On Hysteria and Swine

hysteria: behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess

Neatorama had a link today to this article which was interesting:

Scientists: Swine Flu Milder Than Run-Of-The-Mill Winter Flu

Some highlights:

The swine virus does appear able to spread easily among humans, which persuaded the WHO to boost its influenza pandemic alert level to phase 5, indicating that a worldwide outbreak of infection is very likely. And the CDC reported on its website that "a pattern of more severe illness associated with the virus may be emerging in the United States." [...]

But certainly nothing that would dwarf a typical flu season. In the U.S., between 5% and 20% of the population becomes ill and 36,000 people die — a mortality rate of between 0.24% and 0.96%.

Dirk Brockmann, a professor of engineering and applied mathematics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., used a computer model of human travel patterns to predict how this swine flu virus would spread in the worst-case scenario, in which nothing is done to contain the disease.

After four weeks, almost 1,700 people in the U.S. would have symptoms, including 198 in Los Angeles, according to his model. That’s just a fraction of the county’s thousands of yearly flu victims.

Apparently the hysteria and worry is actually mostly unfounded. Sure, it might mutate, but the same could be said of any virus. It seems almost comical that people are deathly afraid of getting swine flu but aren't too worried about the winter flu that kills thousands of people every year. It's all about perspective folks.