Swine flu spreading further: But was all the initial panic worth it?
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Posted to SciTech on Wed May 13, 2009 at 06:53:49 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
The news cycle has rebooted, and initial panic has subsided. The first reports of the start of the pandemic, coupled with the World Health Organization's raising alert levels and warning of an imminent pandemic are weeks past, although some cautious behavior remains. As the number of cases rises around the world scientists and epidemiologists are starting the debate as to whether initial actions and attention were worthwhile and proper, or whether this entire event has been overblown.
The US CDC announced this week that America has suffered about 2,532 confirmed cases as of 5/11, with 104 hospitalizations and 3 fatalities. Authorities report that the actual number of cases is likely much higher due to the fact that there is a backlog in testing and not all patients are being definitively assessed for the virus. They also announced that most new cases in the United States are now linked to person to person transmission between people that have no connection to Mexico, as opposed to initial outbreak stages where most were travelers. Above all, the CDC suggested that people not ignore the flu completely and warned that it could get worse.
However, now that news media are not covering the situation 24/7 many people are beginning to calm down and take stock of the situation. Scientists are as well. In one of the first reviews since the epidemic began, Dr. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College (UK), suggests that the amount of cases may be drastically understated, and that this flu is much worse than the seasonal flu in terms of transmissible and virulence, but less so than the 1918 flu. Dr. Ferguson argues that this appears similar to the 1957 pandemic which killed about 1 to 4 million worldwide, while seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people a year. He argues with genetic evidence that the virus likely appeared in Mexico around January 12th and is of a type never seen before. With a case fatality rate of 0.4 to 1.4% and each case resulting in about 1.5 new infections the study authors concluded that this will likely be similar to the pandemics of the earlier 20th century.
"Our early analysis would suggest this is going to be an outbreak comparable to that of 20th century pandemics regarding the extent of its spread -- it's very difficult to quantify the human health impact at this stage, however," said lead author Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London.
Other scientists complain that the WHO was too slow in ramping up the pandemic alert to 4 and 5, respectively. They argue that there is still a slight danger of this H1N1 virus mutating to become more deadly and thus take advantage of its high transmissibility and the low innate immunity of humans to it to spread farther and cause more damage. A nightmare scenario would be re-assortment with the "bird flu" or H5N1, although all agree that this is very much unlikely to happen.
Of course, not all have analyzed the swine flu media coverage with such measured terms. Many media critics harshly chastised the press for scaring people into believing a major, immediate and deadly pandemic was occurring. Critics like Jeff Poor point to articles published by the associated press detailing the "worst case scenario" and describing overwhelmed hospitals, destroyed economies, millions killed, etc. Even politicians like Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) blamed the media hype for exacerbating the situation, even as local schools within his state were shut down to contain the threat.
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