Have you noticed that pandemic warnings have gotten a lot more frequent in recent years? SARS, bird flu, swine flu... . Each time the scientists claim a pandemic is inevitable. Their reasoning is historical. Every strain in history that was new to human immune systems was a deadly pandemic. They don't consider that the only historical viruses we know about are the deadly pandemics. Nowadays we continuously monitor new strains around the world so we see the nondeadly ones as well. Every time science improves observations, our paradigms have to shift, and the scientists act all surprised. It is scientific arrogance.
The hysteria is hilarious. How many Americans have died now from swine flu, 3? In an average year, 23,000 Americans die of the flu. *sigh*.
But its actually not funny. The hysteria has a potentially devastating side effect. New flu strains mutate rapidly. Suppose there is a fast moving mild strain, and a closely related slow deadly strain. This is likely as deadly flu strains tend to spread slowly (if they kill the victim, he won't infect lots of people). In the old days, noone quarantined the mild strains, and they provide partial immunity from closely related strains. Now that we are hysterically quarantining the fast mild strain, the deadly strain has a chance to catch up and attack an immunally naive population. Maybe it won't happen this time, but eventually it will.
