BY now, you’ve probably read a lot of news about the swine flu spreading around the world at an alarming rate. At this point, it is best to know what it is to help us prepare. We’ve collated some news and information we think would be useful

Information culled by Reuters:

Q&A: How serious is swine flu?

Excerpt:

WHAT KIND OF FLU IS IT AND HOW IS IT SPREADING?

The virus is influenza A virus, carrying the designation H1N1, but it contains DNA from avian, swine and human H1N1 viruses. It appears to have evolved the ability to pass easily from one person to another, unlike most swine H1N1 viruses which only very occasionally infect people and usually only infect one person and then stop there.

Flu viruses are all passed on by sneezing, coughing or when people pick up the virus on their hands. This one likely originated in pigs, but the Mexican government and the World Health Organization have ruled out any risk of infection from eating pork.

HOW SERIOUS IS IT?

The Geneva-based WHO has declared the flu a “public health emergency of international concern” and raised the threat level for a pandemic, a global epidemic of new disease. H1N1 swine flu poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu re-emerged in 2003, killing 257 out of 421 infected in 15 countries.

It is not clear yet whether this virus could actually become a pandemic.

Poynter Institute has also tracked a growing pool of information from the Internet. In fact, the Internet is now abuzz with swine flu talk in Twitter and blogs.

Here’s another interesting step-by-step way to track news and information about the Swine Flu on the Internet from Mashable.