Swine flu -- and the odds of death

According to recent news reports, out of approximately 30,000 people infected by the swine flu worldwide 145 have died. Of course, these are just official numbers. Most likely, more people have been infected by the swine flu than has been officially tabulated, and, just as likely, more people have died from the swine flu than what official figures indicate.

Going by the official numbers, one's odds of dying -- if one contracts the swine flu -- are approximately 1 in 200.

This is not extremely high, but it's also not especially low. Certainly, the risk would seem to warrant more media attention being paid to the swine flu than is currently is being offered – at least within the United States (I’ve noticed the German media appear to be devoting more attention to the swine flu).

More importantly, the risk warrants a much more thorough effort on the part of the American media -- and American society in general -- to fully investigate and establish the cause of the swine flu.

Of course, as I've noted in another recent newsvine column, 'Denial on the swine flu' (http://demont-heinrich.newsvine.com/_news/2009/06/11/2919565-denial-on-the-swine-flu), there are many reasons so little effort seems to be being devoted to figuring out how and why the swine flu broke out where it did when it did.

Chief among these reasons: Mainstream media’s and mainstream society's near complete -- and potentially quite self-destructive -- denial on the mass production of meat. None of us wants to know where our hot dog came from -- apparently even if not paying more attention to this might end up killing a lot of us.

Need concrete evidence of mainstream media’s and mainstream society’s denial on factory farming? A LexisNexis Academic search on 6/12/09 of “Major U.S. and World Publications” using the keywords “swine flu” and “factory farming” yields just 24 articles, the vast majority of them opinion columns published in media outlets outside of the United States (in the UK, Australia and New Zealand).

Reputable research has warned of the dangers of large-scale meat production to the environment and to the health of human beings – not to mention to the animals themselves. For instance, in 2008, The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production issued a report in which the authors note that filthy and congested industrial hog farms are prime breeding grounds for potentially extremely lethal pathogens (http://www.ncifap.org/).

If you're wondering how a 1 in 200 chance you will die from the swine flu -- if you contract it -- compares to other potential means of dying, here are some odds for Americans I tracked down at http://live.science.com (specific page URL = http://www.livescience.com/environment/050106_odds_of_dying.html).

Heart Disease = 1-in-5
Cancer = 1-in-7
Stroke = 1-in-23
Accidental Injury = 1-in-36
Motor Vehicle Accident = 1-in-100
Intentional Self-harm (suicide) = 1-in-121
Falling Down = 1-in-246
Assault by Firearm = 1-in-325
Air Travel Accident = 1-in-20,000
Lightning Strike = 1-in-83,930

Right now, the 1 in 200 odds you will die of the swine flu – if you contract it – place this risk somewhere between the risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident and the risk of dying from a fall. Of course, dying by a fall is not defined by live.science.com. For instance, does falling off a moving bike count?

Given that the swine flu is an unfolding global pandemic, it is pretty much impossible to calculate what the odds are that one will actually contract it. That said, the current odds that you or I will contract H1N1 right now, in June 2009 -- which is not flu season in North America – are almost certainly low.

However, as the virus spreads, these odds clearly increase, perhaps exponentially. They’ll surely increase – perhaps quite substantially -- when the Northern Hemisphere hits its flu season in the winter of 2009-10. It’s therefore extremely misleading for some to suggest that the swine flu doesn’t matter, because the odds of catching it – right now, at this very moment -- are low.

Just as problematic are paternalistic admonitions not to "panic". It’s as if the people who make these suggestions think the rest of us are idiot chicken littles because we -- in comparison to them -- apparently know so little about the actual danger and threat posed by a complex pathogen capable of quickly mutating and of quickly expanding its pool of victims.

But exactly what are the odds of the swine flu taking off – really taking off? In fact, no one knows – not even the paternalistic pundits who claim to “know” better than the rest of us!

Calculating odds of death so generally, as they are in the livescience.com chart I use here, is, of course, misleading. General odds-making fails to take into account the many variables that could increase – or decrease – the odds a particular individual will die in a motor vehicle accident or from being hit by lightning.

Clearly, the more often you drive, the more miles you cover, the type of car you drive, whether you text while driving etc. – along with countless other variables – all play a role in one’s own particular chance of dying in a car accident. Similarly, a person who lives in Colorado, which has a huge number of lightning strikes per year, as opposed to far Northern Alaska, which does not, is obviously much more likely to die of a lightning strike than their Northern Alaskan counterpart.

My goal in considering the question of the odds of dying if one contracts the swine flu isn’t to create or spread panic. Instead, it’s an attempt to push us – as a society -- to treat the H1N1 pandemic with the seriousness it deserves, and, most importantly, to seriously investigate its cause. Right now, our approach to establishing the cause of the swine flu is denial – I don’t really want to know because it might affect the way I think about meat. This doesn’t seem like an especially healthy – or smart – approach.