Word: lesse
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...severe the current H1N1 pandemic seems depends on what you use as a measuring stick. Compared with previous pandemics, like the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed 20 million people and infected up to 40% of the world's population, or even the far less deadly 1957 and 1968 bouts with a strain of H1N1 influenza similar to the 2009 strain, things don't seem as bad this time around. Fewer people are getting severely ill when infected, and fewer have died or required hospitalization from the flu than in previous pandemics. (See what you need to know about the H1N1...
...clear, however, that past pandemics are an appropriate gauge for evaluating the current flu or that the new projections are based on complete data. The eventual death toll of 2009 H1N1 may be less grim than the outcomes of previous pandemics, but it should be noted that 90 years ago, and even 40 years ago, health officials lacked the antiviral therapies and nationwide vaccination capabilities that are available today. That may have contributed to pandemics having a more devastating effect on the health of past populations...
...estimates are also less alarming than those provided - also by Lipsitch - to the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology last summer near the start of the pandemic. At the time, researchers had only patchy data on the number of people infected by, and seeking treatment for, the new flu. The initially bleak prediction of the impact of H1N1 - with up to 50% of the U.S. population becoming infected in the fall and winter of 2009, resulting in as many as 90,000 deaths - was based on modeling of previous pandemics. (See how not to get the H1N1...
...just those in priority groups. "We would expect that prior exposure to a similar strain in the form of a vaccine will provide some priming for future exposures, even if the virus changes a bit," says Lipsitch. In other words, the more people who are vaccinated this year, the less likely the H1N1 virus, which will probably still be around next year, will take hold and spread...
...private, Obama's aides have long fretted over the danger of a slow recovery and ballooning deficits, and the President has been slipping in the polls on both fronts. For now, however, the West Wing calculation is that bad polls today matter far less than bad polls three years from now, when Obama hopes to win re-election as the guy who saved the nation from economic catastrophe. "The reality is that you would rather have done something, and worked toward solutions, and be able to show results," explains Obama senior aide Anita Dunn, in what just might...