As the World Health Organization raises its pandemic alert over H1N1 (”swine flu”) from four to five, Vice President Joe Biden told “Today” show audiences today that he “wouldn’t go anywhere in confined spaces now” — including commercial planes or subways. But how bad is it? In comments to the Sydney Morning Herald, the WHO’s Vivienne Allan states that claims that 150 people worldwide have died from this strain of flu are false: She, like the WHO’s own report, says the number of confirmed deaths is seven.

The WHO update, which came out before yesterday’s confirmation of the death of a 23-month-old Houston boy from H1N1, found that nine countries reported 148 confirmed cases of infection, with a total of seven deaths, all in Mexico. Mexican authorities put their death toll at 159, including 10 in the last 24 hours. It’s not yet clear why Mexico’s numbers are so starkly different (perhaps Mexico hasn’t “officially” reported to WHO) from the WHO figures.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed that a Cold Spring resident is the Minnesota’s first case of the H1N1.

In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. The Americans had joined in the fight, bringing the Allies closer to victory against the Germans. Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse. Then, in pockets across the globe, something erupted that seemed as benign as the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war.

A new influenza virus discovered in Missouri pigs has a combination of genes from avian and swine flu viruses, supporting the theory that pigs can serve as a mixing vessel for flu viruses and a potential source for a human pandemic strain, according to a report published yesterday.

Researchers found that the virus, an H2N3 subtype, caused illness in experimentally infected mice and was transmissible in swine and ferrets, suggesting it has adapted to mammals, according to the report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In addition, genetic analysis showed the virus has a mutation linked with an increased ability to infect mammals.

The discovery marks the first identification of an H2 virus in swine, according to the authors of the report. The flu pandemic of 1957-58 was caused by an H2 virus, namely H2N2. That virus was replaced by an H3N2 strain in the pandemic of 1968-69, and H2 viruses have not circulated in humans since then. Hence, people younger than 40 have little immunity to H2 viruses, scientists say.