The European medical community was always a bit less amped up about the H1N1 "pandemic" than their counterparts here, and they have been much more reflective about the mass hysteria now that it has passed. There are three items in today's BMJ that, unfortunately, are hidden behind the subscription wall. I will summarize.
First, Deputy Editor Tony Delamothe, in the regular Editor's Choice column, writes:
If influenza was a rock band how would it rate its latest release, H1N1? Not too well, I suspect, despite the greatest prepublicity since—well, its previous release. And it all started so promisingly, in Mexico, whose population had been decimated by the very first outbreak of Spanish flu (and smallpox and measles), courtesy of Cortés and his conquistadores.
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