flu death numbers greatly exaggerated

September 8, 2009

Dr. Mercola's latest e-mail has a post on swine flu with a link to an

older article here:

Flu Deaths Outrageously Exaggerated to Increase Vaccine Sales

Posted by: Dr. Mercola

October 30 2004

I followed up by looking up the stats he was citing in this article

for myself, and posted this comment on his site:

I just looked at the comprehensive overall death report for 2001,

linked above, and it took some looking but I found the stats for the

breakdown of deaths (total for all races, both sexes) from influenza

and pneumonia. Together they're 22.0 deaths per one hundred thousand

of the U.S. population. For Influenza alone, it's 0.1 of 22.0, and

pneumonia accounts for the other 21.9! It's interesting to see all the

many other causes of death that are far higher than influenza; the

figure for malnutrition is 1.2 per 100,000, for instance. Truly eye-

opening. FYI look for page 62 (page number is upper right hand

corner), part of Table 16 (which spans several pages), right at the

top. The sum of flu and pneumonia (22.0) is at the bottom of page 61,

and the breakdown is top of page 62. Thanks for this link, Dr.

Mercola! Now I can cite these numbers with confidence as I've read

them for myself.

I also looked at the CDC statistics for 2007, the most recent ones

available, and it showed the same trend: 98.5% of the deaths

attributable to the combined category of " influenza and pneumonia "

were from pneumonia, not flu. And as we always hear, the deaths were

mainly among the elderly (age 65+). As a cause of death it ranked in

the top 10 for children up to age 14 I think it was, but the actual

numbers were very small. The vast majority of the flu/pneumonia deaths

are flu among the elderly. Not that the elderly are expendable, but it

only makes sense that older people, who may have weakened immune

systems after a lifetime of weathering stress, illness and bad diets,

are the ones that are most likely to die.

Jeanmarie

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