don't panic, but "SWINE FLU COULD SPREAD GLOBALLY"

Don't get why nobody ever points out that medicine was not awesome in 1918.

Got that pandemic!

also this:
A British Airways cabin crew staff member is being treated in a London hospital with "flu-like symptoms" after arriving on a flight from Mexico City, health officials said Saturday
The Health Protection Agency stressed he was undergoing tests "as a precautionary measure," adding there are no confirmed cases of human swine flu in Britain or Europe.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gzCWv4j9VeAlnz_8j236JDWc2ujg

ditto standards of quarantine, general health vigilance etc xxp

The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16.

Fucking thanks, Mr. Obama.

that's one way to improve unemployment numbers : \

yeah right, BLAME THE OBAMA PIG

http://www.northstarwriters.com/brettnoelimages/05March2009cartoonpage.jpg

I heard FDR was a communist.

just waiting for the outbreak of guano-spread flu and the resulting batshit cartoons

NV, you are right that medicine is now more capable than in 1918. But pandemics of highly infectious diseases are still not easy to contain without resorting to the same sorts of crowd dispersal and quarantine methods they used back then.

This shit does not have a magic bullet. Mass vaccination is not as simple as all that. In advanced countries many lives could be saved by prompt resort to intensive intervention, where available. But the worst menace is in countries without the medical resources of the wealthy countries, or in the remote rural areas of places like the USA.

I keep misreading porcine as porcupine :-/

i bet you my bottom dollar there's at least one girl in France named Porcine

Aimless I understand and respect that a disease like this is mostly a threat to developing nations or whatever euphemism we choose to adopt, if I have a bone to pick it's the fact that Western news outlets don't/won't write the story from that angle.

Don't get why nobody ever points out that medicine was not awesome in 1918.

― Eugenecist Levy (Noodle Vague), Saturday, April 25, 2009 6:39 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

btw this has not a lot to do w/the dynamics of viral pandemics

I guess I'm thinking more of the general well-being of working class people in rich countries between 1918 and 2009 but it will be interesting to see if this ever plays itself out. Also a reading of previous ILX "We're All Going To Die" threads is instructive here I think.

i mean, i ~think~ i know what you're driving at, but w/r/t a viral flu pandemic, the only thing that the "general well-being" of working class people might have to do with preventing a pandemic is how it affects their immune systems response. the healthcare apparatus can try and deploy touch-and-go prophylactic vaccines and some antiviral drugs (which, it should be noted, do not "cure" the illness or reduce infectivity), but i'm not sure how the general well-being of the western working-class will have any effect on the spread of an airborne virus.

were we all so bad off in 1918 that everyone, including the young and healthy, was immunocompromised?? srs question!

I don't know about the States, but in the UK the diet of working class people was fucking terrible, in terms of inadequacy of calories consumed and general lack of vitamins and other important stuff. So bad in fact that WWII rationing pretty much massively improved the diet of most of our country. Now I guess you're saying that these things don't affect how a virus spreads, but I'm thinking that what will be different now is the immune systems. Which won't stop the illness spreading but could significantly dent the number of fatalities - caveat again - in the developed world.

well yeah that's what i'm wondering. was everyone so malnourished back then that their immune systems were depressed? sounds like maybe!

which then leads me to wonder: is this whole 'the young and healthy' were hit especially hard just a statistical misinterpretation? like, on a normal distribution, most people are not-elderly or infantile, and not ailing or in esp rude health! so basically pandemics ~by their very nature~ will appear to hit the young and healthy the hardest, because they're pretty much the bulk of the population!

Also wondering if young and health = more likely to spend time out and about where flu might be caught.

Mexico's over-65s make up approximately 6 percent of that country as opposed to 12 percent in the US and 16 percent in the UK so that must bend the curve somewhat.

Also wondering if young and health = more likely to spend time out and about where flu might be caught.

― eggy mule (Hurting 2), Saturday, April 25, 2009 7:30 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

good point.

if this gets into the prison system, it will shred them to bits :(

just waiting for the outbreak of guano-spread flu and the resulting batshit cartoons

― sorry for british (country matters), Saturday, April 25, 2009 11:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

^^^ underrated post

maybe we should let all the other things that are supposed to kill us actually work their magic before gettin all worked up over this one

who's worked up

Okay my enemies, get to killing me.

maybe we should let all the other things that are supposed to kill us actually work their magic before gettin all worked up over this one

Funny you should mention that. Here in South Florida, we have an unexplained outbreak of deadly meningitis.

But I'm not making light of the swine-flu problem. Sounds horrible, and no vaccine = scary.

singling people out isnt my AIM, that's for a LESSer man

xxxp

real talk tho im sure this is a serious problem, forgive me if i'm a little naive/jaded about shit like this

But I'm not making light of the swine-flu problem. Sounds horrible, and no vaccine = scary.

― Daniel, Esq., Saturday, April 25, 2009 7:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

no real treatment, either. antivirals help, but they don't work the same way as antibiotics---we can't really 'cure' viral infections the way we can with bacterial ones

basically when you contract a viral pathogen, it's between the pathogen and your immune system

Purely airbourne transmission, from casual contact, is that right?

what the world really needs is a prion pandemic

only then will i truly head for the cellar with 500 tins of luncheon meat and a shotgun

So now we have reports of "mild cases" of the swine flu in NYC and "flu-like symptoms" in a bronx daycare. But the former would only have been tested/reported after such an "outbreak" and the latter may be nothing at all. It also happens to be the beginning of allergy season, which I am hardcore feeling.

