Statistically Challenged Swine (Flu, that is!)

Is everyone out there so statistically challenged that they're truly afraid of dying from swine flu?

Granted, the news media has hyped this up to the max, but they've also actually reported numbers, and lots of them. But nobody seems to pay attention to the numbers!

Things have gotten so ridiculous that here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Archbishop of Santa Fe sent a letter out to be read in all the Catholic churches last week. By his directive, due what he perceived as the threat that all his sheep would get swin flu:

1. There would be no communion chalice-- in fact, no "Blood of Christ" offered at all
2. There would be no "kiss of peace," no hugs, and not even any handshakes during the "sign of peace."
3. Similarly, parishioners were directed NOT to hold hands during the Lord's Prayer.

Half the congregation (including yours truly) was trying to hold their snorts of disdain during these announcements, and proceeded to exchange normal handshakes, hugs, or kisses during the sign of peace anyway. The other half apparently shared the archbishop's panic; one gentleman behind me, on observing my row calmly shaking hands with everyone aryway, challenged us loudly, "Don't you people listen to the news?"

OK, I wasn't going to start an argument in the middle of Mass, but I wanted to answer quite loudly, "Yes,, I do-- and not being a mathematical moron, I'm not afraid of swine flu!"

The ex-math teacher in me wants to point out that:

As of today, there were 925 "possible" cases of swine flu that had occurred in this country. The vast majority of them have been far too mild to even require hospitalization! And those are only "possible" cases-- here in New Mexico we had two "possible" cases. One of them has since been proved not to be swine flu after all, and the same is likely the case for some of those 925, too. And there have been only TWO deaths in the entire country.

• That's a mortality rate of .002. (Hardly the next Black Death!)
• The U.S. population is 304,059,724. That means the infection rate is .000003
• That would make the chance of dying from swine flu about 6 in 1,000,000,000, or roughly 1 chance in 500 million!

In comparison, your odds of being struck by lightning this year are 1 in 400,000, or ten times greater than your odds of dying of swine flu! Somehow those swine flu odds don't really worry me...

My surgeon father is equally annoyed by this fear-mongering that is making a mountain out of a molehill. It's been a great boon to the makers of Tamiflu though. They were sitting on a stockpile of the stuff that had been produced to deal with the boogeyman "avian flu" non-event of a few years back. I wonder when that stuff was due to expire... How fortunate for them now to have a "reason" for moving all this old stock off their shelves. And just today, Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, filed a lawsuit to obtain "swine flu" domain names to market its product online for swine flu. Roche wants the court to force the actual owners of the domain names swineflutamiflu.com, tamifluswineflu.com, swine-flu-tamiflu.com and tamiflu-swine-flu.com to turn the domain names over to Roche.

And, of course, the government wants to spend billions more of our money to "save" us from this "pandemic!"

Folks, before you rush out to take Tamiflu to "save you from getting swine flu," check it out. Tamiflu doesn't even claim to prevent swine flu or any other flu-- all it claims is to shorten the course of the disease by about 24 hours! And the side effects can be worse than the flu is..

Haven't we got enough real issues in this country to deal with now without inventing new and irrational fears too? Just do the math! And relax!