http://news.slashdot.org/story...

About the same way that every letter is in the alphabet.

No you didn't.

You used imaginary numbers for determining your supposed population, and you purposefully used lowest numbers which you've also imagined.
Those numbers are nowhere to be found in the WHO report.

THIS is what the report says. Again...

NOT 5% of 7.2 billion.
5-10% of adults (so "most favorable to producing a high mortality rate" would be 10% based on adults alone) and 20-30% of children (where "most favorable to producing a high mortality rate" would be 30%).

Have fun figuring out how many "children" that is as not only do they NOT provide such numbers, but they don't even define "children".
Prepubescent? Everyone under 18? 16? Babies?

ON THE OTHER HAND...
8-10% is the number you get when comparing lowest number of deaths to lowest numbers of severe illness, while comparing highest numbers of deaths to highest numbers of severe illness.
It is a moderate guesstimate value based on known relations between known facts.

Just taking 5% out of 7.2 billion is practically the same as taking any random number.
8%. 19%. 56% 807%. Pumpkin %.
I.e. Completely unrelated to given facts.

Again, that is not the issue. Vaccines are kept up to date.

From the same WHO report.

The issue is the unavailability of vaccines everywhere and the disregard of the disease as people "don't die of influenza very often".
With a dose of that general trend of fear of vaccination on top of it all.

Meanwhile, a couple of thousand dead, ONLY in Africa, over several decades, is a cause of panic because that disease is much more sexy.
Cause everyone dies from ebola. Almost nobody gets it but everyone DIES.
Clearly, we should all panic and duct-tape our doors and windows to stop the virus from coming in.

Polluting Americans' precious bodily fluids.

http://ncse.com/news/2010/06/c...

How about you check your words at your mouth and refrain from putting it into other people's mouths? Mate.
We should not panic about ebola. We SHOULD worry more about the flu, as it clearly kills hundreds of thousands each year.

How easy/hard to die from a disease is not an issue - it's how easily it spreads and IS it deadly.
Ebola is not airborne, it happens only in certain parts of Africa, it requires direct contact for transfer, and it is deadly.
Flu on the other hand, IS airborne, does NOT require direct contact, happens EVERYWHERE, and it is also deadly.

One of those two is a clear and present danger to EVERYONE.
One is an imaginary threat for the most of the planet, on the level of a terrorist attack with a dirty bomb.
I.e. It never happened. There was never an ebola pandemic.

Once an epidemic starts anywhere outside of Africa or some other tropical country with free roaming apes/monkeys - that's when the world needs to panic.
Until then... any panic outside of Africa is based on fantasy and delusion.

Meanwhile, due exactly to writing off of flu as "not scary" people forgo on vaccination - and we bury another 0.2-0.5 million.
While diligently panicking about ebola, sky falling down, terrorists, bronies and drinking from plastic cups.

Like with any disease, further research should be done to create a cure.
Meanwhile, 85% of the world can chill and relax and stop worrying about Dustin Hoffman possibly being infectious.

Yet, there was never a case of ebola in humans which originated outside of Africa and the total number of deaths EVER is counted in thousands FOR ALL THIS TIME and not in hundreds of thousands EACH YEAR.
There's a clue there regarding the nature of the disease. I.e. It's quick and deadly - it does not get to spread far.

And African nations which are currently dealing with, and which have historically had to deal with ebola outbreaks don't have "infrastructure that permits long term quarantine of all but a small handful of individuals" either.
Often, they don't have running water.
Yet... It's mere thousands of cases. Ever.
Again, quick and deadly - it does not get to spread far.

Nobody is arguing that it is not dangerous.
Just that as far as the number of fatalities and global issues go - it's trivial compared to influenza which kills a whole city of people and severely affects a small country of people. Each year.
But since it's not sexy and it's kinda like the common cold so many people confuse the two... meh... fuck those hundreds of thousands dead.

But let's all panic about a disease which has killed couple of thousand people who lived near a jungle in Africa, practically at their doorstep.

As for the penicillin, I already answered that couple of times in other posts and my reasoning there is quite similar to yours.

Probably.
It probably took out a bacterial infection for which the influenza opened the doors.
It was the only thing other than the glucose I was given intravenously, just in case.

And it started working from the first shot I received in the morning at the doctor's office (now my doctor WAS on duty) as I was already feeling well enough to walk on my own around the hospital, following the doctors and nurses from examination room to examination room while being examined there later that day.

Had they said "Go home, you're fine." I would have.
But, the EKG said differently so I was provided with couple of nights in the intensive care, listening to delirious old men on the other side of the ward yelling and screaming all night.
Fun times.

