question it a bit more

DarlMan wrote: All we know for sure is that the virus is going to have to change to become a pandemic, will that change be for the good or for the bad of humanity is not known.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure we've seen anything this deadly or widespread in recent recorded history.  It seems to be just as deadly to any other wildlife that it has jumped to, human beings being no exception.  Nothing in the last few years has convinced me that this organism is getting more benign: the opposite.

I think it is much more reasonable that, when it becomes capable of H2H that it will be deadly - for two reasons: I think it is less reasonable to expect basically two mutations: one for h2h and one that makes it less virulent and secondly: as I understand it, it is not so much the infectious activity of H5N1 in human as much as it is the immune reaction to the H5 (and I presume, N1) markers.