Influenza

Time for another flu post, I guess. One of the better updates I’ve seen lately is this post form Science Based Medicine. I would only add that the folks responsible for naming this pandemic virus have done a very poor job. First they called it Swine Flu, misleading because it confused this strain with the one responsible for the 1976 scare and because it is really a re-assortment of avian, swine and human strains. Now they’re calling it H1N1, true but confusing as it implies nothing special or specific: H1N1 isolates have been involved in many ordinary seasonal outbreaks since 1977, and is in one of the ordinary seasonal strains this year.