Word: flu
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...Swine flu arrived in Macon County, Alabama, last week, showing up in classrooms at all levels and leaving a spate of empty desks in its wake. But authorities are battling the virus on its own turf, using vacant seats as both a map and compass to stem the tide...
...even those alarming numbers require some perspective. The figures, says PCAST member Dr. Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and former director of the National Institutes of Health, were generated using data from previous flu pandemics--from 1918, 1957 and 1968--along with the latest data from last spring's outbreaks of H1N1 around the world. Those stats, say officials at the Centers for Disease Control, were then run through models used in the government's 2005 pandemic preparedness efforts that began in the wake of bird flu cases of H5N1 that arose...
...reassuring-and that was the point. While the report's authors, which include some of the country's sharpest minds from science, medicine and engineering, stress that the forecast is not predictive of what could actually occur in coming months, it was intended to remind everyone how devastating a flu pandemic...
...public health officials to get a handle on how infectious a new influenza like H1N1 might be, how it spreads, and how quickly. That helps them know how much vaccine might be needed, how to distribute it, and when to expect a surge in demand for flu treatments, including antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza. It can also help predict when hospitals might become overwhelmed by flu cases, and prepare them to patch up already strained health care resources...
...surprising was how easily and painlessly the reform slipped into Mexican law. The bill was originally filed in October by President Felipe Calderón, a social conservative who is waging a bloody military crackdown on drug cartels. Congress then approved the bill in April - as Mexico's swine-flu outbreak dominated media attention. And finally the law went into the books without any major protests either in Mexico or north of the border. (See pictures of cannabis culture...