Keep in mind that the '45.7 per 100,000' is simply another way to express the average number of guards that have died. You can have fractional values in that case. They aren't counting the total number of guards ... in that case, a fractional guard would be nonsense.

If there were 45.7 guards dropping dead of the Chinaflu and there were 1,000,000 guards nationwide, then a total of 457 guards of the 1,000,000 employed guards would have died since they calculated 45.7 per 100,000.

You are right that this is them merely playing with numbers for effect. It's akin to them changing from ppm when whining about CO2 in the atmosphere to "tons" since "tons" sounds worse.

Percentage-wise 45.7 per 100,000 = 0.0457% of all guards. Again, that doesn't sound as bad as saying the number "forty-five point seven".

I don't mean to sound condescending at all :-) ... but fractions are valid when you are doing basic statistical analysis. You are 100% right about them using numerical tricks as a means of showing those results for propaganda purposes of course ... that's the main thing.