Little known facts from the contagion zone . . .
Bunch of religious cranks! I bet the Ayrabs havenāt even gone quite that deep space.
HG
[quote=ācakeā]This could be a load of hype.
Around 15,000 people die in the US every year because of flu. Thatās almost 300 a week.
Mexico City is a polluted shit hole not famous for itās medical facilities. I would guess the dead had low immune systems.
Something like 300 people a day die there from TB daily.
The amount of dead in a city of 20 million is minuscule, but then again who knows what the real figures are. Governments canāt be trusted to inform us of the truth.
[/quote]
It could be a load of hype, but normally influenza kills the old, the infirm and the very young. Thatās the normal āat riskā group and why you see the elderly going for flu shots every year. Their immune systems get overwhelmed, they donāt move around and end up catching something else that contributes to their deaths, like pneumonia.
The swine influenza is said to be killing young, healthy individuals similar, but not exactly, to what the 1918 influenza did. Itās highly contagious and mammalian, which were two of the three factors of the 1918 influenza. If it also takes the third characteristic, which is the ability to cause a cytokine storm, then weāll be seeing a lot more people dying. Those who usually can brush off the flu after a day or two of feeling ill.
There have been outbreaks of swine influenza before, in the US and abroad. Itās also not like this is a new terror to worry about. During the avian flu crisis, I remember reading that the big worry was the avian influenza strain and human influenza strain infecting a pig and combining to make some killer bird-pig flu that could kill lots of people.
The Huffington Post has an article on the swine flu with comparisons to the normal flu. The normal mortality rate for the flu is around 9% while the last outbreak of swine flu in the US, in 1976, had a mortality rate of 14%. The swine flu mortality rate is based on a study in the University of Chicagoās Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases, April 2007. It is a small sample size though, only 50 people who have been infected with 7 dying.
The only happy faces I have seen so far are the people from the factories that make medical masks. Boy, you should have seen the size of their smiles, orders up to the gazillion, working 24 hours a day.
I keep telling myself it is just the hype, just press fodder:
[quote]Meanwhile, that yearāand in every year this decadeābetween 30,000 and 50,000 American deaths were recorded from complications related to the seasonal flu. Another 40,000 people died in automobile accidents. And each year, gunshot wounds account for 30,000 deaths, around 4,000 people drown while swimming or boating and 60 people die from lightning strikes.
āThe public is driven by irrational fears. They didnāt go to medical school,ā says Shorter. āTheyāre responding to an abdication of leadership by political leaders.ā
So far, the U.S. has responded to the swine flu with restraint. President Obama said the problem is a ācause for concernā and ānot a cause for alarm.ā And the declaration of a public health emergency is not quite as scary as it sounds. It is an important precautionary measure, like declaring a state of emergency in Florida because a hurricane may or may not hit. But Russia banned pork imports from Mexico. And Hong Kong has said it wonāt accept flights from Mexico. āThatās irrational, except to whip up public sentiment against the Mexicans,ā Shorter says
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http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100237462>1=31036
As to why people are dying in Mexico city but not elsewhere, well, might be a matter of access to medical health, but mostly, it is a question of being caught like a deer under the headlights with something unexpected. Furthermore, itās 22 million people, folks, the population of Taiwan, in a space the size of Taipei. If something goes wrong, it goes wrong fast.
Itās not like home, not even the population of Taipei in a place 3 times the size of Taiwan.
Wait, wait, wait! Who said itās still killing young people? It is precisely because young people have stopped dying, particularly as the disease has spread outside Mexico, suggesting it has moderated in contact with other viruses, that is cause for some relief.
HG
Wait, I canāt be arsed to go look for an English language source, however my Danish newspaperās online edition mentioned that a lot of the people supposedly dying from it were subsequently found not even to have it.
Also, the initial death rates on this - well it appears mild averywhere but in Mexico. I think that the size of the epidemy is underestimated, whereas the death toll is overestimated.
Yup. A bunch of media hype designed purely to fill column inches.
Official WHO figures available today showed 1,600 suspected cases in Mexico, just 26 confirmed infections and only 7 confirmed deaths. None in the US, none in Canada, none in Spain, none in Israel, none in the UKā¦ just a load of hot air. Will it blow up into something more? Quite possibly. But donāt be looking at your newspaper for accurate information.
Iām sure there is going to be plenty of hype.
However, Iām reading that WHO spokespeople are more concerned than the low figures youāre reading on their site might indicate.
I seem to recall that when SARS was at its peak, the WHO site had figures that seemed way behind everyone elseās tally.
Is it possible that at the WHO site, they wait a while to post figures? Do they need to send samples off to Geneva or something?
Did you hear about irishstu?
The swine flu epidemic crossed new borders Tuesday with the first cases confirmed in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, as world health officials said they suspect American patients may have transmitted the virus to others in the U.S.
Most people confirmed with the new swine flu were infected in Mexico, where the number of deaths blamed on the virus has surpassed 150.
But confirmation that people have been infecting others in locations outside Mexico would indicate that the disease was spreading beyond travelers returning from Mexico, World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters on Tuesday in Geneva.
