Swine flu ‘could kill 65,000′
Friday 17th July 2009, 4:00PM BST.
Grim estimates of thousands of deaths have been made as the Government confirmed 29 people in the UK have already died after contracting swine flu.
Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for England, said figures being used by the NHS to plan its services show that a 30 per cent infection rate among the population could possibly lead to 65,000 deaths from the pandemic.
Doctors in Shropshire today urged people to ensure they have “flu friends” ready to pick up medicines for them if they are struck down.
Sir Liam said a National Pandemic Flu Service for England should be up and running towards the end of next week.
The telephone and internet-based service will enable people to get a diagnosis and obtain a unique reference number which gives them access to Tamiflu.
A “flu friend” can then use the number to obtain the anti-viral from depots around the country and take it to the patient.
The Health Protection Agency estimates there were 55,000 new cases of swine flu in England in the last week.
Up to 85,000 people could be currently affected, the HPA modelling shows.
A member of staff at Whitchurch Post Office has been confirmed as having swine flu, company bosses have revealed.
The employee, who works at the Post Office in Green End, left work on Saturday and has not yet returned. The Post Office remains open as normal.
It is the latest case in several to be reported in the district, with language students at Ellesmere College and footballers at Market Drayton Town Football Club being suspected to have contracted the virus.
Parents of pupils at Hodnet Primary School have been informed the mother of a child at the school has swine flu, and the playgroup was closed on Wednesday.
It is believed that a number of pupils from Shrewsbury schools are at home with suspected swine flu.
But Robin Chowdhuri, the head of communications for children and young people’s services at Shropshire Council, said: “Absenteeism among pupils across Shropshire is not significantly above the seasonable norm. We have not seen higher levels of pupils not attending school.”
Schools break up today.
By Health Correspondent Dave Morris
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A quick peruse of the BBC news site shows they’re not running this “we all going to die” sensationalist rubbish, why is the star???
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I don’t think it is “sensationalist rubbish” to simply quote the figures. If the Chief Medical Officer is making this statement, how are we sensationalising it?
And where, exactly, do we say “we’re all going to die”?
Andrew Owen
Shropshirestar.com
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The star can’t win, if they go with the story they are sensationalising it, if they don’t report it then they aren’t warning people properly. I would rather be given the facts and make my own mind up.
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I agreed with Andrew there’s no sensationalist angle to this story, if anything Sir Liam Donaldson could be accused of stiring up panic but not the Star.
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I don’t think the star are any more guilty than any other media outlet, however only quoting some of the figures the chief medical officer quoted is a bit misleading. The actual numbers quoted were between 3,000 and 750,000. In other words they have no clue. To be honest I am surprise the media didn’t jump on the 750,000 figure.
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The media is not only to inform us but unfortunately to sell us stuff, and of course sadly to manipulate our opinions too for whatever political or commercial reason. However, I, like most reading this will have survived Nuclear Armageddon, the Millenium Bug, AIDS {anyone ever read their pamphlet? Me neither}, CJD, Blur v Oasis, anthrax and the attentions of Mr.Binladen. Its make your mind up time…again.
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in an average winter 20,000/30,000 people die from influenza, i wonder how many died in the winter of 1957/1958 when asian flu struck the country.probably 150,000 plus. let us get things in context. surely the 65,000 is the worst case scenario.
the bad thing is that swine flu will continue for up to 5 years, mix that with bird flu and we may have problems.
tissue anyone
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Thanks for your response Andrew, and others.
Whilst I understand the fact the Shropshire Star uses their website as a vehicle to encourage people to purchase the newspaper (where as other larger media outlets do not need to do this), all that has happened in this online article is that you have printed a scary figure which grabs the viewer’s attention immediately.
Once you open the story you are presented with little in the way of figures, useful info, hot lines etc etc. Like I said, i understand this site is used to hook people into buying the paper. But in a story where there is a public health risk, and there are a lot of very worried people out there already (especially in the midlands as it has high infection rates of H1N!) because there has been a shortage of information/available GP appointments etc etc, I see it as the responsibily of ALL media outlets to make as much information as they have as freely available to the public as possible via all outlets.
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Actually the front page of this very web site says – and I quote
“Grim estimates of thousands of deaths ”
which is NOT what the government is saying. If you actually read the report you will see that they are planning assumptions and are the assumptions for a worst case scenario. They are not estimates of deaths. I refer you to the excellent BBC website which outlines what all of this means correctly and in a non-alarmist way.
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I rarely buy the Star and often object to some of the stances it takes, but in the case of swine flu I think it has adhered to its public duty to inform. As yet no one can truly predict what this pandemic will do. It is already world wide – pandemic – and it is killing a disproportionately high number of infected people compared to seasonal flu. The autumn and winter wave is the main concern. It may be milder than predicted; it may be more severe. I would sooner we were prepared and thank the Shropshire Star for the quality and informative nature of its reporting on what is an extremely important subject.
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If the Government had kept the flu virus under control in the first place instead of staying it “is no more dangerous than normal flu” we wouldn’t be in the middle of an epidemic.
I am returning from overseas after 3 years and I was contemplating staying in my present country where levels are only 10% of the UK level!
Concerned ex Pat
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One thing is for certain, I will refuse any vaccine. The Obama administration will grant legal immunity to the vaccine producers, which is expected considering the 1977 swine flu outbreak resulted in more deaths from the vaccine than the flu. Baxter International, is a pharmaceutical company which has mass produced a vaccine for swine flu, less than 12 months before the outbreak. They knew this was coming but how? I do not trust this one bit.
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Liam Donalsdson said “We can’t give an estimate of deaths from this virus yet. We don’t know enough about it.” The figure of 65,000 was concoted by falsely applying a death rate which one group of scientists said might apply to cases which were serious to be hospitalised to an infection rate suggested by another group of scientists to the total population of the UK. In this case, I don’t think it was the Star which did the calculations, but, Andrew, you could check your sources rather than just parroting what other news organisations put out.
The New Scientist has some interesting posts on media reporting of Swine Flu (see http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/07/deborah-mackenzie-consultanti.html for example) which by no means treats the subject lightly, but points out the fallacies which get reported.
My own bit of fictional arithmetic, as good as anyone’s given my background and education: 29 people have died(every one a tragedy and my heart goes out to all their families) out of 55,000 estimated cases so far. That’s a mortality rate of 0.05% (normal flu runs to about 10 times that in a bad year). Applied to a population of about 61.6m, about 60% of whom get the virus, that equates to about 19,500, about the same as for the 1999/2000 seasonal flu.
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this is gods will, population loss is needed especially in the cities where the working classes are over populated
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Tory Boy. I’ve only read a couple of your posts and as you refer to yourself as “Boy” I can only observe that you appear to be a thoroughly unpleasant child.
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