McNeil’s article goes on to explain that the release of the White House report was late, poorly planned, and somewhat clumsy. “Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, was at the disease centers’ headquarters in Atlanta, addressing a special symposium on swine flu,” he reported. “A summary of the report was handed out by the centers’ press staff to medical reporters as she spoke, but Ms. Sebelius did not dwell on it or mention its forecast of 30,000 to 90,000 deaths, more than twice the 36,000 deaths usually caused by seasonal flu.”
Both Sebelius and Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, “acknowledged that ‘some people’ would die, but neither gave an estimate,” McNeil reported.
Again, none of this is to say that swine flu isn’t a very grave threat. It’s important to note that by offering this description of Sebelius and Frieden’s presentation, however, McNeil is not just clarifying the record. He is also explaining why the Times did not bite on the easy, death-becomes-us headline. Instead of taking the bait, the Times ran a restrained, but well-reported and no less serious article from the Associated Press the following day. The piece accurately covered the key details of the White House report, but focused on other comments Sebelius made about the importance of the swine flu vaccine. Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal also carried complete and insightful articles that displayed just the right amount of gravity and caution.
Reporters really must be more careful with stories like this one and resist the temptation to run with catchy yet simplistic headlines. A recent poll found that many Americans aren’t worried about swine flu, but there is a fine line between motivating them to take more health precautions and needlessly scaring them. In such cases, attention to detail is more important than ever.
There's a lot of misinterpretation of deaths from influenza in all the media articles I've seen, including this one.
You can't compare the number of deaths generally reported as occurring in a typical flu season (36,000 - 40,000) with the number of deaths reported by the CDC to the public for novel H1N1(556 as of Aug. 28).
The former is a calculated number that attributes all excess deaths from respiratory infection occurring during the flu season to influenza. The latter is the number of patients diagnosed with H1N1 flu where influenza is listed as a contributing cause on the patient's death certificate.
The number of influenza deaths reported annually on death certificates in the U.S. ranges from about 300 to about 2300 per year, averaging less than 1600. That means that in a typical year, death certificates that include influenza as a contributing factor represent less than 5% of the number of deaths that CDC says occurs in a typical flu season. The calculated number of deaths is undoubtedly closer to reality than the reported number, but it's important not to refer to these two measures as equivalent.
If the same discrepancy between these numbers holds true for H1N1, when we have 4,000 deaths of patients diagnosed with H1N1 reported to CDC, we could actually have over 90,000 deaths from H1N1 as measured by excess respiratory infection deaths.
Since we've had 556 deaths already, and we're not even into the time of year that flu spreads easily between people, I don't think 4,000 confirmed deaths from H1N1 is at all out of the question.
#1 Posted by Adrienne LeBailly, CJR on Tue 1 Sep 2009 at 02:48 AM
I think the real issue for the media here is that there is no "real number" of mortality you can give at this point of the h1n1 pandemic, it´s all modelling, not prediction. The report of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is not just to educate the president, but also to recommend new avenues of research, in fact trying to use the momentum to get funding for certain issues of interest for research. Therefore this Scenario was taken!
I think the best number we have so far is that 1 in 10 000 people of healthy people infected with h1n1 will die as a result of being infected with this virus. How much excess mortality we will see depends not only on the virus but on the health care system in which H1N1 is infecting people. Less ICU´s means more mortality, for example...
So the equation is not an easy one, and journalism is not just about getting the facts correct, but to create the context so people can navigate complex topics at least to some extend...
This is a view from germany, my approach can been seen here, for those of you read german: http://www.faz.net/s/Rub7F74ED2FDF2B439794CC2D664921E7FF/Doc~E1ADE860A17114F2C97283A90407D1FAC~ATpl~Ecommon~SMed.html
#2 Posted by Volker Stollorz, CJR on Tue 1 Sep 2009 at 06:13 AM
swine flu is outragous
and my girlfriend loves barack obama with a passion
#3 Posted by Jennifer, CJR on Wed 2 Sep 2009 at 08:44 AM