Will the fall flu season, and the second wave of the 2009 flu pandemic be mild or severe? Experts agree on the bottom line answer: no one really knows. Flu viruses are constantly mutating. This is why we get a new flu shot each year. The virus changes enough from year to year that the immunity you have this year you will not have the next.
Fortunately, H1N1 (Novel H1N1, 2009 pandemic flu or Swine Flu) has been mild so far. In fact, a Google search of the terms “H1N1” and “mild” has 2.5 million results.
But what is “mild”? The health risk from H1N1 is often compared to that of the seasonal flu. In terms of risk communication, this translates for most of us to “no big deal”.
To put this in perspective, if the number of deaths from the pandemic flu equals the typical flu season, 35,000 Americans will die as a result of this mild infection this year. This is more than the total deaths from 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the sinking of the Titanic, Pearl Harbor, 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 50 worst tornadoes in the US and all terrorism worldwide since 2001 combined.
So what does this mean. We hear news headlines that vacilate between "we are all going to die!" and "no big deal". I posted about both extremes on Twitter. The H1N1 pandemic of 2009 is neither. It is a very serious disease that requires an informed and practical response from each one of us. Follow our response and connect to experts throughout the pandemic on the Minnesota InfraGard site and sign up for more posts on this blog. For medical information and tools to respond, go to flu.gov.
