An Enigma: Transmission Of Epidemic Influenza (part 7)

I attempt to shed light on the riddle that is seasonal influenza using my bag of spanners. Today I take another look at the impact of WHO Rule 3

I need to wind the clock back a bit to the second slide of part 6 of this series. This was a plot of all respiratory mortality for England & Wales for the period 1901 – 2022 by sex and it possessed a couple of big dents arising from the implementation of WHO Rule 3. This is a big deal and I want us all to understand the implications.

For those who haven’t the time to go reading back issues I’ll summarise the situation by saying the WHO farted about with the international coding of diseases over the period 1984 – 1992 and this had the effect of removing a good many deaths that would have historically been attributed to serious respiratory conditions such as pneumonia and the like.

After a bit of international argy-bargy rule 3 was abandoned from 1993 – 2000, at which point numbers of deaths attributed to pneumonia rose back to previous levels. The WHO finally won the day in 2001 when everybody was forced to implement rule 3 once more for good.

The problem is – and it’s a big problem – is …