No need to panic over panel's swine flu estimates: U.S. govt.

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology had estimated Tuesday that the H1N1 influenza has the capacity to infect half of the U.S. population, hospitalize more than 1.8 million people and cause 90,000 deaths. The grim numbers has created panic among the U.S. citizens.

To read more on the panel's estimates, click here

“We don’t necessarily see this as a likely scenario,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, speaking about the death estimates.

"Everything we've seen in the U.S. and everything we've seen around the world suggests we won't see that kind of number if the virus doesn't change," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in a C-SPAN interview taped Wednesday.

H1N1 no deadlier than normal flu, so far
Since its outbreak in the month of April, people are easily getting infected with this virus, but so far it has not been deadlier than the regular flu strains seen every fall and winter. Rather, many people affected by the virus are suffering with only mild illness.

A press officer for the CDC said, “Look, if the virus keeps behaving the way it is now, I don’t think anyone here expects anything like 90,000 deaths.”

In case of a regular flu season, up to 20 percent of the population gets infected and approximately 36,000 die.

A close genetic tracking of the swine flu virus has shown no signs of it mutating to become more dangerous. But still, CDC is busy preparing for worst case scenario as a precaution to handle the situation in case spread of the virus increases or vaccination plans fail.

Calculations can be misleading
One of the panel experts who helped prepare the report said that the numbers presented in the report were probably on the high side as the calculations had finished early in August when count was high.

“As more data has come out of the Southern Hemisphere, where it seems to be fading, it looks as if it’s going to be somewhat milder,” said (the expert) Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If we were betting on the most likely number, I’d say it’s not 90,000 deaths; it’s lower.”

However, Dr. Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and one of the panel’s chairmen, defended the report saying, “A lot of people think the flu is over. We think it’s important that there be a dose of reality. It’s certainly not an outlandish proposal. A lot of people are going to be infected.”

Focus more on vaccination in future
Despite all this confusion on how the virus will spread in future, the focus in future will be more on issues like proper distribution of vaccines, set for mid-October.

As for now, the CDC is working towards preventing hospitals from crowded emergency rooms by keeping the not-so-sick at bay and is targeting anti-flu drugs for the most vulnerable.