Bluebottle: "You rotten swines; I told you I'd be deaded" {Goon Show 3 Jan 1956}
So, should we be stripping the supermarket shelves to lay in siege supplies? Probably not quite yet.
It does seem probable that the WHO will raise the true pandemic flag [1] - Phase 6: community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region - within a short while: the existence of multiple confirmed cases in the US, Scotland and New Zealand makes it look likely that there may soon be confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission in one or more of those: if it were to be the US that would be Phase 5, if in Europe or the Pacific it would be Phase 6. Nonetheless, this still wouldn't be panic time. As that WHO page referenced above says, "Previous pandemics have been characterised by waves of activity spread over months", so any problems this causes will be medium- rather than short-term for those outside Mexico.
No-one right now has any idea whether this is a rerun of SARS, Hong Kong flu or Spanish flu - or if it even makes it onto that scale: the stricter reclassification of deaths by the Mexicans over the next few days may reduce the death toll so far, but won't give any clearer indications. It will take days if not weeks for it to be clearer.
Even if there starts to be a cascade of human-to-human infections spreading from returning holiday-makers, this won't automatically get us up to the base of the disaster scale (unless you're running a hotel in Cancun or a restaurant in Mexico City, in which case economic disaster has already struck). Given the level of publicity on this, there are unlikely to be any people returned from Mexico who aren't going to haul themselves off to a doc pretty much if they feel slightly queasy, let alone sneezy, so there is a good chance it will be contained - and just about every country under threat has put monitoring and quarantine procedures in place over the last few days.
There is, of course, a risk that this will eventually escape the containments and spread worldwide, but that is probably weeks if not months away. Similarly, over-the-top talk about the potential for this to hit poorer countries hard isn't going to come to pass unless they are poorer countries who also have numerous travelers to Mexico in their number (or unless there is a really major breach of containments). This in fact puts Guatemala at the top of the risk list, but it really isn't easy country for fast transmission of anything much (having been in Guatemala near the Mexican border just last year visiting my daughter who was working there, I can attest to this!).
Be alert but not alarmed!
ADDED: I was asked (not on Webdiary) what would cause me to be more concerned:
- the first thing to say is that, no matter how many people outside Mexico are confirmed to have been infected, there isn't an iota of extra concern so long as they are all people who have themselves been to Mexico: Mexico gets (or, more accurately, until recently used to get) getting on for two million international tourists per month, 70% of those from the US, so there could be a million confirmed US cases and half-a-million more round the world without that necessarily being any new news or anything for the rest of us to worry about ...
- even one new case confirmed outside Mexico who hasn't been there is an uptick in concern: just how big an uptick depends on how close they are to someone who has been there - to take the obvious, if they've been snogging someone who's just come back from Cancun, again that shouldn't necessarily worry those of us who haven't.
- multiple human-to-human transmissions outside Mexico would be a much bigger uptick, as would be cases who have had only casual contact with returnees.
- if we start to see second order transmissions, ie people with confirmed infections who haven't personally been in close contact with travelers from Mexico, then we start to see the prospect of a couple of years of roller-coaster - and maybe buy in a couple of extra tins of stuff ...
PS: here's a supremely badly timed report from the LA Times on 15 April 2009: Mexico's tourist zones much safer than many in U.S. [2]