H1 N1 and the semantic game

ATLANTA (AP) — Swine flu cases are down, but health officials say the disease's cumulative impact has grown to 57 million U.S. illnesses, 257,000 hospitalizations and 11,690 deaths.

I'm not buying it. That is over 1/6th of the entire US population. That would mean that one in six of the people I meet daily would have had the illness. Yet, I know not one.

Then again, it all hinges on what the meaning of the word "is" is. Anyone want to take a stab at the meaning behind "cumulative inpact." I think it has something to do with pinball.

Models of nothing...

In the waning days of April, as federal officials were declaring a public health emergency and the world seemed gripped by swine flu panic, two rival supercomputer teams made projections about the epidemic that were surprisingly similar — and surprisingly reassuring. By the end of May, they said, there would be only 2,000 to 2,500 cases in the United States.

May’s over. They were a bit off.

On May 15, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were “upwards of 100,000” cases in the country, even though only 7,415 had been confirmed at that point.

Funding...funding...and more funding. Plus, if you are a political machine type operation like the Center for Disease Control, you alway error to the worst case scenario to protect your worthless behind, and increase funding...funding...and funding.

Liberals and their "models." You have to love them. Who knows, maybe some day they will use a half-ass model to predict the end of the world.