A recent study looks at what number of adverse events would be expected in a given population even without vaccines—per x million people, there will be a certain number who die, who have spontaneous abortions, etc. in the next few days or weeks.  We need to know these baseline numbers so that we can see if reactions post H1N1 vaccine go beyond what is statistically expected. I quite liked this bit, some much needed humour dealing with our current serious pandemic:

"By being ready with the expected numbers of chance cases, perhaps we can avoid over-reaction to sad, but coincidental, events. And why don't we ever see a headline 'Man wins lottery after flu jab'?"

Read the complete article here.