Making sense of swine flu

Revere cuts through the constantly changing and sometimes conflicting numbers being bandied about to describe the expanding swine flu outbreak.

Instead of fixating on the latest number of cases suspected in region X or confirmed in region Y, he argues, we should focus on the big picture:

What's the take home message? We should stop fixating on hourly changes in numbers or differences about the sequences and keep our eye on the Big Picture. Right now that picture is still cloudy, but will be coming into sharper focus as new information accrues and is organized. Generally, though, we have a novel virus (in the sense that the human population is immunologically naive to it) that is spreading person to person and seems to have clinical characteristics not unlike usual seasonal influenza. Because of its novelty the number of people it could make sick is potentially far greater than a seasonal virus, however, since there is no naturally acquired immunity we know of at the moment (it may turn out there is some cross reactivity with some other strain from years past but so far we have no evidence of that).

As a Big Picture, it's not the most comforting, whatever the day to day numbers.

One reason it's hard to focus on the big picture is the novelty of our bird's eye perspective on the situation. As Revere notes, this is the first time that we've actually watched a flu pandemic unfold in real time.

Comments

[Thomas]

I think that the popular culture of a pandemic, the Captain Tripps Superflu of Stephen King's, The Stand, the Motaba Virus of the movie outbreak, the Andromeda Strain and the like have really tainted most people's understanding of the spread of disease.

Even if Swine Flu turns out to be as ravaging as the 1918 Spanish flu, we're not going to see corpses piled in the street.

What we will see is panic, which helps no one.

[James]

Interesting article. Where I'm from people are freaking out about it too, so I created an ebook to help people out. You can download it a www.jamesryanhamilton.com/swineflu

[Translation]

The flu has a way of evolving into deadlier more resistant strains, and that is what causes the most concern