Confirmed H1N1 death tallies capture the blessedly few times someone who caught this bug died from it after testing positive for it. The seasonal flu numbers are estimates, mathematical calculations aimed at capturing all the deaths influenza had a hand in.
The frequent attempts to equate the two are driving Dr. Kumanan Wilson bonkers.
Wilson is an expert in public health policy as well as an internal medicine physician at the Ottawa Health Research Institute. He readily admits he never sees anyone die of seasonal flu - a common claim that drives infectious diseases experts crazy.
Wilson is, however, seeing the destructive power of this strain of influenza.
"Nobody has seen a flu season like this on the ground level," he says. "If you talk to any frontline worker, they've never seen anything like this. And we keep getting told this is nothing."