Swine Flu: Should We Worry?

They have postponed many high school sports activities here in Texas (baseball) and canceled the regional track and field championships. A lot of super fast athletes are gonna be upset methinks.

 

it's thursday
2 cases of swine flu CONFIRMED in colorado

someone help!!!

 

After the SARS thing, I think this is just hype. Like the killer bees from Africa that were supposed to invade the west years ago or something like that.

 

there is some kind of "fungus" or disease that is killing off a lot of the world's bees...I think...I heard that somewhere

 

You never know really. Luckily nowadays were really well equipped for something like this. Flu is pretty unpredictable though. It will probably be worse for people with auto-immune disorders, the very young and the elderly.

Hopefully it is just like the avian flu outbreak and fades away in the next few weeks.

I can just imagine some of the hysteria that doctors are having to deal with.

 

links:

http://www.ksro.com/Programs/KSROAMNews/Interviews/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10030503

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-29-swine-flu_N.htm

 

All of the alarmist headlines are bullshit, people are freaking out over nothing. The swine flu will not bring more casualties than what is typical for the regular flu.

Chill out and enjoy life.

 

They keep comparing it to the Spanish flu..... the Spanish flu of 1918. I think we're a bit better prepared.
That girl that caught it in England isn't even in hospital, she's being treated at home. Sort of like normal flu, then.

I agree with Sarah though, the elderly and the very young are the most vulnerable. In Mexico it was mostly the elderly and babies that died, right?

 

That is sooo true!! :smt038

 

Not a pandemic. A "pandemic" would have taken an exponential proportion of 107 lives

 

Yes we all should be worried about the swine flu, very worried but not this strain. The strain we should be concerned with may manifest itself this coming fall and winter. People are unaware that this swine flu has lineage to the 1918 pandemic that wipe out millions. It was called the Spanish flu because if I can recall it broke out heavily there initially.

This rendition is following the exact same path as that one, the H1N1 broke out mid spring and flamed out after a few months however it return extremely powerful in the fall killing people who were completely healthy the day before. It appears 2009 Swine flu is leveling off just like 1918.

I personally think folks are not fully appreciating what I think is fair coverage of this and not overblown at all. Consider if the media took a lazy coverage approach to this and this strain was indeed a virulent one wiping out thousands in humanity, a number of you would be calling for folks to get fired. What you should be asking yourself is have you learned something with the coverage, are you prepared, have you altered your behavior, I have and I am grateful...

If you have not here's a excerpt from CNN

(CNN) -- If there's a blessing in the current swine flu epidemic, it's how benign the illness seems to be outside the central disease cluster in Mexico. But history offers a dark warning to anyone ready to write off the 2009 H1N1 virus.


In each of the four major pandemics since 1889, a spring wave of relatively mild illness was followed by a second wave, a few months later, of a much more virulent disease. This was true in 1889, 1957, 1968 and in the catastrophic flu outbreak of 1918, which sickened an estimated third of the world's population and killed, conservatively, 50 million people.


Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist at George Washington University, who has studied the course of prior pandemics in both the United States and her native Denmark, says, "The good news from past pandemics, in several experiences, is that the majority of deaths have happened not in the first wave, but later." Based on this, Simonsen suggests there may be time to develop an effective vaccine before a second, more virulent strain, begins to circulate.


As swine flu -- also known as the 2009 version of the H1N1 flu strain -- spreads, Simonsen and other health experts are diving into the history books for clues about how the outbreak might unfold -- and, more importantly, how it might be contained. In fact, the official Pandemic Influenza Operation Plan, or O-Plan, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based in large part on a history lesson -- research organized by pediatrician and medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan.

The Full Article
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/30/swine.flu.1918.lessons/index.html

 

I heard Mobile phone masts interfere with there navigation and are causing allsorts of problems.

Last year I saw a handful of bees in my garden, but this year thankfully i've already seen more and we are not into summer yet.

 

It Looks Like We Should! be worried.

