The ABC has reported the death of an Aboriginal man from Swine Flu, that is the bad news. My condolences to his family.
The good news is that this man is from a remote community,
Kiwirrkurra, in Western Australia and nobody else is currently ill with Swine flu. When you look up Kiwirrkurra on Google maps and see how remote this place is, it looks like just about everybody who was going to be exposed to this virus has been. This means that if you live in Australia, that sneeze you had 2 days ago may have been your case of the Swine flu.
This is the kind of thing epidemiologists look for. Current thinking is that viruses tend to attenuate (lessen morbidity) with time but transmissability increases with time (simple selection pressures or evolution in action).
In my opinion, our public health gurus have being very cautious over the last couple of weeks which is a good thing but they have also have tested in real time some of the protocols. Afterall how do you handle a thousand passenger cruise liner? Shutting down primary schools may contain the virus but will the same work for a high school where teenagers may not be content to stay at home?
Of course I may be disasterously wrong and Swine flu may come back with a vengeance.
Filed under: History, Politics | Tagged: ABC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, evolution in action, Kiwirrkurra, Swine flu