It's the reaction of the Mexican gov't that makes it seem so alarming. Closing public events, distributing surgical masks. It sounds like the plot of a bad Steven King novel.

what the world really needs is a prion pandemic

only then will i truly head for the cellar with 500 tins of luncheon meat and a shotgun

― sorry for british (country matters), Saturday, April 25, 2009 8:05 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark

quick, everyone, spot the flaw in this plan!

more than one, actually ;)

i have gone down there to shoot the luncheon meat, as i suspect it of harbouring variant cjd

:)

a wild hog just bit me, should I be worried?

I wouldn't start any long books.

i meant for the pig

i remember the big swine flu scare of the 70s. turned out to be a false alarm. the early reports on this version are scary tho.

http://www.capitalcentury.com/1976.html

I'm coughing and my tail has suddenly become very curly.

Daniel, the reaction of the Mexican government in banning large public gatherings is, at this moment, entirely justified by the nature of the problem they are dealing with.

Influenza is highly infectious and is passed by casual contact among people who are asymptomatic. Once it really gets going in a population it is very difficult to deal with. Because this strain is among the most deadly known, it is perfectly reasonable to throw up obstacles to its rapid transmission to crowds of people at once.

Masks are also a good idea, provided they are the correct sort of masks and are worn correctly. The problem is that most untrained people are unlikely to use them correctly until they are scared enough to pay careful attention, so this is not as good an early measure as crowd dispersal. Them viruses are small and easy to inhale.

As usual, if no pandemic appears, many people who were inconvenienced by public health measures designed to prevent the pandemic will claim there was never any danger and the officials overreacted.

Like I said, read The Great Influenza. You'll be plenty impressed at what this stuff can do.

The Swine Flew

http://i41.tinypic.com/9qgsd0.jpg

Does this mean that all those things people said would happen "when pigs fly" are now possible?
(That some bird flew is way more likely, maybe this should be called swine fever)

Ugh, pharmacists at work (like five of them) were joking about why pigs and birds were hanging out at the first place, which I thought was just lol joeks, but then they proceeded to spend like twenty minutes talking about it and showing that they basically knew less about flu epidemics and the mutation of the virus than I do from my reading of a handful of NYT articles over the years.

I usually try to rep for pharmacists (most are doctors too, rooting for the home team, etc) but seriously, guys had no idea what they were talking about. It was really strange.

President Barack Obama's health is fine a little more than a week after he traveled to Mexico, where an outbreak of swine flu has killed at least 68 people and sickened more than 1,000, the White House said Saturday.

"The president's trip to Mexico has not put his health in any danger," said spokesman Robert Gibbs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/25/AR2009042502068.html

which then leads me to wonder: is this whole 'the young and healthy' were hit especially hard just a statistical misinterpretation?

No. Give statisticians a little more credit than that. Then google "cytokine storm."

awwwwww

*could not hate you MORE.

(I am starting to believe that medical school erodes your ability to use the English language properly.)

My kids cry for, like, 10 seconds, then light up when they get a lollipop. Then they spend the rest of the day skipping around, singing about their shot, and showing off their band aid.

^^^ i also did this

This is in Belgian papers as "whole Alaskan island has the flu"

http://www.adn.com/swineflu/story/1003193.html

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=65.757887,-168.950028&spn=0.003322,0.013937&t=h&z=17

(click "map" to make it disappear btw)

Is it just the US thats being hit hard with this? it doesnt seem to be rating much of a mention in Aus anymore and I dont know anyone much who's been genuinely sick (there were some people who went "oh no i have the flu" and were back at work fine 3 days later so theres no way they had h1n1).

Aus as in Australia? It's not flu season there anymore. In fact, this year's seasonal U.S. flu strain - the one they target with the seasonal flu vaccine - originated in Melbourne, way back when.

Oh ok - I would have thought flu strains were global these days what with air travel and such, but fair enough.

On the down side, we just met someone whose friend's five-year old son died two weeks ago of asthma aggravated by H1N1.

^^^^very sad, and drives home the importance of immunizing children, especially those at high risk for pulmonary crises.

Wow, very sad.

Doctor confirmed last week that I didn't have it, but the lurgey I did suffer with still left me feeling like crap for more than a week.

whatever the fuck I've got is driving me fucking crazy

no fever but so fucking tired all day

Hello, SFT.

Include me into yr portal!

I phoned the info line, and the symptoms list was "Temperature", plus one of the following. etc etc.

Have to say, if I had to choose two I had to have, I got the right ones. Sore throat, runny nos, dry coff.

You can keep the listless/tired, and the Diar/Vom.

I went to bed at 11:00pm, and woke at 01:00 in a damn swimming pool of my own making!

How long does it go on?

nhs just gave me that "you may have this don't leave the house if possible" thing....

flatmate's reaction was as if i'd invited my buddy swine flu over for a party and we were both having a fucking amazing laugh.

my pal has it, even after the vaccine

only plus is I guess work will tell me to stay at home all week and I'm on a really boring shift for next 5 days

fucking hell this is a rough flu now....jesus.

My sympathies. Hang in there. Your immune system will see you through this.

thanks! yeah for sure...I'm feeling this prob is swine, just based on severity. never known a flu to get markedly worse after having it for four days, sweating like a racehorse...urgh.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0114/1224262291929.html

THE WORLD Health Organisation is to examine its handling of the swine flu pandemic after accusations that it exaggerated the dangers of the virus under pressure from drug companies.

i just got my vaccine. headache for a few hours afterward, but i think i'm fine now.

just got my vaccine. autistic for a few hours afterwards, but i think im fine now.

retardo maxelban

thank god jenny mccarthy cured max of his autism

how you feeling ronan?