How Scared Should We Be of Swine Flu?
Those of you who followed the tournament of pandemics know that influenza came very close to winning the whole thing. It came in second to tuberculosis, because influenza was a couple of mutations away from true pandemic capacity. The current swine flu situation? Well, let's just say that if we ran the tournament again, I wouldn't necessarily bet on TB.
The story, in a nutshell: a form of influenza generally found in pigs mutated to infect people. This is much the same as happened with avian influenza. Avian influenza, however, does not spread from person-to-person. Swine flu does. So it's a new form to which people have no immunity, and it's going person to person. It is also showing a high mortality rates in Mexico. (ominous side note: the current strain of swine flu infecting humans is an H1N1 virus type, as was the Spanish flu which went pandemic in 1918)
It seems clear to me that this new form of flu is spreading rapidly; it will achieve pandemic status quickly. That is not the question. The questions is whether it will be a deadly pandemic. We don't know yet what mortality rates will look like. Swine flu responds to oseltamivir/Tamiflu (at the moment) and zanamivir/Relenza. In the US, it's been a reasonably mild and treatable form of the flu. In Mexico it's been much worse. Just how bad things get depends on how this influenza looks everywhere else.
White Coat Underground may have the best summation:
The flu isn't magic. It's a virus we see every winter. It passes through respiratory droplets, so if it hits hard, masks and frequent hand washing will go a long way. Drugs exist to treat these infections, and the U.S. has an additional emergency stockpile...Unfortunately, the only way to really know how well (or badly) we've prepared is to get hit with a pandemic.
We may have that chance.
For more information:
Vital Systems Security has a useful perspective.
Effect Measure on why containment has failed.
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