The H1N1 flu pandemic that killed more than 18,000 people is officially over, the World Health Organization announced Tuesday. ACSH’S Jeff Stier was a guest on the BBC’s “Up all Night ” radio program via Skype last night to discuss the lessons learned from the outbreak.
“One point I made — especially since I was being interviewed in Europe — is that this was a wonderful example of a good partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO), governments around the world and the pharmaceutical industry in developing and quickly manufacturing vaccines that contained this outbreak so quickly and safely,” Stier says.
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross hopes WHO learned to tone down its alarmist rhetoric, such as when director-general Dr. Margaret Chan declared that “it is really all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.”
“The way they vaguely announced it as a pandemic made it seem like we should be very afraid,” says Dr. Ross. “They should have been very clear to define what they were talking about — that this was a technical definition, rather than ‘the globe is now being inundated with swine flu.’”
The H1N1 virus will likely continue to circulate globally for years, probably becoming the dominant flu strain, Dr. Ross adds. “However, that is nothing to be especially worried about — the new flu vaccines will have protective efficacy against H1N1.”