Same reason they later kept me on glucose for several days while allowing me to eat solid food - just in case and cause it fit the symptoms of an infection.
In this case, it took out the bacterial infection of the heart muscle for which the influenza opened up the doors.
Cough syrup on the other hand did diddly squat.

It was effective against a bacterial inflammation of the heart muscle, for which influenza "opened the door".
Like I said, they never figured out what exactly was the cause, they just settled for viral once they ran out of congenital and parasitic causes.

Penicillin (probably a streptomycin combo) was administered "just in case".
Same as the glucose I was receiving intravenously for several days more, despite being quite able to eat and digest solid food - which I did as I was allowed to.

You are working with rather imaginary numbers there.

For one, 5 percent of adults and whatever-percent of children won't give you that 5% number to multiply it with 7 billion.
And second, death tends to be a severe case. A VERY severe case.
Does WHO discount those deaths from severe cases? I don't know. They didn't say.

But it is a much more accurate shorthand to assume a correlation between the number of severe cases and the number of deaths and compare those numbers as percentages of the same population than what you did there.

Precise numbers are not an issue here anyway.
The fact that flu is a much more serious global problem than ebola is the issue.

Following that logic, ebola is not scary simply because most people don't ever catch it.

Or are you arguing that since it's not your ass, you not being elderly, pregnant or a small child - fuck those weaklings dying in hundreds of thousands each year from a disease "Most people survive it just fine".

And again... Most people DO NOT GET THE FLU each year but simple common cold.
"3 to 5 million cases of severe illness, and about 250 000 to 500 000 deaths" comes to 8-10% fatalities.
That's about 3 kids dead in a class of 30 children. Every year.
But it's spread out across the globe and it happens mostly in "third world" countries so - fuck those weaklings.

Back in winter of '96 I had a case of actual flu.
As a teenager, wasn't really in an "at risk group", other than maybe having my immunity lowered.
Unfortunately, my doctor wasn't in that day and I was sent home (by a rather young doctor, rather fresh from the med school) with a prescription for cough syrup instead of a penicillin shot.

That night I had a fever of +40C, and ended up barely breathing by the morning.
Had to sit in a semi-reclined position to be able to breathe as it was difficult for me to do that while sitting or lying down.
Had to lean on my mother's arm to be able to walk to the doctor's office in the morning, about 200-300 meters downhill (mostly) from where I live.

There it turned out that I practically had a heart attack - an inflammation of the myocardium.
Ended up staying over at the hospital for couple of weeks and having tests and booster shots for next half a year - though I was "fixed" after couple of shots of penicillin, getting out of the bed and walking to the bathroom by myself that very night with no difficulty at all.
By tomorrow I felt ready to go home. Still had to stay though.

Funny thing is, during all my stay at the hospital doctors never figured out what was wrong with me. They were looking for congenital heart conditions, trichinosis... only much later as I kept being fine did they take a look back at the original symptoms and figured out that it was all a viral inflammation of the heart muscle.

THAT'S influenza!
"Most people" catch a cold and call that "the flu".

That will be $29.95.

Bubonic, Septicemic, Pneumonic, Pharyngeal, Meningeal and Cellulocutaneous plague are the SAME DISEASE.
Only distinction is the main area of infection and the vector which got it there.
It will shift from one form to the other as the disease progresses.

You're basically trying to be a smartass by saying something like "Ha! You fool! It's not a pastry. It's a croissant."

Flu is killing 200.000 to 500.000 people globally every year.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre...

It's just not that sexy to make a movie about it with Morgan Freeman, Dustin Hoffman and a monkey.
Plus people ignorant of distinction between common cold and influenza don't perceive it as a threat.
Which is a further reason why there is no movie with a monkey about it.

The main topic is memes, not the Federal deficit.
"TLDR", being a meme, many of which were quoted here, is actually ON TOPIC.

Which is funny all on its own, being that it is probably one of the few times that a reply such as TLDR is actually ON TOPIC, and it is funny as a reply to trolls who are trolling the topic with idiotic insinuations of "useless research causes Federal budget to collapse".

And it's triple funny cause though THEY are aware of being off-topic, moderators are not.
There...

Now...
Place your right forefinger on your right cheek, just above the right corner of your mouth, and your left forefinger at your left cheek, just above the left corner of your mouth.
With fingers in that position push the cheeks of your face gently upward.
While holding your cheeks in that position, open your mouth slightly, take a deep breath, and say "Ha!" rapidly three times while breading out with each "Ha!"
It may take a little practice to get it right first couple of years.
Observing how other humanoids perform the laughing ritual may help.