Swine flu
I have been watching this lately. It's very unfortunate that New Zealand students contracted the virus in Mexico, and brought it back to the country. However, New Zealand is still very lucky so far, just a few isolated cases, not a full pandemic.
Also although for most of the time I was very critical of the government here, this time I have to say, the health authority has done quite a a good job. The response was fast, open and transparent, it gave people confidence and assurance so they got no reason to panic.
However, I was totally shocked to see the ignorance of some people here in the country (quite a lot of them in the Herald discussion forum). "This is just a media hype", "it's fuelled by pharmaceutical companies", "normal flu kills more than this". They are demonstrating the total lack of knowledge on ..everything. That's fine, no one knows everything but the important thing is, those people got no interest to learn, but choose to remain arrogant - they just don't know how lucky they really are.
Although there is no reason to panic right now, people need to be aware and closely watch the development of the situation. This is a new H1NI strain (same as the Spanish flu) and most of us got no immunity.It may appears to be mild and not that pathogenic right now but if we just sit and let the virus spread, it is almost certain that this strain will mutate and who knows how this virus may evolve.
However, even to adapt the conservative version of death number, the overall mortality rate is about 5%, which is still significantly higher than normal flu mortality rate - I don't have the number here but if my memory serves, that number should be around 0.4%. Now you start to see why this thing needs to be controlled.
