The flu season is running it's course; stay healthy and you should be fine. In Canada, respiratory complications cause hundreds of deaths every month, 90% of them are among the elderly. So, be careful out there, but lets not go nuts.
... says Dr. Theresa Tam, chief of respiratory disease with the Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control. Canada's flu toll had been estimated at 500 to 1500 deaths annually, but after using new modelling Health Canada estimated that 700 to 2500 deaths may be attributable to influenza. ...
...Statistics Canada says the number of deaths from pneumonia and influenza has increased from approximately 4200 in 1979 to 8030 in 1997. Of the latter, 6618 cases involved people older than 75, compared with 2965 in 1979. Despite the increase in the absolute number of deaths, says Tam, mortality rates have actually gone down in every age group. "Canada now ranks number 1 in the world for influenza [vaccine] doses per capita," says Tam. "It's almost 1 in 3." ...
source: Estimates of flu-related deaths rise with new statistical models
Seasonal flu has a death rate of less than 0.1 percent — but still manages to kill 250,000 to 500,000 people globally every year.
A category 5 pandemic would compare to the 1918 flu pandemic, which had an estimated death rate of 2 percent or more, and would kill tens of million of people. ...
...Seasonal flu is usually far worse among the elderly, who make up 90 percent of the deaths every year.We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity. Learn more »
