Chicago: The World Health Organisation predicts a third of the world will be infected by the end of this H1N1 flu pandemic, though now voices suggest a second wave may not be as severe as people fear.
This what David Morens and Jeffrey Taubenberger, infectious disease experts at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have written in the latest in the Journal of American Med Association after a review of 14 past flu outbreaks.
They concluded that recent flu pandemics exhibited no more than one seasonal recurrence before changing into the relatively mild seasonal flu.
In fact, according to them, the current H1N1 spread will make people more immune to it.
This, in case of a second wave in the end of year - when temperatures drop.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Morens and colleague Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger said there is not enough evidence to conclude that the relatively mild spring wave of H1N1 flu is a harbinger of a more severe outbreak.
He said the common belief that severe flu pandemics are preceded by a milder wave of illness arose because of some accounts of the 1918-1919 "Spanish" flu pandemic that killed between 40 million and 100 million people.
The team analyzed 14 global or regional flu pandemics during the past 500 years and found past pandemics patterns vary widely. They said two other flu pandemics in the 20th century -- in 1957 and 1968 -- made just a single, seasonal appearance, and generally did not become significantly more serious in the early years of their circulation.
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