Bid to prevent flu concert panicBid to prevent flu concert panic

pa.press.net
The Scottish Government has defended its decision not to tell hundreds of concertgoers that Britain's first swine flu victim was in the audience days before being diagnosed.
Newlywed Iain Askham, 27, went to see the rock band Doves at an Edinburgh venue on April 23 after returning from his honeymoon in Cancun, Mexico.
Mr Askham was among the crowd at the 1,500-capacity HMV Picture House in Lothian Road two days after flying home, but told The People newspaper he had been advised not to reveal he had been at the concert.
He said: "I told them everything when I was in hospital. They suggested it was best not to mention it to anyone else so as not to cause any panic."
Asked whether he thought it was the right decision to make, he added: "That's not something I want to comment on. It's been a worrying time. I hope things get back to normal soon."
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: "In line with Health Protection Scotland guidance, close contacts are followed up whenever any probable or confirmed cases are identified, to offer advice and where appropriate antivirals.
"We are aware that Mr Askham did attend a concert on April 23 - before he was being treated - but this would not be classed as close contact. The risk of spread to others who were around him is low, and it is important to stress that the risk to public health in Scotland remains low."
There are now three confirmed cases of swine flu in Scotland, Mr Askham and his new wife Dawn, 24, in Polmont, and friend Graeme Pacitti, 24, who lives in nearby Falkirk. There are 15 cases across the UK overall.
A new probable case is being investigated in the Ayrshire area of the country after a man flew back home from Texas in the US via Birmingham last week.
There are also 19 possible cases in Scotland, people showing symptoms and undergoing tests. This is down from 29 previously, but includes nine new cases.

 

Where is this child's parent???????????????????????

http://hater site.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/kissing-a-pig.jpg?w=425&h=319

 

standing in the background w/ the strap on sandals.(in the bottom right corner)

and yes, considering what's happening right now all across that globe, that picture is disturbing. :-?

 

After reading this I would never get vaccinated.


http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_12281978

When Scott Heath stepped onto a parked public bus in 1976 for a free swine-flu shot, he considered himself "civic- minded": doing his part to help the country avoid a pandemic.

It was a decision he believes nearly killed him. Within days, the Denver man was mute and paralyzed, an extreme reaction to a vaccine that critics said was rushed by the federal government to calm fears of a massive flu outbreak.

"I recall it ruined my Thanksgiving weekend," he said. "I thought I'd be better by Monday, but I wasn't."

What happened to Heath helps explain why federal and state officials have been more cautious and deliberate during the current H1N1 scare than their predecessors were in 1976.

President Gerald Ford's $135 million

Swine Flu Resources
Latest News: Read the latest Centers for Disease Control swine flu update.
Background: View an interactive timeline of events in the outbreak.
View a slideshow of images related to outbreaks around the world.
Things You Can Do: "Preventing the Flu: Good Health Habits Can Help Stop Germs".
Plan and Prepare: PandemicFlu.gov's website.
International Information: The latest from the World Health Organization.
inoculation program resulted in the vaccinations of 45 million Americans in the fall of 1976 before it was abandoned, linked — fairly or not — to about 500 cases of neurological disorder and 25 deaths. Hundreds of people, including Heath, sued the federal government.
Heath, a Harvard-educated graphic designer who was 25 when he was vaccinated in downtown Denver, was awarded $1.2 million in an out-of- court settlement.

He now works in the research department for Bonfils Blood Center in Denver, and he recalled last week how that swine-flu vaccination changed his life.

His first symptoms were aches, fever and delirium. He was vomiting and seizing when his roommates rushed him to Mercy Hospital.

When he regained consciousness weeks later, President-elect Jimmy Carter's inauguration was on television. Heath, who had voted for Carter a couple of weeks before getting his vaccination, was still unable to speak or walk.

Slowly, he began to regain his speech. But even now, at 58 years old, he talks slowly, deliberately and in a monotone. He must force himself to articulate each word to be understood.

It took 10 years before Heath regained his balance enough to walk again. Today, he sometimes uses a cane, and his gait is wide and jerky.

