It had to happen, but it’s interesting nonetheless. The “implied mortality rate” that I calculate from the WHO data has stopped its decline and seems to have levelled out at about 0.45% over the last two weeks. Remember, this mortality rate is simply the deaths due to swine flu divided by the confirmed cases. I use the WHO global data. For a full explanation of the implied mortality rate and why I think the real rate is probably a lot lower, see this post here.
What does this levelling out mean? I don’t know, I guess we’ve just found the bottom. If you pressed me, I would say that in the last fortnight we’ve just reached large enough numbers for both cases and deaths for some “statistical stability” to settle in.
What would it mean if it started to increase? Well that’s an interesting one. Let’s cross that bridge if we ever get to it.
It’s probably stopped falling because of the situation in Argentina.
I don’t trust Argentina’s flu numbers any more than their economic numbers – any data generated by the government there is suspect. NGOs suspect that the number of deaths there could be more like 300 than the 100 or so being claimed but if you look at the death rate per case for Chile and others in the area, Argentina’s would make more sense if the total cases were also drasticly under reported. Sure, Argentina MAY have a more lethal new strain or a more susceptible population but I think the “bad data” hypothesis is a simpler one.
But since all global data includes Argentina’s numbers it makes them all hard to have faith in. We would probably be better of if we ran all our numbers as if Argentina was not really there. It would mean under counting the numbers but the ratio of deaths to infected person would be more accurate.
Hi mate
I kight have a go at running the numbers ex Argentina and seeing what I get.