I'm starting to worry a little more about swine flu

From initial reports, swine flu appeared to be a problem, but because it didn't seem any worse than the "regular" flu in terms of severity and health impact, the issue seemed to evolve into a lower level of concern. Even though it graduated to pandemic level.

But now it's "unstoppable" -- and people are dying from it. The problem with that is, people die from the regular flu, too. What's hard to judge is if the rate of dying is any worse from swine flu than regular flu. It may be too early to tell.

Swine flu sweeping world at unprecedented speed

From this article:

"On Thursday, England's chief medical officer Liam Donaldson said that in a worst case scenario, around one in three Britons could be infected and 65,000 could die.

The WHO policy shift was partly motivated by the "mildness of symptoms in the overwhelming majority of patients, who usually recover, even without medical treatment, within a week of the onset of symptoms."

Apparently in the worst-case scenario, 65,000 citizens of the UK wouldn't recover. And that would be obviously tragic for them and their families.

Swine flu pandemic now 'unstoppable': WHO official

From this article:

"While most cases have been considered mild, a study released on Monday said the virus causes more lung damage than ordinary seasonal flu strains but still responds to antiviral drugs."

OK, that's not good, but it doesn't seem too bad. But then there's also this:

"The worry about the present strain of A(H1N1) is that it could pick up genes from other flu strains that would enable it to be both highly virulent and contagious, and these warnings are spelt out in the new study.

"Sustained person-to-person transmission might result in the emergence of more pathogenic variants, as observed in the 1918 pandemic virus," it says.

Another concern is that the virus could acquire mutations enabling it to be resistant to Tamiflu."

None of that is good at all. The next thing to remember is that there a lot fewer people living in the Southern Hemisphere than the Northern Hemisphere, and there is going to be more widespread transmission during the Northern Hemisphere winter.

So we have to hope that a good, reliable vaccine that doesn't have a lot of side effects (like death) will be available sooner than later.