My thoughts on swine/h1n1 flu/pandemic/end of the world

I was at a party with a friend last week and a discussion about the swine flu came up.

My take:

As much as I think it is important that we continue to take such contagious viruses seriously, I argued then and I still argue now that this whole "pandemic hysteria" has been a little bit exaggerated.

First off, in this blog I will continue to write about it as "swine flu" not the "H-1N-1 virus"
as North American news networks have formally re-named it following a wave of complaints by the pork industry.

BBC hasn't changed a thing, whats good for BBC is certainly good enough for me.

Anyways to go back to my point.

In Canada, there now have been 165 confirmed cases of swine flu, 2 of which are actually of serious nature, the rest being minor (Editor's note: By the time you read this, that number will likely have gone up). Worldwide there have been 1,490 with 29 deaths as a result.

In comparison, the SARS outbreak in 2003 killed 44 people in the Greater Toronto Area alone.

That's not to say that this is the end of the outbreak, and I'm certainly not trying to dehumanize the numbers, but I still think that we need to maintain a bit of perspective before we start freaking out.

Why are there disproportionately more cases in Canada than in the US?

What I also find interesting is that there are only 403 confirmed cases in the US compared to 165 in Canada.

I write only because, if you consider that the US has:

-10 times the population of Canada
-and many more high population density clusters
-much closer proximity to Mexico,
-a much higher Mexican population

then the rate in Canada seems disproportionately high. Why is this?

My guess is that, with nearly 90 million people, or 1/3 of the US population under 65
without Health Care insurance the US numbers are vastly under-reported as people with mild flu like symptoms simply don't go to the doctor.

In contrast, Canadians are far more likely to actually go to the doctor because of signs of flu-like symptoms, thus the number of cases here is more accurate.