Orders of Magnitude

Remember the big swine flu scare of 2009? Probably not I mean it’s not like there was wall to wall coverage about how it was going to be the flu to end the existence of our miserable species on this planet. Anyhow we’ve got some numbers of Oceania in regards to predicted deaths versus actual deaths. First:

Sir Liam pointed out that there were the same experts who predicted that up to 65,000 people might die from swine flu this winter – a figure which was later downgraded to 1,000.

So first they were predicting 65,000 people were going to die. Then they downgraded it to 1/65,000 of the original value. That’s 65 TIMES fewer people. And what was the actual death toll? Well:

To date there have been 360 deaths from swine flu in the UK (251 in England, 64 in Scotland, 28 in Wales and 17 in Northern Ireland). But the vast majority of those infected have had either a mild disease or no symptoms at all.

So a little over 1/3 the number of people they predicted were going to die. This once against demonstrates how the mass media will hype anything to get a story. Of course you know the governments of the United Kingdom will proclaim the lower number of deaths was a result of the actions taken by the said governments. Might as well take credit where credit isn’t due.

Further more I’m almost willing now to believe the conspiracy theories about the swine flu being a plague designed by the world governments to lower the population. I’m not seen a government plan or program not end up being a total failure yet. This story lends credibility to the conspiracy theorists.