During the last 13 days, up to May 6, WHO has confirmed that 25 countries are affected by the Swine flu and 31 persons have died from Swine flu. WHO data indicates that about 60 000 persons died from TB during the same period. By a rough comparison with the number of news reports found by Google news search, Hans Rosling calculates a News/Death ratio and issue an alert for media hype on Swine flu and a neglect of tuberculosis.
Astronomical numbers.
Since it’s likely that more people died in the 1918-19 epidemic than have died from plague it’s not a bad thing to make people aware of the potential devastation that flu can bring. I think most people equate flu with a bad cold.
Nicely done piece. I agree that more attention needs to be paid to the daily losses from matters like TB, HIV, road safety, etc-it’s tough to figure out the best way to get the information into the public sector rationally (ie, not relying on which group can yell the loudest about their findings), so that people will feel empowered to prioritize health spending appropriately.
Beautiful job with the production, by the by. Gapminder is excellent for this sort of thing.
Nice piece, that really puts things in perspective. And, just to comment on the previous post, my own research showed 200 million deaths due to the plague, and 50 to 100 million for the 1918 epidemic of flu. Plus, the flue epidemic in 1918 attacked healthy young adults, which caused much greater alarm because typical flu attacks children and the elderly typically, as does this current strain of swine flu. Obviously, when a virus lethally attacks those with healthy ammune systems, it is much more alarming, and more likely to become a world wide catastrophy. THANKS FOR THIS EDUCATING VIDEO! P.S. I lived in Lesotho for 4 years.
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