Hartl said the source of some infections in the United States, Canada and Britain was unclear.
The swine flu has already spread to at least six countries besides Mexico, prompting WHO officials to raise its alert level on Monday.
āAt this time, containment is not a feasible option,ā said Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of the World Health Organization.
New Zealand reported Tuesday that 11 people who recently returned from Mexico contracted the virus. Tests conducted at a WHO laboratory in Australia had confirmed three cases of swine flu among 11 members of the group who were showing symptoms, New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall said.
Wait, so let me get this, The Media overblewa normal flu by overworking it and we are suppose to trust them?
Hello? Hurricane Katrina, anybody?
[quote=āOkamiā]Wait, so let me get this, The Media overblewa normal flu by overworking it and we are suppose to trust them?
Hello? Hurricane Katrina, anybody?[/quote]
Not normal flu. But everyoneās so desperate to get their deathless prose onto their editorsā screens that the fact-checking goes out the window.
According to Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_p ā¦ #Mortality
I.e. not good but by no means certain death. Also I think if you can make it to hospital youād probably have a less than 1% chance of snuffing it due to all the bad ass medical technology they have.
On the other hand there is no treatment for Cytokine Storms yet, so maybe you will die horribly even in the unlikely event you manage to stagger into the emergency room.
I dunno I checked Wikipedia and Iām 100% sure one of the following is correct
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Everything is dandy, donāt panic or.
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[color=#FF0000]We are all completely fucked, and panic is advisable[/color].
There is a metaphorical thunderbolt about to wipe out a certain number of people tomorrow, but Iām quietly confident the world is not about to end, even as we know it.
Ouch! Gold will now buy you just a little less Tamiflu, and shotgun shells.
HG
[quote=āKingZogā]
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Everything is dandy, donāt panic or.
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[color=#FF0000]We are all completely fucked, and panic is advisable[/color].[/quote]
XKCD to the rescue!
The rollover text has the following:
Have you received medical care there, cake, or are you, to put it politely, providing uninformed opinion?
I donāt dispute that health care in much of Mexico is poor, DF is polluted, and so on, but the largest cities do have modern health care available. I also agree that when the dust settles we might find thereās been some hype in all of this. But it is better to take such matters too seriously at first than not seriously enough.[/quote]
Not disputing that.
I should have written, that these said hospitals and the health care wonāt be available for the usual suspects who are vulnerable at times like this.
I am willing to bet any money you like that since this scare started, more people have choked to death on their own faeces than died of this ākiller flu;ā Any takers?
[quote]Only 7 swine flu deaths, not 152, says WHO
A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.
Vivienne Allan, from WHOās patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease.
āUnfortunately that [150-plus deaths] is incorrect information and it does happen, but thatās not information thatās come from the World Health Organisation,ā Ms Allan told ABC Radio today.
āThat figure is not a figure thatās come from the World Health Organisation and, I repeat, the death toll is seven and they are all from Mexico.ā [/quote]
Yes, yes, some scary elements involved to be sure, but its precisely this sort of action that gives hope! Health officials are all over this one, just like that killer rash that can spread by sunlight no one talks about.
HG
Iām waiting to see if deaths happen among those confirmed infected in the US and what %. From this we can make a fairly accurate prediction of the severity of this disease. So far I see no cause for panic.
BTW, WHO say there is no point to do border monitoring, as most carriers or infectious people do not display symptoms.
Dunno but panic is working well for some sectors of the economy, thank you very much.
We went to mask hunting during lunchtime. Most pharmacies were out and the ones that had looked like the Mitsukoshi on sale. The attendants threw the open boxes and it was a free for all. And these were the normal ones, most pharmacies are out of N95s.
I got some for my bro whoās a doctor -most are sold out already back home.
alert raised to LEVEL FIVE, only one below LEVEL SIX, the max level
msnbc.msn.com/id/30398682/?GT1=43001
Egypt also going to slaughter all pigs in its country. Over 300,000. which I think is a political move (only a few eat pork in Egypt) as that is not a necessary move
voanews.com/english/Science/ ā¦ -voa55.cfm
Flights may be cancelled in some places when it reaches level six.
We were looking forward to a relaxing vacation in Mexico at a very reasonably priced, all-inclusive resort that came highly recommended from a coworker.
Our plans are cancelled.
Got an email from my university (CSULB) last night letting everyone know that a student contracted Swine flu over the weekend. The tested back as a āprobable positiveā and the actual results will be known in two days. They quarantined her in the the dorm, quarantined the her roommate and warned the students and teachers in every class that the she had to watch out for symptoms. The email said she didnāt go to any classes this week, but they were watching all of the students in her dorm to see how many of them came down with it.
Two Southern California college students may have swine flu
Itās not necessarily a political move. They didnāt ban pork from being produced and they are reimbursing the farmers (ranchers? what do you call someone who raises pigs?). The Egyptian authorities said that the conditions that the pigs were being raised in were horrible and a perfect breeding ground for something like swine flu. They tried to relocate poultry after the avian flu outbreak a few years ago but were unsuccessful, so they instead are trying to cull the herds and make farmers move. According to their cabinet spokesman, the point is to get pigs out away from urban areas.