He never returned to his job as a graphic designer — he no longer had the fine motor skills to use an Xacto knife or perform the cutting and pasting skills that the job required. Instead, he went to the University of Colorado Denver to earn an English degree and, later, an education degree.

Heath met his wife, Linda Smoke, at an aikido dojo. She was a lawyer dragged to a meditation course by a "hippie friend." Heath was there because he thought practicing martial arts would help him ditch the cuff canes he was using to walk.

They married in 1990 and have an 18-year-old daughter, Sarah.

Under an annuity created by the settlement, Heath has received a few hundred thousand dollars, enough to buy a place to live and pay for physical therapy, he said. Doctors have told him he might have had an underlying genetic condition that surfaced after the flu shot.

More than 30 years later, Heath isn't bitter. He says he never was, perhaps because the neurological damage "generally flattened" his emotions.

"By the time I got back the ability to be angry or resentful, it was so far in the past, it was in the abstract to me," he said. "I'm starting to think that the injury, the neurological effects, may also include what they call affect — or my emotional reactions."

Looking back, he believes the government rushed the vaccine to people, who were wary of another pandemic like the bird-flu strain that killed more than 548,000 Americans in 1918 and 1919. The so-called Spanish flu killed about 6,000 Coloradans, according to Denver Post archives.

Heath recalls Ford taking his swine- flu vaccine, calling for "every man, woman and child" to get vaccinated.

"It was a civic-minded thing as much as anything else," he said. "I had heard that this was a free program, and I knew what they were trying to achieve."

Today, many scientists believe links between the 1976 vaccine and neurological disorders were exaggerated, at best. Even if there were adverse reactions, vaccines today have fewer proteins and additives with the potential to cause problems.

Still, some experts warn that anytime there is mass inoculation, there is the possibility for real — or perceived — adverse effects.

Health authorities said last week that the nation, if necessary, could have a vaccine to combat the H1N1 virus within six months, in time for next year's flu season when the virus could return in a more virulent form.

Americans could get two shots next fall — one to fight off the seasonal flu and another for H1N1, said Dr. Michelle Barron, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine.

What went wrong, if anything, with the 1976 vaccine has never been definitively answered. One theory is that there was too much egg protein in the shot, said Arthur Allen, author of "Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver."

"I don't think anybody really understands what happened in 1976," Allen said. "Whenever you have mass vaccination campaigns, you tend to have more adverse events. It's more visible."

Many of those severely sickened after getting the vaccine had Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder. But studies since then have shown the incidence of the syndrome was no higher among people who had the swine-flu vaccine.

Heath's condition — he developed encephalitis — was more extreme.

The 1976 inoculation campaign proved unnecessary, said Dr. Edward Janoff, director of the Mucosal and Vaccine Research Program at UC Denver. But he called the notion that the vaccine was dangerous a "persisting urban legend."

Among the questions before world health authorities now is whether H1N1 is destructive enough to warrant mass inoculation, said Janoff, who added that only a tiny portion of people have adverse reactions to vaccines.

"No one will be forced to take a vaccine," he said.

"There is no line 'em up, shoot 'em up. Everyone will be informed of the potential benefits and risks."

Researcher Barry Osborne contributed to this report. Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com

 

People 'round here are wearing masks 'n shit. Which, I guess, isn't such a bad idea considering there are a lot of folks in my area that go back and forth to Mexico. My thing is, the new "wash your hands!" posters up at work are kinda grossing me out. Like grown adults should have to be reminded to wash their hands after they use the restroom....EW.

 

Be careful out there!

I have yet to see anyone with a mask on but if I start seein that I might get a little concerned/ :|

 

It was at the local 7-11, no less. Agricultural town in socal, you're going to have some immigrant farm workers...but haven't heard of anyone in my town coming down with it yet.

 

I've decided that I'm going to get vaccinated. Better safe than sorry. I'm not taking any chance while swine flu got in my body and become sick. I don't want to spread towards my family and get sick from me.