Goodbye swine flu! Epidemic seems to be over

[Farmer]

Wishful thinking and very poor communication. They base the wording of this headline on 4 weeks of 'no widespread flu activity' and an opinion statement from Schaffner.

So irresponsible....

ATLANTA - Is the U.S. swine flu epidemic over? Federal health officials won't go so far as to say that, but on Friday they reported for the fourth week in a row that no states had widespread flu activity.

U.S. cases have been declining since October. An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says swine flu cases are still occurring and are likely to continue a while longer at some level.

But another expert said a future large wave of cases now seems very unlikely. The expert, Vanderbilt University's Dr. William Schaffner, said the epidemic has "one foot in the grave."

/snip/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35259765/ns/health-cold_and_flu/

[Commonground]

Re: Goodbye swine flu! Epidemic seems to be over

An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says swine flu cases are still occurring and are likely to continue a while longer at some level.

at "some level". Could not get more general than those terms.

[turkali10]

Re: Goodbye swine flu! Epidemic seems to be over

Major concerns facing this pandemic are whether the new virus will replace, co-circulate and/or reassort with seasonal H1N1 and/or H3N2 human strains in next years.Studies show that the pandemic Ca/04 virus has a clear biological advantage in replication, transmission, tropism and pathogenesis when compared to both seasonal H1 and H3 representative strains.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762341/

[hawkeye]

Re: Goodbye swine flu! Epidemic seems to be over

adios H1N1, don't let the door hit ya!