IS IT EVEN "LITTLE MORE"?:

Was the Alarm over Swine Flu Justified? (Bryan Walsh, May. 04, 2009, TIME)

[T]here have been no deaths and few serious cases reported outside Mexico — and even there, the epicenter of the H1N1 outbreak, officials reported that the spread has slowed. As labs slogged through the backlog of suspected H1N1 flu cases, the number of confirmed cases and deaths dropped precipitously, indicating that the initial outbreak that so alarmed world health officials might not have been as serious as first feared. (See the top five swine flu don'ts.)

As a global network of flu experts began to take a good look at the genetic structure of the H1N1 virus, there were indications that the bug might turn out to be little more dangerous than an average flu.

The problem here is that officials will now convince themselves that this was a good test of the response system and that we handled things well, as proven by how little damage the flu did. In reality, it wasn't much of a test because the bug wasn't much of a threat.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 5, 2009 6:04 AM