Swine Flu not that bad

It's not spreading. [Link]

The World Health Organization announced an increase in the number of confirmed cases of swine flu on Saturday, but said there was no evidence of sustained spread in communities outside North America, which would fit the definition of a pandemic.

“At the present time, I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent because we are seeing transmission to other countries,” Dr. Michael J. Ryan, the director of the World Health Organization global alert and response team, said in a teleconference from Geneva. “We have to expect that phase 6 will be reached. We have to hope that it is not.”

Phase 6, the highest level in the organization’s health alert system, is a pandemic. But Dr. Ryan emphasized that the word pandemic describes the geographic spread of a disease, not its severity. There can be a pandemic of a mild disease. The current level, phase 5, means that the disease is spreading in communities — not just within households or in returning travelers — in two countries in one of the World Health Organization’s six regions, in this case the United States and Mexico. To move up to phase 6, community spread would have to occur in at least one other country in another region.

The most important thing to do to prevent it's spread. [Link]

Wash your hands.

I know this sounds silly, but it is far more effective at preventing flu than having a dose-pack of Tamiflu in the medicine chest. Take it from a doctor, mother and reporter who covered SARS as well as bird flu where they were most virulent.

In 2003, as SARS was spreading across Asia, I was posted in Beijing. Many families fled. My children’s school — the International School of Beijing — was one of the very few in the city to stay open, although my daughter’s class of 25 dwindled below 10. For the children who remained, the school instituted strict policies — the ones that schools promote all the time but never really enforce. For parents, the first was: Don’t send your child to school sick. For students, it was: Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly during the day — before meals, after recess. No one got SARS. But more than that, the stomach bugs and common colds that are the bane of elementary schools all over the world disappeared as well.