A growing swine influenza outbreak is starting to spark global attention.  What started as a strange sickness is thought to have taken 103 lives in Mexico City with over 1000 other cases reported throughout the city.  As cases in the United States and Canada have sprung up the world begins to brace itself for what the World Health Organization has declared a “public health emergency of international concern.”

The origin of the virus is still unknown and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) have confirmed that it is a virus we haven’t seen before.  At this point, only 18 cases of mortality have actually been confirmed by laboratory tests to be death directly from the swine influenza.  Some countries have banned meat exports, placed travel restrictions, and quarantined people who they think might be infected.

The mask covered faces of people walking the streets of Mexico City bring back chilling memories of Asia’s SARS pandemic which took the lives of 774.  What makes the swine flu especially dangerous is the person-to-person transmission which mutates the virus and makes it harder to fight off.  Though nearly 250-500 thousand people die of the flu a year, the worry about the new virus is that most people don’t have natural immunity to it and it will take time to develop vaccines.  Additionally, new convenient new modes of travel have given what would have originally been a more contained outbreak greater ability to spread farther–and even globally.

While Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano assured the public the public health emergency declaration sounded more severe than it actually is, it’s clear the swine flu outbreak is more than just a small isolated problem.

It’s probably not time to panic yet, but this is starting to hit a little too close to home.  Literally.