There have probably been other cases but now that people are being tested, it’s showing up.
The thing that amazes me is that it only took one(?) alert doctor here in the US who submitted samples from their relatively ‘mild’ flu case to the CDC to alert MEXICO to the fact that this was not just a “late-season flu” as they were treating it for WEEKS through their medical professionals and how they were reporting it to the public.
The other thing is — in several other reports originating out of mexico they are saying that TAMIFLU ‘seems’ to work against this strain, but NOT ALWAYS. There is an anecdotal story supposedly from a doctor in Mexico reported through the BBC that stated although all the healthcare workers were innoculated with the ‘flu shot’, 2 interns STILL died, and supposedly there are many more healthcare workers that are sick that have NOT been reported officially (not surprising really).
I am taking this sort of personally because my family JUST got over a nasty flu which hit me completely differently than the rest of my family. My kids and husband had your “typical flu symptoms” — me on the other hand, one sneeze before bed when they were getting better, and in the middle of the night I woke up with a full-blown NASTY bronchial infection. The difference between me and my kids — my immune system is weakened due to a variety of medications I’m on for other medical problems. Part of me wonders if I should ask my doctors to take some samples of (yes, this is gross) some of the stuff I’m still coughing up and test it, just in case (even though I responded to antibiotics).
The other thing that kind of makes me upset on these threads is those who accuse people of “overreacting”. Overreacting would be trying to hoard medicines, avoiding all public contact, inducing panic attacks in oneself, etc... I don’t see ANY evidence in these postings that people are doing anything more than looking at all the angles and trying to get to the truth. We all know our media cannot be trusted to even get things right like direct quotes, and there are too many little bits and pieces of information (and in some cases those bits are changing over the last 24-48 hours — like what REALLY killed that archaeologist) to get a clear picture.
That’s what’s so awesome about FR — we can come together discuss these issues and use our COMBINED wisdom to try to QUELL fears, and RATIONALLY look at how to deal with the possibilities we are faced with.