New cases of the deadly swine flu virus have been confirmed as far afield as New Zealand and Israel, as the UN warns it cannot be contained.

The US, Canada, Spain and Britain confirmed cases earlier but no deaths have been reported outside Mexico, where the virus was first reported.

From the way the news media – including online / social media sources – are reporting this developing story, anybody would think the world is on the brink of Terry Nation’s Survivors becoming a reality; the BBC Radio 4 Today programme headline for the item declares “Up to 40% of population could become ill“, with one commentator in the item reminding us that the country could literally grind to a standstill as not only the people being ill being off work, but also the people staying at home to look after them; and emergency planning teams of local councils issuing statements about how resiliant they are.

As of writing, in Mexico – where the outbreak started – the current total number of confirmed cases is 20, with 152 described as ‘probable’, and a further 1,614 people ‘under observation’.

In the rest of the world, where there are as yet no confirmed deaths:

Putting those numbers in perspective, the populations of those countries are:

Putting the numbers further in perspective, flu epidemics occur every year all over the world, and the human tragedy is that hundreds of thousands of people die of it every year with tens of millions of people – globally – dying in roughly three pandemics per century as a new strain emerges.

Tens of millions of deaths is clearly a serious human tragedy, but in the meanwhile, 884,000,000 people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, with 3,900 children per day – 1,423,500 per year – dying of diarrhea alone.

Over the last four years we’ve been being told we were all going to die of Bird Flu, and in November 2002 we were told we were all going to die of SARS.

I think clean drinking water is a more pressing concern.

(Source link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8022437.stm)