Is that a lot or a little?
PAX organizers say they have confirmed nearly 100 cases of H1N1 virus infections, or swine flu, in the wake of the Seattle videogame convention, which drew approximately 75,000 gamers to the Washington State Convention and Trade Center between Sept. 4 and 6.
So, that's about one tenth of one percent of the people reporting likely swine flue (H1N1). That would be a very mild flu season, but since its a weekend and not a season, it may be a large number. On the other hand, small samples are highly variable. What you'd need to do is to find ten or twenty conventions of 20 or more thousand people and count the flu cases across that sample, and from that perhaps extrapolate rates. (I'm just estimating these numbers .... my point is that I'm not convinced this is a large number.)
This is, however, the beginning of the season of school and other changes in behavior that enhance flu transmission, and we are hearing reports like this one from Pax as well as various colleges that have started to report large numbers of cases.
Well, wash your hands, get plenty of bed rest, and I'll see you in the morning.
Flu's already hit the U too.
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2009/09/its_day_2_of_sc.php
You're not teaching this semester, are you?
No swine flu for you!
Don't you have to adjust for con crud?
When H1N1 meets "Get tough" attendance policies in the workplace this winter, life may become interesting.
Charles: My wife is a high school teacher and my daughter is in (a different) high school. We're doomed!
I'm not sure I buy this yet for Pax. Well, what I'm not sure I buy is that 100 healthy people got the flu from other attendees during this three day period and showed the symptoms. Then again I don't actually know what the infectio to symptom time is with this flu. But I will go look it up.
But Wil Wheaton was there! That makes it newsworthy! What if Wil gets H1N1? Then he might have to talk about crying on his blog. Oh, wait...