Swine Flu

Tyler Cowen finds this:

Cities that instituted quarantine, school closings, bans on public gatherings and other such procedures early in the epidemic had peak death rates 30 percent to 50 percent lower than those that did not.

That is from a study of the pandemic of 1918-1919 and here is more, from 2007. The best place to follow what is going on in Mexico -- where such restrictions are now common -- is ElUniversal. People in Mexico are dying of the flu every day; what is the chance that only the benign version of the virus crosses the border?

It may be too soon to adopt such measures of panic - but not by much. It's easy to forget that our rapidly available weapons against the flu are only slightly better than they were in 1918.

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