Being tuned in and being the Subject Matter Expert (SME) on pandemic at this time in our history is turning out to be an amazing experience for me. Anyone can/could have attended the conference call from the World Health Organization (WHO) but I don't know how many people are tuned in enough to know that nor who would have bothered.
Like most people I am on hundreds of conference calls every year. This was really neat because you could hear the people in the room moving around and whispering in hushed tones. I knew that they were getting ready to start the call because you could hear the clicking of the cameras as the VIPs entered the room. The other minor thing that made it clear that we were on an international call because we had to enter the PIN followed by the 'hash' sign, not the pound sign.
They are now in the Q&A portion of the call. It is interesting to hear all the different accents.
"Should the average person be losing any sleep over this?" Good question! Hmmm... She is pushing it back to the individual countries rather than answering the question directly. Thankfully, I am going to dial in to the CDC call for the US in about 10 minutes too! :)
Some of the slightly scary facts on this are:
While only 2% of the cases are severe, within that 2% about half of those people are young (30 to 50) and previously healthy. This is not how the seasonal flu behaves. Seasonal flu typically is hardest on the elderly, the very young (children), and the frail.
This flu is being considered a Moderate Severity, for now.
Off to CDC call...
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