Swine flu’s death toll was 10 times higher than thought

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/27/swine_flus_death_toll_was_10_times_higher_than_thought/

Nov 27, 2013
Lindsay Abrams

About 203,000 people throughout the world died of flu and respiratory problems during 2009′s H1N1 epidemic, a new study funded by the World Health Organization found. When heart failure and other secondary consequences of the flu are included, the death toll is bumped up to about 400,000 — far exceeding the 18,449 laboratory-confirmed cases that the WHO had until now been reporting.

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And from the New York Times:

Brazil’s data was particularly enlightening, [Simonsen] said, because infection and death rates there were much higher in the temperate, relatively wealthy south than in the impoverished, tropical north. That suggested, she said, that the flu threat was more dependent on cold weather than on income, which affects the quality of medical care victims get.