The swine flu epidemic death toll is now officially at 7,826, according to the World Health Organization. Mutated and resistant strains are playing a yet-undefined role in the death toll. Around 1,200 mutated strains have been identified.
Europe recorded 300 deaths in the previous week. Most fatalities were in the Americas, where 554 deaths were recorded over that period, up to 5360 up from 4806. That figure indicates
deaths from infections of all forms, and represents over 10% of the whole in the time frame.
WHO is monitoring the mutated strains of the virus but is unable at this stage to identify a definite trend in terms of progression. The nature of flu strains is that while some may become killers, many actually mutate into harmless forms.
There’s a problem with predicting mutation characteristics and their effect on viral populations. In
a recent case, a mutant form of virus completely replaced the previous strain. In this case a Tamiflu resistant strain became the primary strain.
Epidemic time frames are another problem. A
recent flu outbreak in Mexico created a panic, but was relatively brief, and the reporting of the epidemic left a lot to be desired. The moral is that the first case scenarios tend to produce more rumors than facts.
Basic flu, the common version, is believed responsible for 36,000 deaths in the US every year. Swine Flu isn’t yet in that league, globally. The high mutability of this disease isn’t good news, but if it follows the normal pattern of mutation, only a few strains will be dangerous.
Avian flu was a case in point in terms of assessing the relative dangers of mutation. Only one of several strains was identified as a high probability killer, although all strains were lethal in several cases.
So the educated approach is “Don’t get too concerned… yet.”
The ultra-pandemic scenario to worry about it is a “plague” syndrome with high degrees of human to human transmission and lethality. That isn’t the case at this stage. For a communicable disease with an extremely high level of infections, the death rate for Swine Flu is if anything statistically very low.
The spike in deaths may represent a seasonal peak in terms of normal epidemiological assessment methodologies.
