Sometime during the end of March or early April 2009, a 5-year-old Mexican boy living down the road from a pig farm got sick. By mid-April, news reports blasted throughout the world press of a new type of influenza outbreak in Mexico City—where half the population of the boy's town commutes to work.
Within weeks, over 80 local people were dead from complications associated with swine flu infection. All schools and public parks were closed. Sunday church services were cancelled. Antiviral drugs were distributed to residents. Facial masks were disseminated to all citizens living within the vast metropolitan area in one of the world's most populated cities. This strain of influenza type A, 2009 H1N1, is remarkable in that it is a virus never before encountered by human kind.
As epidemiologists work tirelessly implementing and tweaking control strategies with each new ...
