Chinese Zodiac and Influenza

There is a claim that there was a connection between the influenza outbreaks and the Chinese Zodiac calendar. In 2007 it was the year of the chicken, also the year of the bird flu outbreak in parts of Asia. In 2008 it was the year of the horse and there was an outbreak of equine flu in Australia. During 2009 there was an outbreak of swine flu, and quite coincidentally it was the year of the pig for the Chinese Zodiac calendar. If you think these claims are quite ridiculous than you would be right. The first mistake made by the creators of this myth is that they assumed that correlation was causation.. Another principle of critical thinking that can help to prove this claim wrong is that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. There is no real evidence that shows that there is a correlation between the Chinese Zodiac calendar and the outbreaks of influenza in the last few years.

Believers in this myth are making an illusionary correlation between the two events. Like most other pseudoscientific claims they also overlooked the fact that breakouts of these types of influenza happened at times when it did not correlate to the Chinese Zodiac calendar. The creators had confirmation bias when making the claim and ignored a lot of evidence supporting an alternative cause. In my eyes this is purely a coincidence and no real correlation exists between the two variables.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/swineflu/astrology.asp