A more reasoned response

On May 1st, the New York Times had an op-ed article by Julio Frenk, Mexico’s minister of health from 2000 to 2006, currently the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.   It’s well written and he also says that Mexico responded in a quick and effective manner.  I don’t think it is just political BS, maybe a little, but what he says about the discovery and reporting ring true.

EVERY year approximately 10,000 Mexicans die from the effects of seasonal flu. Usually they are the elderly and the very young, people whose immune systems are not robust enough to fight off the virus. But this year has been different. The Mexican disease surveillance system, a network of more than 11,000 hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices, picked up a minor but troubling trend in April. Across this nation of 110 million people, a handful of young adults had apparently died from influenza. An immediate investigation led, within a few hectic weeks, to the isolation and full genetic sequencing of the microbe causing the illness. The experts’ worst fear was confirmed: it was a new kind of influenza virus.

Some have complained that the Mexican government did not act fast enough to identify this new bug and sound the alarm. But such criticism fails to take into account the real-life complexity of recognizing and responding to an unexpected public health emergency.

I recommend reading the whole article.