# 3664
It is axiomatic that past performance doesn’t necessarily predict future results . . . and so the experience of countries in the southern hemisphere over their winter flu season may not accurately foretell what we shall see this fall and winter.
Still, it is the best source of information we have. And the good news is, the flu season south of the equator was serious, but not devastating.
Helen Branswell of the Canadian Press brings us an overview of how this year’s flu season affected countries in the southern hemisphere, and what that may mean for our upcoming flu season.
Northern countries watching swine flu in the south
By Helen Branswell, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Last Updated: 24th August 2009, 1:26pm
When a new, unheralded flu virus startled the world last spring by igniting the first pandemic in four decades, public health authorities in the Northern Hemisphere knew they’d caught a bit of a break.
While the virus seems to have started its journey in this part of the world, and caused a lot more illness than one would expect throughout our summer, the pandemic didn’t start in peak flu transmission season.
The first real test of how the new H1N1 virus behaved in winter conditions would fall to the Southern Hemisphere. And the countries of the North could watch, learn, plan and fast-track vaccine production.
With winter now on the wane south of the Equator, experts are sifting through the experiences of temperate countries there looking for signs of what this new virus might have in store for the fall and winter of 2009-10 in northern countries.
There are few givens with notoriously unpredictable flu viruses. Still, experts say, so far this virus has carved a path and hewed closely to it.
