Posted by Todd (64.34.202.197) on August 07, 2000 at 23:06:23:
In Reply to: Admiration posted by Simon on August 07, 2000 at 19:42:00:
deserves another.
Got to playing with numbers one night a few days ago, based on something someone said in chat.
You math/statistics gurus feel free to correct my logic errors.
World pop is roughly 6 Billion according to the UN. Thats 6,000,000,000
Assuming the .6 to 1% incidence of CH, and going for the low end, that means there are 36,000,000 of us....36 million world wide.
(This assumes no ethnic variances, which isn't supported by the limited number of Afrocentrics and Asians we see here, but that could be an Internet phenomenon)
If 10% of us are chronic, that's 3.6 million.
If they each have 4 attacks per day (on average)
And if each attack lasts 20 minutes (assuming foolishly that they all have meds that work),
there are 14,400,000 chronicattacks each day for 20 minutes or a total of 288,000,000 attack minutes/day.
Divide this by 1440 minutes per day and there are 200,000 (TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND!) chronics suffering an attack somewhere in the world every single minute of every single day.(Here assuming a equal distribution of attacks over the 24 hour period, which is not too far fetched given the time zones and regularity of attacks, though not normalized for population distribution).
Toss in the 90% of us who are episodic and the numbers become almost unbelievable.
But back up to the beginning....at .6 (six tenths of one percent), there are 36 MILLION of us. The UN also says there are currently 34 million people infected with HIV/AIDS. Granted, that's a far worse affliction, with much more serious ramifications for mankind. But we outnumber HIV victims, and NO-ONE has heard of us.
In light of Simon's documentary possibility and the Discovery deal, just thought I'd toss this out for the more statistical to play with...might be some good data in here for the media to run with.