Swine flu: let’s scrap the pandemic alert system

CDC is reporting about 14,000 confirmed or probable cases of swine flu, although they have already said this may represent only a fraction of the total number of infected. I wasn’t able to find the latest number of those hospitalized (some of you probably have it but I couldn’t locate it with a quick search), but my recollection is that it is somewhere around 300. That puts the hospitalization rate at around 2% of the confirmed/probable cases (I round figures liberally because they are too uncertain to worry about precision). 2% is the same number the Chilean health authorities are using for serious complications there:

The Institute of Public Health in Santiago reported 24 new cases of the virus, officially known as A/H1N1, taking the national toll to 393, it said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. About 98 percent of infections in the South American country result in “mild” disease. The rest are serious, and one was fatal, the institute said. (Jason Gale, Bloomberg)

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