# 697
Back in late 2004, the World Health Organization put forth some numbers of what the best-case death toll might be in a future pandemic, and it has been widely quoted in the media since that time.
Two to seven million people, they stated, could die.
Remember, that's a `best-case' scenario.
Since then, many scientists have weighed in, each with their own estimates of what a pandemic could bring. Numbers range from the 2 to 7 million `best-case' proffered by the WHO, to over a Billion deaths estimated by Dmitri Lvov, the director of the Institute of Virology in Moscow.
Most estimates are somewhere in-between, and the range of 50 million to 150 million deaths appear to be the most common. Still, the old 2 to 7 million number comes up in media reports, as it did again in an article in Thailand's The Nation, today.
Bird flu pandemic could kill seven million people: WHO
Tue, April 24, 2007
MANILA - A global bird flu pandemic could infect one billion people and kill between two and seven million of them, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday."The next pandemic may cause very high morbidity and mortality in a few weeks. It could cause one billion cases and two to seven million deaths," said Jean-Marc Olive, the organisation's country representative for the Philippines.
The estimates were derived from models based on previous flu epidemics, he told a forum organised by the Australian embassy.
Even "a modest pandemic lasting over one year might cause losses as high as three per cent of Asia's GDP (gross domestic product) and 0.5 per cent of world GDP," Olive said.
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 172 people since 2003, mostly in Southeast Asia, according to the world body.
Most human infections have occurred through contact with sick birds, but scientists fear the virus could mutate and become easily spread among humans.
The organisation said the evolution of the threat posed by bird flu "cannot be predicted."
Just for reference, the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, which was the mildest of the three pandemics of the last century, reportedly killed between 1 and 3 million people worldwide. The world's population at that time was roughly half of what it is today.
No one can know, in advance, what the death toll of the next pandemic will be. Much depends on the attack rate (how many people become infected) and on the CFR (Case Fatality Ratio), or percentage of those who will die.
Could we see a mild pandemic, like 1968, and only suffer the loss of 2 to 7 million people worldwide?
Sure. It is within the realm of possibility.
The next pandemic may not be derived from the H5N1 virus, after all, and so any estimate is possible. Even if the H5N1 virus is the culprit, it could somehow lose much of its virulence, and become a tamer threat. Anything is possible.
Should we assume that the next pandemic will be a mild one, and only plan for that?
Absolutely not. And thankfully, despite media reports like the one above, we're not.
The United States and the UK are working under the assumption that the next pandemic will have, worst case, an attack rate of 35% and a 2.5% fatality rate. In the United States alone, that would account for 2 million deaths.
Worldwide, those numbers would work out to more than 2.2 billion stricken by the virus, and 57 million fatalities.
It could, of course, go higher.
The media should be giving both the best-case, and worst-case numbers. People have a right to know the range of possibilities. If governments around the world truly want people to be prepared, they need to have all of the information we have available, not just the best-case scenarios.
People can handle the truth.
And it would be far better to over-estimate the effects of the next pandemic, and have people prepared for it, than to underestimate it and place millions of lives at risk.
