Ebola
Out of context: Reply #215
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- mg330
The thing about comparing ebola to the flu is that even with those death figures for the flu, it still doesn't have anywhere near the mortality rate of ebola. I did some math on this earlier, and in just the US the mortality rate of the flu was not even 1% of the people who get it. It was .06%. Think about that:
The average yearly flu deaths from 2000 - 2010 is estimated at 32,743 deaths.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/…They also say that between 5% and 20% of the US population gets the flu each year.
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-fl…Let's just go with 10%. That's 31,600,000 people in the US that get the flu each year. And approximate deaths is 32,000.
That's 1.03% that get the flu and die from it.
Now look at ebola. It can have up to a 90% mortality rate, and there's no cure. Let's be conservative and say it has a 45% mortality rate. If there were truly an epidemic, and even 70,000 people get it, that mortality rate kills the same amount of people as the flu scenario above. If, God forbid, it went into astronomical numbers and 31,600,000 people got ebola, it could kill 14 million people.
I realize that this is hypothetical, but it should show the vast difference between mortality rates of something like the flu and ebola. I have faith that we will prevent a massive epidemic in the US, but just imagine if it got out of control.
And before you criticize me about this post, all I'm doing is trying to illustrate that saying that 32,000 people die of the flu without us batting an eye at it might be the case because it's such a small percentage that die of the people who get it. If lots of people get ebola, the deaths are going to be far more comparatively than the flu.
- Disregard my first percentage on flu. the 1.03 is what I calculated after thinking about this a bit.mg33
- You do know that in Africa malaria has a 54% mortality rate. And is transmitted easier.ETM
- And still only kills 627 000 people.ETM
- But if 31,600,000 got malaria, it could kill 17,064,000.ETM
- The media blows this up every time. Sars, H1N1. Without the media, you'd never know ebola exists.ETM
- At least, not until it became an actual issue outside the geographic hot zone.ETM
- < yep********