And I quoth from the above story link:
"...
The patient had underlying health conditions..."
Ergo, a sick person caught the flu and this contributed to their passing. That over 30,000 people A YEAR die of flu-related illness in the U.S. alone (CDC figures) should illustrate how common this occurence is.
I hate to break it to all the Henny Pennys, but life on this planet has been mutating/changing/evolving for, well, forever (okay, approx 2 billion years give or take a few). The difference now is we can can genetically map virus strains with increasing accuracy. So, whereas 40 years ago someone in hospital "got an infection and died", now we can say they suffered from complications of contracting "
Staphylococcus aureus Strain UT0002-19 as defined by the chromosonal linkage groups thy-1-lys-5-trp-3-thr-4-ala-8".
In the end, this identification process doesn't mean (unless you're a journalist with a "PANDEMIC MEGA-DEATH PLAGUE" headline you're dying to print) that we are on the verge of an "I Am Legend" scenario. If you want to be truely scared check out the mortality rate for a rabies infection versus H1N1 swine flu infection.
Meanwhile, sit back, relax and maybe pick up a real estate bargain or two in Melbourne where apparently the "GLOBAL-MEGA-PANDEMIC-DESTRUCTO-HYPER-DEATH" plague is destroying all life as we know it!!
