The international threat posed by H1N1 calls for a necessary pooling of international data, both by medical teams and by social scientists. Particular concern has been expressed about the pandemic spreading to Asia, and the potential for mixing with other variants, such as avian influenza [8] . Our team in the UK, Portugal and Malaysia sought to explore initial responses to the pandemic influenza threat. Responses to a new pandemic can be very time specific, with public reactions liable to change almost daily with media coverage [9] . Particularly important may be the gathering of data during the escalating responses that accompany a WHO pandemic alert phase 4 and 5 [10] . The WHO raised their flu alert to level 5 on 29 th April [11] , a mass media information campaign began in the UK on 5 th May 2009. We collected data from 30th April 2009 (at which time there had been 9 deaths and 212 confirmed cases worldwide) until 6th May 2009 (31 confirmed deaths, 1569 cases). By 6 th May there had been 27 confirmed cases in Europe, but none in Asia.