And the 'American' death was actually a Mexican toddler than came to Texas for treatment of the flu. Lives in Mexico, contracted in Mexico, died in the US.

The scarier part about flus is the exponential nature of it. Currently though, the death toll is small potatoes compared to the myriad ways of which people are dying every day.

True the flu is minimal out side the Mexico, but the 1918 out break started in spring with a small outbreak than faded by summer. It was not till it's return in the fall that it became the infamus world wide killer.

Level Five now...

The Egyptian government has ordered the slaughter of all pigs in Egypt. Quite an extreme reaction considering not a single case has been diagnosed there yet. The Coptic community are very upset about this, as they own most of the pigs.

Normal influenza is much more serious.. I'm just surprised after SARS and bird flu people are still buying into this slow-news-period stuff

Austria, Switzerland, NewZealand, US have now all reported confirmed cases.
WHO has upgraded this to level 5 concern.
Is there more concern now? Down here in Oz, the media is talking about it a lot, and so are people, kind of reminds me of The Stand by S.King. :-)

I live in Washington state and its scary, Theres two known cases in my county now and they're closing down schools from it all around.

The regular flu kills far more people each week.

Look, the reason the media is freaking out over something so minor is because, by getting the masses fearful of a disease, it both increases their ratings and increases our chances containing a virus before it actually does spread. Because of this, I don't actually expect there to be a new ACTUAL pandemic for a while.
(at least I'm hoping.)

And with this Virus, all you really need is to drink lots of clean water, get bed rest, and to see your doctor if the symptoms get worse. The only reason such a large number of Mexicans are dying is because it's harder for them to get their hands on clean drinking water.

Drink a bottle of tequila every day. Your system will become so toxic that H1N1 runs away from you.

It is now in Hong Kong. We have a hotel being quarantined. One guest, from Mexico, has returned a positive test.

Not good news. Not here, not anywhere.

Calm down, Flashman. You didn't die of SARS, you didn't die of bird flu, and you're not going to die of this.

I was merely reporting the latest news. Because of SARS (my own building was quarantined at one stage), the HK Govt has a plan to act very quickly and decisively.

I fear, because people don't react to crisis until they feel immediate danger to their own person (or to a loved one, I guess). For example, people often ignore fire alarms until they see smoke or fire, and then it is sometimes too late. In relation to swine flu, people aren't going to sneeze into tissues and wash their hands until it becomes a major outbreak (I know I keep using 'until,' sorry). I am with Joe Biden on this one: stay away from enclosed public spaces.

As far as tissues and washing hands... Any reasonably clean person already does that, and some of us are just doing the hand washing a little more often. I keep hand sanitizer at my desk so I have it handy when I return from someone else's cubicle or after I've been working on a bunch of old laptops (recycle, renew, and reuse).

I used to be worried about what would happen if Swine flu and Bird flu got together. Fortunately, that will only happen when pigs can fly.

Ouch,

that's as 'bad' as Edi's one above.

I'm so worried, I stopped having sex with the pigs.

no need to go THAT far.

OMGNSO, there's no need to involve bird flu to use that pun. Flu is already a homophone with flew, so swine flu = pigs flew.

Glorious, let's not overreact here.

TheSleepingBear, tissues and handwashing are pretty common practices. I don't know though, will such precautions really protect you in a serious flu pandemic? Wouldn't proximity to infected individuals be a far more important variable than whether or not you washed between your fingers? It seems almost like a token action to keep people calm.

Normal influenza kills more people, but the real issue is the lethality of swine flu. Normal influenza is currently infecting on a far larger scale with only the weakest or most remote people dying. Swine flu can become serious if it's more lethal and it grows exponentially.

I'm pretty confident that governments will take the proper measures to control the growth of swine flu, and we'll dodge this like we dodged SARS and bird flu. Yes, those didn't amount to anything to you, but that doesn't mean you weren't in danger. Forget the media reports, WHO can tell you if it's serious or not. SARS and bird flu were stopped by proper government quarantine and reactions, not because they ran out of momentum on their own. China dealt with SARS extremely effectively, which might be expected since the authoritarian communist government can quarantine quite effectively. I find it funny because here in Toronto it wasn't dealt with nearly as effectively, and it's totally because of our freedom. =D

I would expect for every documented case, theres a lot more people who stayed at home and never realized what they had WAS swine flu. While you are more likely to contract swine flu than bird flu, it is far less lethal, so no I'm not really worried.

The real issue is Mexico City (and Mexico as a whole) not officially recognizing cases as H1N1 (or whatever it's proper title is) so that the number are really higher there than the official count shows.