It appears that the season of swine flu has come
around earlier than expected this year. Well at least that seems to be the case
for Mexico. It appeared in the U.S. in April 2009 and never went away, and it
was only three years ago when the world almost broke out in complete hysteria
due to the widespread of the infectious disease. By January of 2012 Mexico had
already reported more cases of the virus then they had in all of 2011. Unfortunately
this is not unusual and is a normal number of cases within the flu season for
Mexico. The rapid pace of the outbreak seems to be causing a great amount of
deaths fairly soon. Thirty-two people have already died from the flu and only
three of them were from things other than H1N1. Because there was such a low
number reported of the virus just last year, the country was not properly
stocked for this pandemic. Private schools and pharmacies were forced to close
due to shortage of the antiviral drugs. Due to the high number of deaths from
the initial outbreak in 2009 Mexican authorities have already begun to work more
diligently to attempt to keep the flu under wraps. Because this was such a global
pandemic the swine flu is now included in the flu vaccine that people are
encouraged to get yearly. I feel as if the swine flu only became an issue when
the outbreak started to affect more people than expected. Mexico was not really
prepared for their most recent outbreak and I believe that it was something
that could have easily been prevented. Due to the outbreak in the previous
year, that should have set the precedent for them as to what was to come in the
future. The severity of swine flu cases varies from mild to severe but there is
no definite way in determining just how serious any particular outbreak may
get. For this very reason is why we must take safety precautions, plan ahead,
and take note of the history of diseases to ensure the safety of the world, Mexico
included, from prevalent respiratory diseases such as the swine flu.
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