Which is more contagious? Swine Flu or Swine Flu Press Coverage

I was wondering which was more contagious – Swine Flu, or the Swine Flu press coverage?

To answer that question, I used the sometimes flaky data from Google News search (meaning it gives different answers at different times).

The results are in and it’s a landslide.  Swine flu press coverage is far more contagious than swine flu.

With 279 confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States as of May 4th, the number of press articles on that day was 154,617,297.  That’s 554,184 articles per patient.

But wait, the confirmed cases is cumulative.  So I have to accumulate the swine flu articles since the first US case on April 23rd.

Again, Google News search gives different answers to each search, but adding up the returns of articles on each day, there have been roughly 2.5 billion news article hits through May 4th.   That’s nearly 10,000,000 articles per confirmed case.

Even more interesting (at least to me).  It is essentially one article, per day, for every person in the United States, including those that are illiterate or do not speak English.

So we are far more infected with press coverage than we are by the swine flu virus.  Even worse, press coverage may be more lethal.

Cheapening the pandemic brand

Pandemic sounds pretty scary.  But the definition of a pandemic is a disease that appears in 3 or more countries.  Basically, every year’s flu bug qualifies.

Each year, 36,000 to 40,000 people die from influenza.  The worldwide infection of the Swine Flu stands today at 150 new confirmed cases.  Now that every sniffle will be tested for the flu, it’s more likely that we’ll find it.  It’s going to sound scary, and it’s an important reminder of the fragility of our biological niche.

Each flu bug needs to be considered in terms of virulence and severity.  The SARS bug is very severe (it kills people) but it isn’t virulent (it doesn’t transfer between humans).  The Swine Flu appears to be virulent, although we don’t know how many people are exposed or infected yet.  On the severity level, it is significantly less severe than SARS, which has killed 20% of people it has infected.  Severity may be no worse, in the end, than a bad year of the flu.

Politically, it’s better to be careful than Katrina-ed, so it makes sense to overreact to these scares.  But I expect (and hope) that the death toll in the US will be less than the yearly deathtoll from influenza.