Mailund on the Internet

It’s official, the swine flu has been upgraded to pandemic.

WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan made the announcement Thursday after the U.N. agency held an emergency meeting with flu experts. Chan said she was moving the world to phase 6 — the agency’s highest alert level — which means a pandemic, or global epidemic, is under way.
“The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century,” Chan told reporters. “The (swine flu) virus is now unstoppable.”

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The last pandemic — the Hong Kong flu of 1968 — killed about 1 million people. Ordinary flu kills about 250,000 to 500,000 people each year.

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Yes, people are still talking about the pig flu:

• How long does it take to sequence an influenza virus? (Aetiology)
• Flu news you can use (Neuron Culture)
• Nonoptimal virulence and avian influenza (Mike the Mad Biologist)
• World Health Organization raises pandemic alert level (Ars Technica)

While I have read a bit about the flu and find it interesting, if scary, I am by no means an expert, but luckily there are other bloggers around who does a good job at writing about it.

Check out these links:

• Swine flu: What did you expect? (Effect Measure)
• Swine flu and the Mexico mystery (Neuron Culture)
• Outbreak vs epidemics (Slate)
• Understanding the outbreak: an influenza biology primer (Ars Technica)
• Swine flu: what do CFR, virulence and mortality rate means? (Effect Measure)

Also check out the Flu Wiki and you can follow the spread of the swine flu at google maps.
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It is all over the news these days, the swine flu from Mexico.  The US has declared an emergency and the first cases have appeard in Europe.

How bad can it get?  Pretty bad, actually.

We are better prepared than we were in 1918, but still, we also travel a lot more, so a pandemic can spread fast if measures are not taken.

With the scare of the bird flu the last couple of years, one would hope that goverments are prepared, but of course it can also end up with a “boy that cried wolf” situation where people do not take the flu serious enough.

This might be a bad time to go to a busy airport, but I’m off to Heathrow now…

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