The Los Angeles Times reported on the front page Thursday about an emerging consensus that the current flu hybrid "isn't shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics."
Like other news outlets, The Times cautioned that a second wave of the disease in the fall might, or might not, prove more deadly.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, a medical epidemiologist with the UCLA School of Public Health, told me that experts need to know much more to make better judgments about how lethal this flu will be.
"In public health . . . everyone is trying to have a posture of humility about this," he said. "This is a virus we haven't seen before. It appears to be relatively mild in the U.S. at this time. But because we have not seen it before, we don't really know what will happen.
"We have to have modesty in making predictions," Kim-Farley concluded. "We prepare for the worst and hope for the best."
So I'm coming out from under the desk for now. But, just to be safe, I'm keeping the TV off.
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james.rainey@latimes.com
