quote:Originally posted by CaySedai: Maybe the government - or the Iowa Pork Producers - could run a contest for a catchier name that doesn't doesn't involve pork.
They kinda have a point.
During the Spanish flu epidemic, I really cut back on eating Spanish people.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
In keeping with your suggestion, BlackBlade, how about "Spam Flu"?
Oh wait--then all the grocery stores would have to pull their cans of Spam off the shelves.
Jebus202--if we kill all the humans, then there would no longer be any urgency for developing a vaccine. It might save the pigs, though. And the birds.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Jebus202--if we kill all the humans, then there would no longer be any urgency for developing a vaccine. It might save the pigs, though. And the birds.
Damn it, I knew there was a flaw in the plan.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
See, the difference between pandemic flu and regular flu seasons is that in regular years, only a small fraction of people even get sick, and a small fraction of those die. In pandemics, a much larger fraction of people get sick all at once (within a 2 or 3 week period) and so they cause outages of normal services of societies, like filling grocery store shelves, keeping the power on, etc. So society is very stressed to be able to keep things going. With our new just-in-time global economy, nobody really has any idea how bad things might be. The last bad flu pandemic was in 1918 when the population was much less and global interdependence was much lower.
So there really is reason for concern. Not so you spend your days in dread, but enough that you realize that it just makes sense to be prepared.
Important ways to be prepared are
1) knowing what to expect so you don't panic and add to the problem. For instance, no groups or organizations, no matter how fearful and hated, did this on purpose. Pandemic flu is a recurring feature of human history.
2) Having supplies of food and water on hand so you can feed your family for several weeks even if grocery stores shelves are empty, power goes off, water goes off, natural gas goes off, other services are unavailable, etc. Hopefully those won't happen, but if half to 2/3 of your workforce didn't show up today, how much of your regular work could you manage to cover? Realize that's true for all sectors of our economy.
3) Knowing to check on relatives, neighbors, the elderly, and make sure everyone is cared for. Wear a good face mask if you're afraid of contagion, but don't let people die for want of simple things you can help them with like water or crackers.
4) So far they're holding up fine, but during a bad pandemic, health care facilities are swamped and can't possibly take care of everyone. Health care workers tend to get infected more than others, since they obviously get exposed to more. Emergency workers as well. So people may have to fend for themselves, or get kicked out of the hospital to make room for people much sicker. Another approach the hospitals might take is to turn away anyone else who comes after they fill up. They'll be working round the clock, stressed, fatigued, and traumatized by all the deaths, so don't try to argue with them. The hospital might be more dangerous a place than our homes for those few weeks while the wave passes.
5) Again, we can hope that the death rate is very low from this strain. Things very well might not get this bad. We've been preparing for an H5N1 pandemic for a while, and those preparations should help. But at the very least it looks like a lot of people will come down ill at once. So don't panic, know what to do, be prepared.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Edit: Sometime between when I originally posted a link to the picture and now, a highly-probable malware site (country origin .ru) was inserted into the RandomFunnyPhoto page. ie Clicking on the link to that particular RandomFunnyPhoto causes an automatic link redirect that does insert an executable file without asking for permission.....and without changing the appearance of the page.
I replaced that particular link with what I think is one to a safe webpage. But definitely do NOT use the RandomFunnyPhoto link if you've bookmarked it.
posted
Well, with 4 confirmed cases here in AZ already, things will likely get interesting. My husband (who works in the IT department for a large national financial company) has had to prepare computers today for employees to take home in case of a large outbreak. My biggest concern is for my mother, who is immune-compromised. Between it and some of her other physical issues, she doesn't normally come into contact with many people, but things like this make me a little nervous for her.
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Noeman, my personal (and unscientific but frank) belief is that we've already had swine flu travelling around the US and Canada for the last few months. I think it's likely that Mexico does have an underreporting problem, and (I think) odds are we'll mostly make it through just fine.
But. But. We just do not know. I don't think anyone has any reasonable way of predicting "how likely" at this point. It's a "may be, may not be, will have to wait and see, so best to be prepared" sort of thing.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I had wanted to suggest "zombie flu" in response to someone's post (Noemon, on second page) about zombies. Lo and behold: "zombism".
