What made swine flu so worrisome was the high death toll it wrought in Mexico. Most of us assumed that the virus would be at least as lethal wherever it spread. It wasn’t. With the virus temporarily in retreat, current estimates show all but one of the swine flu deaths were confined to Mexico, and all but a few of those were in Mexico City. Why? Rampant poverty, for one, which kept many in Mexico who contracted swine flu from going to the doctor until it was too late. Swine flu isn’t much more dangerous than seasonal flu, it just struck a particularly vulnerable population. That didn’t prevent a public panic, of course: the Mexican economy could lose as much as $5 billion before tourism and economic activity recovers. [%comments]
The Importance of Sample Size, Swine Flu Edition
and 
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What is particularly interesting about the whole Swine Flu episde is how the news media reported and propogated the story.
Infected stories were passed from news hound to news hound, with limited medical intervention, until we had a pandemic of misinformation.
Did this prop up the media corp economies ? (it certainly does not seem to have damaged them).
“Swine flu isn’t much more dangerous than seasonal flu, it just struck a particularly vulnerable population”
I would argue there was also a strong selection bias that needed to be overcome as well.
http://www.broadcastthoughts.net/2009/05/sample-size-and-bias.html
Steerpike: I’m sure that yes, the media industry benefited from the scare they themselves created. That’s what they do best. But everyone’s gotta make a living, right? Nobody HAS TO watch TV and buy newspapers.
The problem is how public figures and elected officials (e.g. Joe Biden) contributed to creating this scare. Shame on them. I really wish elected representatives were smarter than the average citizen. I’m all for a technocracy. This only will save mankind from its own stupidity.
I think this flu hit the Mexican population harder because they haven’t had the same exposure or chance to build immunity to the larger spectrum of flu virus out there. It’s a shame so many died, and a miracle more weren’t effected. For a healthy person with travel plans to Mexico this summer – don’t cancel unless this breaks out into a pandemic. They could use the tourism.
Living in poverty in one of the world’s most polluted cities is a double whammy in dealing with the flu. I suspect that important contributing factors to death from the swine flu are the long term respiratory problems arising from the terrible air pollution.
If only economists ran the media. Perhaps we could actually get some factual information rather than a lot of conjecture and panic.
Not quite right. Asked about a possible link between poverty and infections, Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said Monday the flu struck across all socio-economic strata with a slight predominance towards lower- and middle-class people.
What was interesting though is the number of women among the fatalities: 24 of the 42 confirmed so far. The sample is too small to call that a trend, of course, and the infection rate between the sexes if 50-50. Another thing to note: this flu mostly hits people aged 20-40, not the very young and very elderly as in a normal influenza strain.
It should be noted that there were several more deaths occurred this month, including two on Tuesday. Presumably they received the best care available — to rich or poor — since the outbreak was first declared in Mexico on April 23.
Yay for sensationalism.