Swine flu: on not knowing

Swine flu: on not knowing

Category: Infectious disease • Pandemic preparedness • Public health preparedness • Swine flu

The unpredictability of flu and difficulty of making any predictions with confidence is tiring to repeat and tiresome to listen to. Unfortunately that doesn't make it any less true. There are things we know -- because we see them happening -- and things we don't know -- because the information isn't available (like an accurate estimate of CFR or prevalence) or they have yet to happen.

What we know is that we are confronted with a new influenza virus that is spreading with ease outside of its normal season, is infecting an age group that normally doesn't get easily infected (the 5 - 24 year olds), and is causing most of its serious illness and deaths in that same age group. In North America it is now the only significant circulating flu virus, present in all 50 states. WHO's Dr. Keiji Fukuda ((WHO presser .mp3) said yesterday that preliminary data from Chile, in the southern hemisphere, suggests it has similarly displaced the usual seasonal flu strains there. 64 countries have now reported over 17,000 cases and there is no doubt this virus is now a pandemic strain, whatever WHO chooses to call it. So that's what we know, because it is happening and we can see it.