Swinin' and Dinin'

Recently, the WHO upgraded the swine flu outbreak to a level 4 pandemic; this means that the disease has achieved sustained human-to-human transmission and is in the pre-pandemic stage. The particular strain of swine flu we're dealing with is a very new strain of the H1N1 virus - thus, very few people have immunity provided to them by the antibodies designed to fight off other strains.

It's theorized that the current strain is the result of a superinfection, a process by which cells are infected by multiple viral strains of influenza. The genetic mixing results in a virus that has the potential to spread between several different species, and has the added danger of being completely unrecognized by the antibodies developed to fight other types of flu. The strains recognized by (some of) our bodies include the H1N1 subtype that caused the 1918 pandemic, which is currently endemic in the population.

So what to do now? I'm certainly no expert when it comes to epidemiology or disease control, but there is no reason to panic. There's no reason to be unduly worried at this point; it's still early in the development cycle of the pandemic. In the coming weeks, one of several things could happen. The disease may not have the potential to spread effectively and efficiently between humans. If the rate of infection is less than one new host per host, the disease would die off fairly quickly. However, if this strain of H1N1 is able to spread effectively throughout the population, the World Health Organization will undoubtedly upgrade it to a level 5 pandemic; this is a sort of pre-pandemic level, an epidemic. Once epidemics begin to pop up across the globe, it's upgraded to a level 6, the highest designation with which to classify a disease.

Anyway, if you're running low on cough syrup or ibuprofen, it might be a good time to go pick some up. Honestly, though, I don't truly believe there's any cause to run out and empty the shelves of your local grocery store of canned goods and hoard bottled water. That time might come soon - full blown pandemics can necessitate governmental acts as serious as full blown quarantines, which can shut down entire towns and cities potentially. We're peering over the side of the cliff, and hopefully we won't lose our footing.