Word: h1n1
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...were the hundreds of U.S. school closures and the presidential press conferences about hand-washing much ado about not that much? Unfortunately not. As health officials pointed out repeatedly, we're still in the early days of the H1N1 outbreak, and influenza viruses are notoriously unpredictable. Right now the new disease seems to be no more dangerous than the seasonal flu (researchers who have examined the genetic code of the H1N1 virus say it appears to lack key mutations that made past pandemic-causing viruses so deadly), but H1N1 could return next winter in a more lethal form--just...
...fitting that in a booming metropolis of 20 million people, the first sign that Mexico City had been recalled to life wasn't a public religious ceremony or a political rally but a traffic jam. After a weeklong shutdown in response to the H1N1 flu outbreak, on May 5--Cinco de Mayo--Mexico City began to stir again. The spread of the swine flu had slowed, leading Mexican officials to hope that the worst had passed. "Our strategy is working," said Mexican President Felipe Calderón. "We are now in a position to gradually resume our everyday activities...
...reality is that while health officials in the U.S. and the rest of the world deserve praise for their comprehensive response to the new flu virus, H1N1 wasn't a true test of our mettle but a warning shot. "We should look at this as a wake-up call, not one more snooze alarm," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University...
...H1N1 makes clear how vulnerable our interconnected globe is to emerging diseases. As a result of jet travel and international trade, a new pathogen managed to seed itself in more than 20 countries in less than two weeks. But while globalization has its liabilities, it is also a strength because it gives us the tools to create a truly international disease-surveillance system. And the threat of a pandemic should remind us that we must fill the gaps in the creaky U.S. health-care system; during an infectious-disease outbreak, everyone will be at risk. "We live in one world...
...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...