SO FAR swine flu is behaving exactly as expected. The first wave seems to be finishing in North America , and as the winter flu season hits the southern hemisphere, countries such as Argentina and Australia are feeling the strain.
We can also predict with some confidence that there will be another wave, and possibly several more after that. And as more people acquire immunity to the circulating H1N1 strain, it will evolve, and its effects could change significantly 鈥� because that鈥檚 what viruses tend to do.
The big question is whether or not the swine flu virus will become more deadly. The truth is we have very little data to go on. Only three flu pandemics have been studied in any great detail during the 20th century, and we know a bit about a few more during the 19th century and earlier. That is how we know they come in waves, and that the disease in the second and third waves often seems to be worse. We don鈥檛 yet understand enough about what drives the evolution of flu to know if this is always true. That means we can only guess at what might happen next during this pandemic.
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But all is not lost. Gut feelings can provide useful insights, and hunches are, after all, how scientists decide what questions to investigate. So 麻豆传媒 approached more than 300 influenza and public health experts worldwide to ask them for their best guesses about what might happen next in this pandemic.
Sixty of them responded and on page 6 we analyse what they told us. It is worrying that although most of the respondents weren鈥檛 unduly concerned about the virus increasing in virulence, more than half seriously doubted that their health authorities would be able cope if it did. About half of the respondents have stashed away their own antivirals or taken other precautions to protect themselves and their families.
Even the best hunches can only take us so far. What scientists should be asking themselves now is what data we need to improve our prediction of how flu pandemics behave.
鈥淲hat scientists should be asking now is what we need to improve our predictions of pandemic behaviour鈥�
The Chinese classic The Art of War taught us to know both ourselves and our enemy. We should at the very least be freezing blood samples from flu patients and storing them with case details, to see how immune responses correlate with viral changes and the severity of the disease, so we can understand more about flu evolution.
We may not be able to predict the character of the second wave this time, but launching a global data-gathering effort now will mean we鈥檒l stand a chance of being able to confront the next pandemic armed with more than just gut feelings.