These are the latest Swine Flu figures, now hotwired to the Guardian’s. When they update, this’ll update automatically.
UPDATE: 6th AUG – this table keeps breaking because every time The Guardian updates it, they move the rows around! I will try to fix. UPDATE 29th Aug – OK I’ve fixed this now.
UPDATE 19th July: The Guardian have now updated their spreadsheet to include infection rate & mortality rate. Hmmmmmmm. I’m not saying anything….
Click around and re-order the countries by confirmed cases, infection, and mortality rates to get different perspectives on the situation.
(Apols for the crudeness of the design. I haven’t quite worked out how to edit the look and feel)
I believe just using sheer number of cases is a limited way of looking at it. Raw, the figures seem alarming. Put them in context with other countries or other figures, however, and it seems less alarming.
- Confirmed cases have to be taken as a proportion of each country’s population size, or else it’s just a meaningless number.
- Similarly, death rates are far more revealing when shown as a proportion of those infected
- If you order the table by mortality rate, a very different picture emerges of the most stricken nations.
Suddenly the poorer countries leap to the top the table. Why do Argentina, Colombia and Mexico have the highest death rates?