June 12 (Bloomberg) -- The first flu pandemic in four decades is sweeping across the globe and people in Melbourne, one of the hardest-hit cities, have one thing to say: So what.

“It’s the flu, it comes and goes,” said Gavin Dufty, 46, a social researcher in Australia’s second-largest city. “This one just happens to have a different name.” Locals “are taking it in their stride. It doesn’t seem that severe.”

Melbourne and the rest of Victoria, a state the size of Kansas, have more than 1,000 cases of swine flu and officials said last week so many people have the bug they stopped counting. Evidence that the virus has taken root there, as well as in Chile, the U.K. and five other countries, prompted the World Health Organization to move to the top of its pandemic alert scale yesterday.