Bring Out Your Dead or Use Your Calculator

A January 20th 2006, UPI report about a survey done by the Washington-based Pew Charitable Trusts for the American Institutes for research said 20 percent of students graduating from college with 4-year degrees and 30 percent graduating with 2-year degrees are unable to do fundamental computations.

That’s not surprising in light of a December 5th 2005 Reuters report by Maggie Fox, their Health and Science Correspondent. The report stated that,"US Health and Human Services has projected that in a pandemic 92 million Americans will become sick, as many as 2 million will die and 40 percent of workers could be out at any one time."

The same report went on to mention that roughly half of all confirmed H5N1 avian influenza cases have been fatal. It also reported that, "scientists say the virus is only a few steps away from mutating into a form that could easily spread from person to person...that could kill tens of millions."

Well, our friends at Health and Human Services aren't doing too well with fundamental computations. If 92 million Americans get H5N1 and if it does not increase or decrease in virulence, we should expect not 2 million, but 45-50 million fatalities. According to the World Health Organization's very conservative figures, mortality rates in many Asian nations exceed 70 percent.

I'm not sure how HHS arrived at its projection of 92 million Americans effected by a pandemic but if it happens to be H5N1, the actual fatalities could look more like 64 million. I would be more confident in our government’s ability to manage a pandemic if I knew that those responsible for public health were doing the math correctly and then telling the truth about it.

kkk