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H1N1 ("Swine") Flu
- Thread starter Cave Man
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We'll see, but people often forget that the flu kills 10's of 1000's of people (just in the U.S.) yearly. (This year has been a little less, but still lots of deaths.) The sensationalism with this strain comes from the name - no one wants anything to do with "Swine" - and the fact that in one isolated city (Mexico City) there were deaths to young apparently healthy people. But all the cases outside of Mexico City have behaved just like every other garden variety flu.
The sensationalism is really crazy though. Banning pork imports? That's totally insane! People don't want to go out in public or get on planes. I was unlucky enough to train during the SARS outbreak, when all you had to say was "Could this be SARS?" and you got an immediate lockdown and isolation.
I agreed with virtually your entire post except this part. Lots of people? I defy you to find me one case report. About 1:2,000,000 will get Guillane-Barre syndrome from the shot, but even with this complication very few die. I suppose if you had an egg allergy and didn't tell your doctor, you could get an anaphylactic reaction to the shot. I've seen some really unusual stuff in my career - a Pakistani King Cobra bite, for instance - but I've never seen a complication from a flu shot, let alone a fatality.
Oh, that's what I was wanting a link to - a source for the deaths from the flu vaccine.
The WHO tends to lean on the conservative side of issuing worldwide health warnings. If the WHO is issuring a warning, there's a reason to.
Spot on, BoyBach. We'll stick the kettle on, have a nice cup of tea and we'll ride this crisis through.
I'll see your $0.02 and raise your another $0.02. Hype is all it is. People die all the time from all kinds of stuff.
Are they going to recall ladders because people fall of them? If a celebrity was to fall off a 12 foot ladder it would be a big to-do. Fox news would have a special "Ladders...The silent kills?"
How many people die each day from car accidents?
Neither were the dozens of people who died from it.
You only die from this if you don't have access to proper health care. Unfortunately this will affect most of the third world if it gets serious.
Maybe this is nature sorting out the problem of over population. Survival of the fittest?
This is about the most uninformed comment on this entire thread. Clearly you don't understand immunopathogenesis.
With this virus, it's beginning to look as though those who are "most fit" (whatever that means) are most likely to have severe disease and mortality.
Because it doesn't normally transmit between people. That's what the hype is about, a very uncommon strain that is communicable among humans and no longer requires direct animal to human contact. Only ~150 have died, but CNN reported there were over 4,000 with the active virus in Mexico. (Link coming soon)
For those of you who enjoy visuals, I found this article on Gizmodo that tracks the cases with Google Maps lol
Will Gas mask help me to protect myself from this, if its getting a global problem? i just got one in the army...
That's why, at our clinics at least, there is an RN there with ephenephrin, in case of anaphylactic shock.
If you leave before the 20 wait period after the injection, tough *****!!
I thought the U.S., and only the U.S., had the measles. Or maybe "ring around the rosie"?
I heard they are stopping Visa's from Mexico... Wife is in a field regulated by the state dept.
I'm not sure if they are stopping all travel or just this business segment.
I'm not sure if they are stopping all travel or just this business segment.
Now when I see the replay of the NYC Air Force flyover, I'm reminded of the Will Smith vampire movie when the F-16s took out the bridges. Seems a flawed containment strategy in real life, unless you're trying to create jobs in infrastructure repair.
You realize the acting director for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states he fully expects US deaths from this, right?
Are you saying the US doesn't have proper health care?
This is just being well prepared. It in no way indicates the level of risk from getting the flu shot. Every clinic that administers medications should be prepared to give epi in case of anaphylactic reaction, it isn't specific to the flu shot.
I can teach someone how to administer epi in about 2 minutes. Hell, teachers at public schools all over the place are taught it every year.
He's saying that people not close to a hospital or treatment center have much higher chances of dying. I don't believe it was a political statement. At all.
You're a sick bastard.I had to go downtown yesterday and saw plenty of tourists (and not just fromt he US) so if I go down at least I'll know a lot of the world will go too
Well the media is owned and controlled by the government.. and the government wants the people to have something to focus on other than the government.
CaveMan,
Why do you bother? You're never going to change the mind of someone that uninformed.
By profession, I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist. I have worked for and with the WHO, CDC and a whole bunch of NGOs in outbreak investigations and control on four continents. A few days ago, when this first broke publicly, I tried explaining a few things about the outbreak control process on another popular forum. Of course, none of it mattered because on the internet, Google gives anyone the ability to quote things out of context and argue whether they're capable of interpreting or even understanding the facts they're looking quoting. After all, they saw the movie Outbreak, so they must know how things work. One guy even told me that he hoped that I died, because I told him (politely) that he was using the term "vector" wrong.
I'm just waiting for the day that some guy unknowingly quotes a paper I've authored as proof that there's peer reviewed evidence that I'm wrong.
It's too bad they couldn't be charged with inducing panic
There's a fine line between warning people and scaring the crap out of them. We crossed that line long ago.
It's too bad they couldn't be charged with inducing panic
There's a fine line between warning people and scaring the crap out of them. We crossed that line long ago.
Sensationalism has been the new black for a veeeeeery long time in journalism.