Global health officials are warning that H1N1 swine flu could bloom into a pandemic. Yesterday, the World Health Organization declared a Phase Five alert. Epidemiologist and virus hunter Nathan Wolfe, of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, says it never should have gotten to this point. In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Wolfe argues that if global public health functioned differently, we probably could have detected the virus before it spread so widely.