Now that it appears that the swine flu has officially reached “crisis” proportions that requires a White House response, I started looking for background information on the virus. This Washington Post article has a good timeline.

In short, the first known victim died April 12th, Mexico identified something unusual was going on by April 16th and it was sent to Canada on Monday, with characterization within hours of it being received.

It’s absolutely mind blowing how science and technology, along with cooperative politics has allowed us to get such a quick grip on a new disease…especially picking it out from the hundreds of thousands of people that are sick at any given time. It’s too early to say how dangerous it will be, but it’s not too early to state that if it is highly dangerous, then literally millions of people’s lives were probably saved by the quick identification. Bravo to the public health apparatus, from the bench scientists, to the bureaucrats, to the doctors that recognized something was different and submitted it to authorities.