Flu update...

Well, it seems that that British flight attendant does not have swine flu. On the other hand, there are some suspected cases in New Zealand, and a possible one in Israel. (On a side note, can you imagine the conclusions folks might have jumped to, and the consequences, if Israel -- or Iran or Pakistan, for that matter -- had been the site of the initial outbreak?) The news from this country is contradictory; this CBC story reports possible cases in Nova Scotia, but the most recent flu story in the Chronicle-Herald says otherwise. In any case, the CBC story quotes one specialist as saying fears are overblown:

A Toronto infection control specialist said it's important to keep the outbreak in perspective.

"This sounds like a pandemic — while it's not trivial — that is less severe. And less severe is something that we spent a lot of time planning for and a lot of time working on," Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital told CBC News.

Reassuring... maybe. Also interesting, and perhaps reassuring, is this:

A big question is: Just how deadly is the virus in Mexico?

The seasonal flu tends to kill just a fraction of 1 percent of those infected.

In Mexico, about 70 deaths out of roughly 1,000 cases represents a fatality rate of about 7 percent. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, which killed an estimated 50 million worldwide, had a fatality rate of about 2.5 percent.

The Mexican rate sounds terrifying. But it’s possible that far more than 1,000 people have been infected with the virus and that many had few if any symptoms, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a prominent pandemic expert at the University of Minnesota. U.S. health officials echoed him.

“In Mexico, they were looking for severe diseases and they found some. They may not have been looking as widely for the milder cases,” said Schuchat of the CDC.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I know I freak out easily; maybe it's all the books I've read (The Stand, The Last Canadian, Earth Abides, etc).