There’s a decidedly softer tone to swine flu / A (H1N1) stories in recent days. The sense seems to be emerging that this new strain of flu may not be much more deadly than the new flu strains that show up almost every year.

AP, in an unbylined story, quotes a flu expert saying “there are encouraging signs” that the outbreaks are leveling off. UPI, also unbylined, quotes the Mexican president taking credit for slowing the outbreak by, essentially, shutting down the country.

Todd Ackerman had a particularly good take on the outbreaks in the Houston Chronicle, quoting a flu researcher saying, “I don’t see anything to justify this panic.”

But some sources are reminding the public that previous bad pandemics have come in waves, the first one looking relatively small and the second wave being the tsunami. For example, CNN out of Mexico City notes the possibility of the nationwide shutdown being lifted but U.N. health officials warning that a second wave could “strike with a vengeance.”

Indeed, Thomas Maugh at the Los Angeles Times wrote on Sunday that while the pace of infections is slowing, a WHO official predicted that the agency would eventually raise its alert level to its highest point, indicating a full-fledged pandemic is underway. “I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent,” said the WHO director of global alert and response. The key factor seems to be whether there is sustained person-to-person transmission outside of North America.

Meanwhile, Denise Grady and Alan Cowell report in the New York Times that the virus has been found in more countries, raising the total to 20. A large fraction of the new cases are among people who had recently been in Mexico. Also, they report, there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission in Europe.

-BR

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Health & Medicine Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.