The numbers that came out yesterday were downright alarming: up to 90,000 people could die from the swine flu this fall, and 1.8 million people could be hospitalized. So says a report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
But how scared should we be, really? For one thing, those numbers out of context don't mean very much. In truth, the White House numbers estimate the deaths would be between 30,000 and 90,000, while a normal year checks in between 30,000 and 40,000 flu deaths, though bad years like 1957 have reached as high as 70,000.
The scarier fact is that the vaccine against swine flu won't be ready until October, while flu season generally begins in force in September. As I recently wrote for DISCOVER, swine flu expert Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona says that failure was mostly caused by public health officials not having a wide database of flu genetics and being months behind the curve when swine flu jumped from pigs to humans.
As Worobey says in a Big Think/Discover/Pfizer-sponsored panel discussion, we have the genetic sequencing technology to build that database and be a step ahead in creating the vaccine. We just have to get our act together and start sampling not only people with the flu, but also populations of birds, pigs, and other animals closely related to us so we catch new strains jumping around.
Fortunately, Worobey says, he doesn't think there's sufficient evidence to believe swine flu will return with significantly greater virulence in humans when the Northern Hemisphere's flu season returns next month. But we should learn from the surprise of swine flu so we're more prepared for the next big species-jumping viral strain.
Discuss
Luciana Lhullier on August 26, 2009, 9:00 PM
Public health officials´ delay in taking action are enervating worldwide, it seems. This afternoon, with the announcement of more Influenza A related deaths, with a total of 557 and others being still investigated, Brazil is at the top of the list. The city where I live, Passo Fundo, had the first fatal case, back on June 28th, and it was an imported one,from Argentina. At that time, even knowing that the neighboring countries were in the middle of an epidemic, the Brazilian Health Ministry confiscated Tamiflu from pharmacies and centralized it at their headquarters. It was only to be distributed if necessary. sigh and only to designated hospitals. Physicians started getting desperate of seeing young, healthy people die in front of them, and not being able to do much. In mid-July, Tamiflu was finally distributed to hospitals. Unbelievable. It was then that, with ERs packed and Intensive care operating beyond their capacity, physicians in Passo Fundo formed an unofficial health committee, got in touch with other physicians in Mexico and in the US to learn what they were doing, and broke the Ministry protocol. They started treating any suspect case with Tamiflu if the symptoms were serious, since the Influenza A tests were taking more than a week and the medication is more effective in the first 48 hours. What the medical community has been saying is that, had the ministry been less bureaucratic and centralizing, lots of lives could have been saved.
ed hardy on August 28, 2009, 3:39 AM
thanks, the article is very good~~
by ed hardy
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