Word: flu
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...missed H1N1 when it was still just swine flu because we weren't looking for it. There's only scattered surveillance for pig diseases in the U.S. and Canada; in Mexico, there's even less. According to the American Association of Swine Veterinarians (AASV), there were few reports of unusual sickness in the months leading up to the H1N1 outbreaks--not that vets would have necessarily noticed, since flu in swine is common and rarely serious. "We haven't seen anything that would have tipped us off," says Dr. Tom Burkgren, AASV's executive director...
...should we spend scarce medical resources swabbing the inside of pigs' nostrils, looking for viruses? Because new pathogens--including H5N1 bird flu, SARS, even HIV--incubated in animal populations before eventually crossing over to human beings. In the ecology of influenza, pigs are particularly key. They can be infected with avian, swine and human flu viruses, making them virological blenders. While it's still not clear exactly where the H1N1 virus originated or when it first infected humans, if we had half as clear a picture of the flu viruses circulating in pigs and other animals...
H1N1 has already jumped out of animals and established itself in people, so it's too late to contain it, but there are new viruses brewing all the time in the animal world. That includes H5N1 bird flu, which is simmering in Asia and Africa and could still mutate and trigger a pandemic. Globalization has made us especially vulnerable to new diseases--the right pathogen in the right place could spread around the world in 24 hours--but it also gives us the tools to form an effective defense. "The fact that the world is one continuous village now means...
...occasional pathogen will get through even the most vigilant early-warning system. Viruses, after all, are pretty good at what they do. A new flu pandemic is all but inevitable, and while the response to H1N1--the rapid deployment of Tamiflu, the blizzard of advice from the Federal Government--shows we're better prepared for a pandemic than ever before, it doesn't mean we're truly prepared. A virulent flu pandemic--one that spreads throughout the world and sickens 25% to 30% of Americans--would cause our health-care system to crash like an overloaded website. Partly because...
...simultaneously sickened enough coal workers--or the tiny number of engineers qualified to operate those trains--supplies of coal could dwindle fast, switching off the lights in much of the country. "We'd be dealing with two calamities if a pandemic hit," says Osterholm. "The human morbidity from the flu and the collateral damage for the just-in-time economy...