# 4515
Declan Butler, senior reporter for Nature and a blogger in his own right, was one of the first journalists to begin covering the avian flu threat back in 2004, and it was his work that helped inspire me to begin this blog.
But hey, you really shouldn’t blame him . . .
But I digress. Today Butler brings us a portrait of the H1N1 pandemic on its first birthday.
I’ll do the wise thing here, and simply give you the link and step out of the way.
Portrait of a year-old pandemic
'Swine flu' isn't over yet, but it already holds lessons for the future.
Declan Butler
One year ago this month, the world watched with trepidation as a novel influenza A virus, to which the global population had little or no immunity, emerged in Mexico and the United States. In the weeks that followed, the H1N1 'swine flu' virus spread rapidly to countries worldwide, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 June 2009 to officially declare the first flu pandemic in more than 40 years. Nature looks at the lessons learnt from H1N1, and how they will help scientists and health authorities to handle the next flu pandemic.