I wish we had spoiler text coverup on this site. It's a very clever page - mimics the BBC page and the links go back to the original BBC site.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Here's the best preparedness site I've seen. This is the preparation level at which we all should be. I don't know about you but I've got a way to go.
posted
I just listened to the WHO daily press briefing from today and the WHO scientist on one occasion referred to it as "this pandemic". I thought that was interesting that he didn't say this potential pandemic or this impending pandemic but just this pandemic. It seems they are fully expecting to go to stage 6 any time.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
They pretty much are expecting to up the level to 6 very soon (the last report I heard was that it would go up within 24 hours)... but it's based on global spread, not on virulence or severity of the illness.
By definition, this IS a pandemic. It just doesn't seem to be an especially virulent one (outside of Mexico City anyway, and we're not even sure about that, cuz we're not sure exactly how they're counting cases).
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
What another WHO scientist said is that the 1918 flu was very mild at first. That there is no way to tell from these first cases how mild or virulent it will end up being.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Another interesting thing I found, video of a symposium on pandemic flu from 2006. Of course they assumed an H5N1 pandemic, but the conclusions they draw would apply to any severe pandemic.
The whole thing is like 2 hours long or something but it's really fascinating, or is to me.
Here we have this tremendous problem for society, and it has the potential to cause many deaths, and much trauma to those who survive, it can deal death-blows to any systems upon which we depend to survive in our society, if they are too delicate or too vulnerable. The big take-home lesson of all this is ...
we are on our own
we're going to have to learn self-reliance to get through this. All our support systems, the government, the hospitals, the ambulance drivers and EMTs, the grocery stores, the utilities, the gas stations, all of those things could go away, and we would be left to fend for ourselves, as the victims of Hurricane Katrina had to fend for themselves, but not just for a week but possibly for up to 12 weeks.
The thing we need more than anything else is people who are resilient, prepared, determined, and able to take care of themselves. Those types of people will be the leaders who can get their communities through a severe pandemic, whenever it comes. We need a lot of people like that. I hope all hatrackers will be among them.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Some health authorities I have heard on the media say that we are not into the regular flu season yet, which is one of the unusual things about this current outbreak. But once we do enter the regular flu season, many will think that any case of flu is H1N1 (Swine, Mexico, Babe). So as far as public hysteria is concerned, we are not out of the woods yet.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I just had another possible name for the current flu occur to me. We could call it "Mayo Flu." Which could give a whole new meaning to the Cinco de Mayo holiday. The Mayo Clinic probably would not mind the extra publicity. Sales of mayonnaise might be depressed for a while, though.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Hmmm--I just did a little research on my favorite "Sinko de Mayo" joke. I was surprised to find it made its way to Snopes. Here is the link: http://www.snopes.com/humor/jokes/sinkomayo.asp
I am sure I was not the first to tell it, but I know I was telling this joke prior to 1997.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/ Here's a good and fairly brief overview of the 1918 flu. This is what a bad pandemic is like during a time when the population is much smaller, the world is much less interdependent, and our local economies were not run on just-in-time principles. So here's a bad one. Hopefully this one will be a mild one.
The thing is, nobody knows. There's not anyone on earth who can tell you at this point if this will be mild or bad. If it's bad, it can be bad in whole new ways that we've never before experienced, because of the way society has changed in the meantime to a form that happens to be much more vulnerable to flu-like infectious diseases.
Again, I'm not trying to scare people for no reason. I'm trying to motivate people to prepare, I'm trying to educate them about how things will be, and I'm trying to encourage them to be strong, self-reliant, and capable in emergencies and disasters.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
To put this new pandemic into perspective a little, I found a pubmed article (DOI citation doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2007.03.46) that discusses the epidemiology of the 'seasonal flu' which is a mix of several subtypes that commonly infect humans. In the 1990's the US had an annual average of 36,000 deaths from influenza and 200,000 hospitalizations. The study doesn't give a number of total cases, but it must be well in excess of 200,000 people. Of course the deaths (over 60%) were mainly in people over 65 with deaths in children between 5-17 being so rare that they didn't have enough data to extrapolate the frequency.
