Filing this one away in case I ever forget why reading just the headlines and the standfirst of news stories never really tells you what’s going on:

Swine flu could affect third of world’s population, says study

Researchers say swine flu will spread around world within nine months, as UK confirms three more cases

The swine flu virus will infect a third of the world’s population if it continues to spread at its current rate, scientists warned today, as three more cases were confirmed in the UK.

In what the journal Science described as the “first quick and dirty analysis” of swine flu, a study by researchers at Imperial College London predicted the virus was likely to cause an epidemic in the northern hemisphere in the autumn.

One of the authors, the epidemiologist and disease modeller Neil Ferguson, who sits on the World Health Organisation’s emergency committee for the outbreak, said the virus had “full pandemic potential”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “It is likely to spread around the world in the next six to nine months, and when it does so, it will affect about one-third of the world’s population.

OH MY GOD. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

“To put that into context, normal seasonal flu probably affects around 10% of the world’s population every year, so we are heading for a flu season which is perhaps three times worse than usual –

Oh.

– not allowing for whether this virus is more severe than normal seasonal flu viruses.”

That strikes me as rather a large “not allowing”.

So: scary headline, story that confuses more than reassures. Standard stuff, really.