Some examples:
1. It was not until yesterday (April 24th) , that the right name: swine influenza was used in the official speeches. Previously they referred to it as "seasonal influenza", misleading the public to believe that it was a normal, regular and seasonal outbreak. The US government knew that the 8 cases in Texas and California were swine influenza since April, 18th (and probably well before) so why Mexico did not?
2. Officials and politicians said yesterday: "...but the epidemiological pattern -of the flu epidemic in Mexico City- so far has NOT been exponential regarding the number of human casualties." (Canal 11 and Televisa news live, April, 25th, 2009, 10.30 pm)
Well, here are the numbers: April 22nd: 10 cases. April 23rd: 20 cases. April 24th: 60 cases (officially 20 confirmed and 40 unconfirmed). April 25th: More than 80 cases according to the BBC . You don't have to a mathematician to figure out that this is pretty close to an exponential growth curve!. However, the true behaviour of an epidemic like this should be much more clear in a couple of weeks, so my point is: Has not been exponential?!
However, in pure epidemiological terms, whether it is exponential or not is important but not as important as the behaviour of the disease in space and time. We will hopefully know about this soon.
3. There are now confirmed cases in New York (another megalopolis) and Canada and possible cases in New Zealand, France, Spain and Israel (to be confirmed yet) of people that recently travelled to Mexico during the outbreak. So; is this going to be the well predicted next flu pandemic of the 21sth century?. Too early to say so according to the WHO. But it certainly deserves a much, much better surveillance, monitoring and information management (in particular by the Mexican government).
Take a look at this links:
BBC
SSA
New York Times
La Jornada
AOL
More to come...
