The Numbers Do Not Add Up
Who to believe, the CDC or the New York State Department of Health?
Last week, New York Governor Cuomo declared a public health emergency due to an outbreak of influenza. But, the numbers just don’t add up. The CDC has published numbers that show the new number of laboratory confirmed cases of flu nationwide totaled 4,222 (for week 1, 2013), down from a high of 5,108 for the last week of 2012.
But, New York State is claiming that [laboratory-confirmed] “influenza was reported in all 57 counties plus New York City. There were 4,059 total reports, a 7% decrease over last week,”
according to the weekly STATEWIDE INFLUENZA SURVEILLANCE REPORT, for the week ending January 5, 2013 (source: http://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/influenza/surveillance/2012-2013/flu_report_current_week.pdf).
according to the weekly STATEWIDE INFLUENZA SURVEILLANCE REPORT, for the week ending January 5, 2013 (source: http://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/influenza/surveillance/2012-2013/flu_report_current_week.pdf).
The numbers just do not add up. New York State cannot account for nearly 100% of all flu cases nationally.
Weekly confirmed flu cases reported to CDC (source FluView, http://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/fluportaldashboard.html).
YEAR WEEK number of confirmed cases
2012 40 162
2012 41 197
2012 42 299
2012 43 339
2012 44 408
2012 45 618
2012 46 841
2012 47 1328
2012 48 1995
2012 49 3366
2012 50 4449
2012 51 5417
2012 52 5108
2013 1 4222
TOTAL # , LAB CONFIRMED (NATIONALLY) CASES FOR THE SEASON: 28,749
TOTAL H3N2v FOR THE SEASON: 0
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