Swine Flu - 14

It's the end of the line for this source of data from the World Health Organization.

The number of new, lab confirmed cases of the A(H1N1) flu worldwide had been tracked and reported on by WHO since April 24th. But the last update on that page was made on July 6th, just over a week prior to their announcement on Thursday that they won't be doing it anymore.

As a reliable metric, the "lab confirmed" official reports do have a weighty caveat in the time consuming nature of lab testing, not to mention the cost. It becomes especially so now that the pandemic shows no slightest sign of petering out... the burden of this kind of reportage with these steadily increasing numbers has apparently become too unmanageable.

Although the number of lab confirmed deaths worldwide is still very low, the trend shows no sign of abating...

It also shows the relatively low death rate, while closely tracking the same trends as weekly cases.

As expensive and as burdensome that lab confirmation is, this WHO data series has been the only reliable source of hard data available on the course of this pandemic.

Hopefully, they will begin a new tracking series of reports that will help to show whether it continues to worsen or not.