I am sorry to keep commenting on swine flu, I don't mean to be argumentative. It's just that I majored in biology and my career is pharamceutical research. Swine flu may turn out to be nothing, but it sort of drives me nuts to keep hearing people say: "It's just a flu, and the flu kills people all the time." It really shouldn't be dismissed as "just another flu".:wave:
True, the flu is a serious disease and is responsible for a large number of deaths every year. While specifics of the virus as you described are unique (at least we think they are), the symptomology is apparently no different from most other influenza outbreaks, possibly even more mild.
I have my undergraduate in Microbiology and have worked in pharmaceuticals and vaccine production most of my career, so I have a decent grasp as well.
In the grand scheme of things, it is "just the flu". There is no novelty of spread or virulence.
Compare it to the 4 million cases of chicken pox per year before the varicella vaccine or the millions of cases of shingles caused by the same virus in adults, or 200,000 deaths annually from measles. Following is a quote from a WHO report on infectious diseases:
Most deaths from infectious diseases - almost 90% - are caused by only a handful of diseases. And most of them have plagued mankind throughout history, often ravaging populations more effectively than wars. In an age of vaccines, antibiotics and dramatic scientific progress, these diseases should have been brought under control. Yet, in developing countries today they continue to kill at an alarming rate. And at times - as in recent outbreaks of influenza - they also kill at an alarming rate in the industrialized countries.
No more than six deadly infectious diseases - pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhoeal diseases, malaria, measles and more recently HIV/AIDS - account for half of all premature deaths, killing mostly children and young adults.
We now have tools that allow us to rapidly identify these pathogens in ways that were impossible 10 years ago. While this seems like a "unique" combination of strains, we actually have no idea how routine or unusual this may be. It is great scientific discussion, but not appropriate to invoke mutation in the sense of 50's horror films, 28 Days and Doom movies.
Do I have serious public health concerns, you bet! The egregious misuse of antibiotics and antimicrobials in everyday items leading to a broad population of resistant microbes to pale the influenza virus, AIDS infecting about 1 million people in the US (I won't even go into worldwide figures).
If a family member has the flu, is it the most important disease for me, yes.
From a public health, immunological trending perspective, it
IS "just the flu"
