Thursday, April 25, 2013

China’s bird flu outbreak: 3 good signs, 3 bad signs and 3 very bad signs

Since the new avian flu strain H7N9 began appearing in China earlier this year, it’s infected over 100 people, killed 22, spread to five provinces plus Beijing and Shanghai and, as of Wednesday, is confirmed to have spread abroad to Taiwan.

 How worried should you be about this? How serious is the H7N9 outbreak? The simplest and most honest answer is that we don’t know what’s going to happen next, either with the virus, which may or may not mutate and become more transmittable, or with Chinese and international health-care authorities responsible for tamping it down. But there are some good signs, some bad signs and some very bad signs. Here are a few.

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