The epidemiology of this pandemic is different than for seasonal influenza epidemics, but not unlike previous pandemics. Young people have been disproportionately affected in terms of hospitalisation and deaths compared to seasonal influenza in which complications and mortality are predominantly borne by the elderly [4] . Similarly, the risk to pregnant women has been higher than for seasonal influenza [5, 6] , which was also noted in previous pandemics. The attributable premature mortality may remain unclear for some time. Recent American analyses have estimated many more deaths than those officially reported with laboratory confirmation of infection and that years of life lost were equivalent to the 1968 pandemic. The lower bound of such estimates is equivalent to the annual burden caused by a typical H3N2 seasonal epidemic in temperate climates [7, 8] . The years-of-life-lost metric captures the impact of a different agespecific mortality pattern which death counts cannot. Deaths involving the young and healthy incur many more potential years of life lost compared to those of older adults and of chronically ill individuals.