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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Mexican Flu round up

Hopefully this pandemic doesn't rise to the scale of the infamous Spanish Influenza in 1918, that killed more people then World War One. However two important contributing factors should be kept in mind about that particular outbreak. Firstly there were large-scale troop concentrations due to the recent conclusion of World War One. Secondly communication and co-ordination of efforts to deal with the outbreak were not as efficient as today.

So now we have the Mexican Flu, which seems to have jumped the species barrier more effectively then previous Avian flu strains. This site at the BBC was useful in answering most of my questions. (Pork is fine to eat, don't visit Mexico at the moment, wash your hands and cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you sneeze.) Interestingly it pointed out that the standard but still very unpleasent flu kills lots of people all around the world every year. So the real question remains is this version of the flu as nasty and as contagious as the Spainish Flu?