About that Flu Number...

I wrote about the exaggerated threat of Swine Flu and the subsequent media-driven hysteria here and here.

Comparing the infectiousness of Swine Flu to the per annum death tool of normal influenza bolstered my case. I believe the case still stands. However, an article in today's Wall Street Journal reveals the shakiness of the 36,000...and how, like much else, it's based on models and estimations.

A Pandemic of Confusion About Flu's Death Rates

Though the swine flu captured the world's attention, its total confirmed death toll of fewer than 100 people so far provided a point of comparison that many health experts couldn't resist: Garden-variety seasonal flu kills that many people each day in the U.S. alone.

That's according to Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, which is among many groups that cite an estimate from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists that flu causes or contributes to an average of 36,000 deaths each year. "This is no little deal," Dr. Epperly says. "I don't want people to think, 'Oh my gosh, we just avoided this bullet with swine flu,' when every day influenza kills 100 people."

But a bullet, it turns out, may never have left the barrel. According to the CDC's own numbers, influenza was listed as the underlying cause on just 849 death certificates in 2006, the most recent year available -- half as many as hernias and a quarter the number killed by peptic ulcers. This number has been flat in recent decades even as the CDC's much larger estimates of annual flu deaths have been increasing.