An influenza pandemic of the type that ravaged the globe in 1918 and 1919 would kill about 62 million people today, with 96 percent of the deaths occurring in developing countries.
That is the conclusion of a study published yesterday in the Lancet medical journal, which uses mortality records kept by governments during the time of "Spanish flu" to predict the effect of a similarly virulent outbreak in the contemporary world.
| Remember folks, you can't trust Lancet on anything that has anything remotely smacking of politics. Their articles on Iraq are nothing short of disgraceful, and they've done long-term damage to their reputation. |
The analysis, the first of its kind, found a nearly 40-fold difference in death rates between central India, the place with the highest recorded mortality, and Denmark, the country with the lowest. The reason for the huge variation is not known, but it may reflect differences in nutrition and crowding.
If a modern Spanish flu killed all its victims in one year, it would more than double global mortality. About 59 million people now die each year. "It is a huge, huge number," said Christopher J.L. Murray, a physician and biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health who headed the study. "This really took us by surprise."
One of the World Health Organization's key influenza experts, however, called the main public health implication of the study "no surprise."
| So one scientist is easily surprised and another isn't. |
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