New Scientist is being reassuring – sort of – when it declares that this swine flu pandemic business isn’t any kind of surprise:

But in 1998, says Richard Webby of St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, swine H1N1 hybridised with human and bird viruses, resulting in “triple reassortants” that surfaced in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas. …

By 1999, [...]