.
Researchers hoping to disprove earlier estimates of 50 million deaths were surprised to come up with calculations showing a death toll of 51 million
to 81 million (with a median estimate of 62 million). The report is published in the latest issue of the
Lancet.
New Flu Pandemic Could Kill 81 Million
A flu virus as deadly as the one that caused the 1918 Spanish flu could kill as many as 81 million worldwide if it struck today, a new study
estimates. By applying historical death rates to modern population data, the researchers calculated a death toll of 51 million to 81 million, with a
median estimate of 62 million.
That's surprisingly high, said lead researcher Chris Murray of Harvard University. He did the analysis, in part, because he thought prior claims of
50 million deaths were wildly inflated.
"We expected to end up with a number between 15 and 20 million," Murray said. "It turns out we were wrong." ...The new work is published in
Saturday's issue of the journal The Lancet.
***
Flu pandemic forecast to kill 62 million
Had a strain of influenza akin to that which caused the 1918 influenza pandemic emerged in 2004, researchers estimate it could have killed 62 million
people worldwide.
The vast majority of deaths (96 percent) would have occurred in poor countries where "scarce health resources are already stretched by existing
health priorities," report Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray, of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and colleagues in The Lancet medical
journal.
Low-cost public health measures such as school closure, quarantine and masks could offer the most hope to countries without access to medical
interventions. However, more study is needed to determine the true impact of these measures, Ferguson notes.
***
New flu pandemic could kill 81 million
One surprise in the new study was the huge variation in how different countries would be affected by a pandemic. The study estimates that 96% of the
deaths would occur in the developing world. Murray and colleagues noted there was a 30-fold or more variation in mortality. ..."That tells us it's
not just the genetic makeup of the virus that will cause deaths, but that there are a lot of other things that intervene," he said. ...Determining
the mitigating factors might help avert a catastrophe. "If we can answer that question, we may unlock the mysteries behind which non-pharmaceutical
strategies could significantly decrease mortality," said Murray.
...said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of the World Health Organization's Global Influenza Program. "Speculating about the possible numbers is an
interesting exercise, but the really important thing is, what do we do about it?"
...experts think that if H5N1 were to evolve into a strain easily transmissible between people, it would also become less deadly. ..."It's not in a
virus' interest to kill its hosts so readily, otherwise it can't reproduce," said Dr. Ian Gust, a flu expert at the University of Melbourne,
Australia. ...Still, there is no guarantee that H5N1 would become less deadly. ...If it doesn't, "we would be in for a devastating impact," said
Gust. "All bets would be off."
All reports of human H5N1 flu cases show that the people most likely to die are young, with strong, healthy immune systems - unlike normal flu, which
is most likely to kill the very young, very old, and already ill with compromised immune systems. Yet fatality estimates for the pandemic flu say
immune compromised people are most likely to die, as in normal flu.
I don't get it.
