So does this mean that the numbers will be much lower than they should be? Or is this simply the way that it will be recorded?
So how many cases went unchecked before it was formally announced?
There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks.
Many friends working in hospitals or related fields say that the situation is really bad, they are talking about 19 people dead in Oaxaca, including a doctor and a nurse. They say they got shots but they were told not to talk about the real situation.
It does seem as though the unprecedented actions being taken by the government to contain the virus don't match with the statistics being provided, however, so there is some doubt as to whether they're just being overly cautious or whether things are a lot worse than what they're telling the public.
I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.
Still strikes me as odd.
The new strain is an apparent reassortment of several strains of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, including a strain endemic in humans and two strains endemic in pigs, as well as an avian influenza.[28] Reassortment is common in influenza viruses, due to the structure of their genome. This particular reassortment is consistent with a transmission of swine influenza from pig to human (a zoonosis) combined with the mixing of two viral infections in the same person (superinfection).
Also, once this was reported, I noticed how fast it popped up all over the globe. Do you think that they waited to report this, or is it just a very contagious virus?
Originally posted by pause4thought
reply to post by antar
So does this mean that the numbers will be much lower than they should be? Or is this simply the way that it will be recorded?
It is specifically to hide the real number of deaths. It was a Mexican doctor who wrote to the BBC to alert them to this appalling deception.
So how many cases went unchecked before it was formally announced?
According to the same report cases have been known about for a full four weeks.
The following is taken from the link above:
There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks.
and another extract:
Many friends working in hospitals or related fields say that the situation is really bad, they are talking about 19 people dead in Oaxaca, including a doctor and a nurse. They say they got shots but they were told not to talk about the real situation.
and another:
It does seem as though the unprecedented actions being taken by the government to contain the virus don't match with the statistics being provided, however, so there is some doubt as to whether they're just being overly cautious or whether things are a lot worse than what they're telling the public.
and another:
I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.
And that was all published on Saturday...
An estimated one third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to <0.1% in other influenza pandemics. Total deaths were estimated at ≈50 million and were arguably as high as 100 million.
The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but is estimated at 2.5 to 5% of those who were infected died. Note this does not mean that 2.5-5% of the human population died; with 20% or more of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent, a case-fatality ratio this high would mean that about 0.5-1% ( ≈50 million) of the whole population died.
