Lancet study shows millions would die in Flu epidemic, Conservative thinkers scoff

Researching the possibility of a flu pandemic sweeping the globe, the Lancet Medical Journal predicted it was possible that as many as 62 million would die worldwide, most of that number in developing nations.

From the Washington Post:

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.

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.”

The Lancet had recently made news in 2006 by concluding in a study that more than 600,000 Iraqis had been killed due to the Iraq war. Conservative thinkers, quick to debunk anything from the Lancet, said this study was obviously politically motivated and similarly flawed as it counted people in “developing countries” as “people.”

Based on momentary, factless research, Conservative estimates place the potential death toll of a global flu pandemic at “like 80 or so.”

–WKW