[thefactor]

i'm sorry but this seems to be getting a little out of hand. nothing seems to be happening but the world media is making this seem like it is literally the end of the world.

60,000 die of flu/pneumonia in the US every year. why is this different? just because of the affected age-groups?

[Pharmboy]

Check the date on this...later info says Tamiflu shows good activity against this strain. Tamiflu has never shown good activity against the original swine flu, so this is BS and should not have been posted. Basically, this article is talking about the OLD swine flu virus.

The reason this is different is that bad damage is done when a new flu circulates that the population has little immunologic experience with, that is, people are naive to the virus.

Influenza always kills the weak, the infirm, the very old and the very young, but if the protein parts of the virus that induce the immune response are in a new configuration, we're playing catch-up.

Public health officials are in a tough spot: if they don't say too much and all hell breaks loose, they're blamed (and why Napolitano at Homeland Security is making the pronouncements on this is crazy). Or, if they start to ramp up precautions and nothing happens, they're chicken little.

Sorta like the FDA and drug approvals: too fast, and some side effects come out, they're idiots. Too slow, and the Wall St Journal denounces them in an editorial. Life is complicated...