BE HEALTHY AND PRETTY WITH UNCLE

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL IMPACT of H1N1

The WHO now reports 816 flu deaths worldwide, since the first cases in March. Seasonal flu, it says, kills 250,000 to 500,000 people each year, or 744 to 1488 deaths. So after over four months, we’ve finally got swine flu cases equal to those at the lower end of the range for a single day of seasonal flu.

For the U.S., deaths are equivalent to what we’d see in one or two days of seasonal flu during the season.And that’s your pandemic panic update.

I agree, gratefully, that the numbers are mercifully small. That’s scarce comfort to the family of the Brazilian girl who died en route home from Florida (see below), and others who have lost loved ones.

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Leave a Comment July 11, 2010

New Finding of HIV Variant

A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday’s edition of the journal.

The finding “highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa,” said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

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Leave a Comment August 5, 2009