So the newest strain of A H1N1 is still relatively small in terms of epidemiological impact. However, it is the nearing the end of the flu season and the virus may smolder over the summer only infecting a small number of people only to resurge in the fall and become a more severe problem. The fear of this was the reason for a wide spread flu vaccine program in the 1970's. The result was that the virus never spread like feared, and the morbidity and mortality as a direct result of vaccination was greater than that of the actual disease. Of course I wonder if the reason it never took off in the fall was because there was such a great vaccination program, but politicians and epidemiologists of the day were lambasted for overreacting.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Okay, the people whose main concern about SwineFlu was whether they'd close the theaters before StarTrek's opening weekend, raise your hands. It would be ironic if this minor outbreak turns into a pandemic because of this coming weekend's packed theaters.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Those pesky viruses, wishing to, "Boldly go where no man has gone before--your lungs."
Or maybe, "To Boldly go into a man where no Swine derived virus has gone before."
The new name, "The Romulan Flu--insuring only it lives long and prospers".
I can see the post-mortem now. "The CDC reports that the virus was spread and strengthened due mostly to it being shared during the "Star Trek" weekend. It could have been stopped if the authorities had taken faster action, but since the Trekkies were the first to go, no one really noticed. Even those who saw a sick Trekkie--pale, glazed eyes, feverish, could not tell them from normal Trekkies."
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
According to the Encyclopedia Galactica, Mauves are an alien species with three sexes that are entered into sequentially by one individual, first as the "sire" stage, then as the "wife" stage, then as the "incubator" stage. Sadly, if something goes haywire and a Mauve spends too long in the wife stage, eventually he/she/it bursts into flame and turns to ash. Hence the admonitory slogan known to all the Mauves--"Wive long and phosphor!"
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
The numbers continue to increase in a way that looks exponential, but will obviously turn into an S-shaped curve (sorry, I forgot the cool mathematical word for that) eventually. On this site, ignore the map, which isn't helpful at the moment, but notice the graph below it of cases day by day. It's not looking so good. At least for now the mortality rate is low. I guess that's the bright side. And if it comes back in more virulent form in the fall, all the people who get the milder form now will be immune, most likely. So it will be interesting to see what happens.
posted
The WHO declared pandemic phase 6 today. Don't quit taking precautions.
quote: The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic.
We are in the earliest days of the pandemic. The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch.
No previous pandemic has been detected so early or watched so closely, in real-time, right at the very beginning. The world can now reap the benefits of investments, over the last five years, in pandemic preparedness.
...
A characteristic feature of pandemics is their rapid spread to all parts of the world. In the previous century, this spread has typically taken around 6 to 9 months, even during times when most international travel was by ship or rail.
Countries should prepare to see cases, or the further spread of cases, in the near future. Countries where outbreaks appear to have peaked should prepare for a second wave of infection.
...
We are all in this together, and we will all get through this, together.
Unfortunately, not all, but hopefully most.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
That is, except the precautions that become useless in a pandemic. For instance, air travel to any particular location is nothing to avoid; the flu will be everywhere but the most remote locations.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I think the best precaution (besides getting enough sleep so that your immune system does not get run down) is to take lots of garlic tablets. The Allycin in garlic is said to have both antibacterial and antiviral properties. Odor-free tablets are commonly available. You will have to experiment to see what dosage works best for you. I take eight capsules per day, of the kind sold by CVS Pharmacy. With that I also take 2.5 grams of vitamin C daily (in the form of ascorbic acid), and I chew up several Rolaids tablets with them, to avoid too much acidity in my stomache. I prefer Rolaids because it also has a balanced amount of magnesium with the calcium. I have had no colds or flu in years.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
1. Allicin in garlic has no antiviral properties. Garlic won't have had anything to do with you avoiding colds or flu.
2. Are you saying that you take several rolaids tablets, preemptively, daily? This is a quick ticket to having kidney stones and it is a poor way to handle gerd.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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yeah Cairo is one of those nations whose governmental systems and degrees of corruption give a real sense of perspective to our own. Them and Italy.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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