Pig on the Wing

Facebook has been a joyful waste of time for the last few days, but it is very seriously cutting into my reading... I currently have over 400 unread items in my international news folder. Now that is, as a rule, my biggest folder, but also as a rule, where I find the most important and interesting news items. I just started wading into it, and found this:

Yesterday, the World Health Organisation said 800 people had now died worldwide from H1N1 flu and as many as 2 billion people could eventually be infected.

According to Dr Alan Hay, director of the WHO's London-based world influenza centre, the first wave of UK infections is likely to peak within the next week or two before re-emerging in the winter.

Research published in the journal Anaesthesia suggests that when the peak comes, demand for intensive care beds could outstrip supply by 130% in some regions, while the demand for ventilators could exceed supply by 20%. Paediatric facilities are likely to become "quickly exhausted" as hospitals confront "massive excess demand..."

From The Guardian. Now this is the British situation, not the US. But if anything, we're more poorly prepared.

And just think, when I finish wading through those 400 items, I only have 18 more folders to look through.