Is it me—or has there been more uninformed reporting than usual over the past few days about the developing outbreak of human swine flu? Could it be the wholesale exodus of experienced health reporters from many newspapers and magazines is having an effect on the quality of coverage? Flu is not a topic that general assignment reporters can easily get up to speed on overnight.
I have read news reports cautioning people not to get near pigs for fear of contracting swine flu.
Not true. The new human swine flu is transmitted from person to person. So you minimize your risk of getting it by keeping your distance from other people, washing hands, reminding folks to cover their nose and mouth when they sneeze.
A number of news articles ominously report that the new human swine flu is H1N1—the same subtype as was responsible for the 1918 pandemic. The implication—that a terrifying type of flu has come back after more than 90 years.
Yes, the 1918 flu was caused by an H1N1 strain. But the H1N1 subtype is now very common. Indeed, it has caused many seasonal flu outbreaks over the past 90 years. The current vaccine even includes a strain of H1N1, first identified in Brisbane in 2007.
So if the new flu is H1N1 and H1N1 subtypes have been around for years, why are health officials so worried? Because the arrangement of genetic components of the new flu have never been seen before—whether in pigs or people. And they are different enough from the recent strains that the body’s immune system may not be able to mount a quickly effective response.
Many news sites are also reporting as fact that the flu is killing more people under the age of 60 than the usual seasonal flu. We don’t actually know this for sure.
Yes, there have been lots of reports of middle-aged people dying from the flu in Mexico. That’s worrisome because it’s the same pattern of fatalities that was seen in the 1918 pandemic. But that is only part of the story. There are other possible explanations for the pattern of middle-aged deaths: maybe those were the folks who went to the hospital first. Maybe health officials haven’t paid as close attention to deaths among the elderly because they are so much more common. It could still be a true cluster of middle-aged deaths but we probably won’t know that for at least another couple of weeks.
Lots of headlines are also proclaiming that countries are racing to “prevent the pandemic.” Sorry, that horse is out of the barn. This flu has already been confirmed in Mexico, the U.S., Canada and cases are suspected in New Zealand, Israel and Western Europe. If there is going to be a pandemic, there will be a pandemic. That will depend on how virulent the virus is—something that we don’t know yet.
What people can do is mitigate the damage. Sort of like a hurricane. You can’t stop it from coming ashore but you can try to protect as many people as possible from drowning.
In addition to newsfeeds at the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, here are some of the folks I have come to trust for information on the current flu outbreak:
Anything written by Helen Branswell, Canadian medical reporter. Her coverage of flu and the potential for pandemic flu over the past several years has been stellar. She is also @diseasegeek on Twitter.
Tara Smith at Aetiology. Tara is an assistant professor of epidemiology, whose research focuses on pathogens that jump from animals to humans. Very readable and very smart.
The Reveres at Effect Measure. Anonymous, opinionated but well-informed, from public health professionals.
Crof at H5N1. Crof has been a smart aggregator about avian flu and potential pandemic news for years but is now including human swine flu.
The pandemic flu section of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.
Good, if technical overview on swineflu, also at CIDRAP.
And here are some web resources to understand flu and potential flu pandemics better. I’m chasing down links to some other tools and will add them as I learn them.
One-stop access to US government information on pandemic flu
The Nieman Reports special issue on preparing to cover pandemic flu
Association of Health Care Journalists ($60 per year). Members have access on the website to excellent content created specifically for journalists covering flu. (Update: AHCJ has now made its flu resources freely available.)
The basic science section of the Flu Wiki
WHO's excellent guide to risk communications in a pandemic
General overview on pandemic flu, with history, by US government's Health and Human Services.
Related blog post: Swine Flu: Stocking Up On Soup, Just In Case
(Updated April 30, 2009)
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