Putting swine flu in perspective

The last few days we’ve been inundated with numbers and swine flu facts. Eighty deaths in Mexico jumped to 100. Twenty sickened school children in Queens became 40. We know that pork’s fine to eat, and that we might not want to travel south of border. But what about some of the contextual facts ? are people getting sicker more quickly in this outbreak than they have in others? Will border security stations really help? Here to answer the Big Picture questions is Dr. Richard Wenzel, The Takeaway’s go-to swine flu epidemiologist.