[navcom]

I just heard on the news that they are now stepping back a bit and saying this strain may be no more severe than the average flu. Of course it's still early in the game. The 1918 strain took awhile to ramp up too. But I think today, with communications and medical savvy the way they are, a 1918-type flu pandemic is probably not that likely. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

Most of the people infected with H1N1 so far, outside of Mexico anyhow, are not having a problem with it. Even in Mexico we don't know for sure how well they are doing. 26 confirmed deaths...even 160 confirmed deaths...would be nothing if we find out a month from now that 500,000 or more were infected but they were never reported because they just thought it was the regular flu, stayed home, and now they are better. Some 30,000 people die every year from the flu directly or indirectly in the U.S. alone.

[falconeye]

The problem isn't the current outbreak of swine flu.

The problem is that there is now a new mutation of flu which crossed the boundaries between species (i.e., infects humans). This is very hard to achieve for a flu virus.

But now, if only enough individuals are infected it will only be a matter of time until new, more dangerous, maybe deadly mutations, may evolve.

Better extinct the swine flu virus now. WHO alert level 5 of 6. Otherwise, we may be lucky and the swine flu virus won't ever become more dangerous than the flu we are used to.

But if not ... the Spanish flu was believed under control after 3 months. Before it mutated and killed 50 million over two years. And became extinct.