Avian 'flu - maybe not so mild after all
one of the buzz about avian 'flu is that people were thinking the true death rate from infection was much lower than the apparent death rate.
Argument, simply put, is that only acute cases were being diagnosed and those are necessarily the ones where the patient is in danger of dying, so the mortality rate is artificially inflated by selection bias. We only know of the sparse really bad cases.
If only, the argument goes, we did a random sample of a population where a case had been found, we would likely find many asymptomatic or mild cases that never came to medical attention.
Or, unfortunately, maybe not...
Not definitive but curious.
Good news is then, that the H5N1 strain really has a hard time spreading; the bad news is that it is very lethal. As is.
Argument, simply put, is that only acute cases were being diagnosed and those are necessarily the ones where the patient is in danger of dying, so the mortality rate is artificially inflated by selection bias. We only know of the sparse really bad cases.
If only, the argument goes, we did a random sample of a population where a case had been found, we would likely find many asymptomatic or mild cases that never came to medical attention.
Or, unfortunately, maybe not...
Not definitive but curious.
Good news is then, that the H5N1 strain really has a hard time spreading; the bad news is that it is very lethal. As is.
posted by Steinn at 1:49 PM
1 Comments:
This is just to let you know, that we found the recent post in your Blog, related to the bird flu virus, to be interesting, if some what alarming and have today added that entry of your blog, to the "Recent Entries, from the Best Bird Flu Blogs & Articles on the Web" section of our web site: www.birdflubreakingnews.com.
Thank you for this and we hope that we will have further contributions from you, regrading the important subject of the bird flu.
The blogs & Articles team.
www.birdflubreakingnews.com
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