Does Admin Know More Than It Is Saying About Swine Flu?

The World Health Organization has raised their swine flu alert to Level 5. The WHO’s formal definition of a Level 5 designation is sustained human-to-human transmission "in two countries in one WHO region" (there are six regions worldwide; the US is in the Americas region). So the "two countries" must be the United States and Mexico.

One can argue that the designation was fundamentally a wake-up call to governments to take this seriously, remembering the SARS and bird flu outbreaks earlier this decade. In particular, it's a call to governments not to withhold information from the international health community, as happened earlier. The SARS angle may be particularly relevant for the WHO's relatively new Director General, Margaret Chan, who is a representative of the Western Pacific region.

On the other hand: sustained human-to-human transmission sure sounds a lot more serious than what we've heard so far from the Obama Administration, doesn't it? Are they hiding something? If so, we're pretty fortunate to have the Joe Biden Truth Serum.

But one bit of good news on the WHO front: Taiwan will formally participate in the WHO's Assembly in May as "Chinese Taipei" (just like in the Olympics). This takes a perennially nasty dispute off the table which became only more acute after the East Asian-focused SARS outbreak.