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Piggy Influenza (Summary in OP)
Posts
You're absolutely right, and my mother phoned me to do the exact same thing
I just wouldn't want to catch a very infectious flu on my vacation for the year, that would be so awful.
These people just had no fucking clue, and I was kinda shocked.
They would have gone into the country completely unawares if we hadn't talked.
There was also a statement by the head director of Canada's infectious disease prevention and control organization that if swine flu hit Ontario it likely wouldn't be any worse than SARS was.
Relax, it's more media scare. I'm a doctor, I know these things.
I really doubt it's as bad as advertised though, because nothing ever is.
Yes.
In Mexico.
Not exactly a shining example of health care in the best instances.
But oh well, I do like myself a media generated epidemic.
True, but the way its killing is a hallmark of a pandemic flu. It you could chock it up to simply poor health care then you'd get the regular looking valley-shaped graph. Lost of deaths in the elderly, lots in young children, few in the middle. A poor health care system would mean that deaths in the young and healthy would correspond with even higher deaths in the elderly and the very young. So far as I know, this is not what's being seen.
Unless people start dying in the US it does however seem likely the virus itself isn't that dangerous to people outside of Mexico. Early days yet though. Once a few hundred people have caught the virus outside Mexico we'll have a better idea of just how dangerous it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_H1N1_influenza_outbreak
This includes helpful charts and maps showing possible and confirmed cases worldwide, updated every few minutes.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/26/2552700.htm
However, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world/americas/25mexico.html?_r=1
Less likely this, more likely that it loses some potency as its transmitted. A lot of animal-origin viruses are most lethal when they first hop over, then slowly losing it after that.
Here is a list of subtypes of avian influenza. You'll notice there are a lot of them. "Bird Flu" is an influenza virus incubated and evolved in birds. We get a new one (or a repeat of an old one when we're lucky) about once a year. If you're talking about the outbreak of the H5N1 virus that occurred in 2005 and turned out to be a total non-issue because it wasn't effectively transmissible between humans, call it H5N1.
"Swine Flu" is an equally retarded term for the H1N1 outbreak.
I am not a doctor, but I am smarter than the audience that the writers at CNN are writing for.
edit: and you are too, so don't fucking call it "bird flu"
STEAM ID
"Avian influenza" is the name the government uses for it, and in fact you still can't import bird products from any country that has it. So...
edit: damn, that was at endo
also, "Swing Flu" sounds like a lot more fun.
STEAM ID
If you really want to have a unique term for it, call it the Summer 2009 flu or something. Swine flu and H1N1 are both generic terms already commonly-used; in fact, they are pretty much the same thing, except that the HXNY designation (aside from describing antibody response) insinuates that a such-named strain is capable of infecting humans. 'H1N1' is not unique; it just means 'Influenzavirus A with the H1,N1 antibody response.'
When will Obama get on this and declare a War on Microorganisms?
Pandemic 2009!
Or is it not spreading quickly enough for that to be an issue?
edit WHAT I WISH: That they'd do antibody testing for the rest of the students at the New York school, not just those ill ones. Testing transmission rates and virulence in a fairly closed system (schools have been used for this, historically) is the only way to even get a ballpark figure on some of this stuff.
Wait, someone has it in New York?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_H1N1_influenza_outbreak
This includes helpful charts and maps showing possible and confirmed cases worldwide, updated every few minutes.
Yeah.
I'm beginning to think wearing a facemask would be a great idea about now. Going to start today if my roommate brings some home or tomorrow when I get to work. If you go, I'd wear one...
Not a thing. Two kids (possibly three) from my school got sick between April 10th and 14th, and were sent back to school when doctors decided they weren't contagious anymore. They had been back in school for awhile, and now that they're perfectly healthy we have to stay away from them. So no school for me for a week (right before AP tests! yay!).
The freakout about this thing is so ridiculous that all people in Guadalupe county have been encouraged by the CDC not to attend any of the final Fiesta events this weekend. Or leave our homes, for that matter - which is silly, because what they've effectively done is given high school students a second Spring Break.
Fun fact: My girlfriend sits right next to one of the guys in a class. She is not sick at all, nor am I.
Yes, some students. Its been all over the news since yesterday.
Are you serious?
Man, this fucking sucks.
On the one hand: First trip to USA ever.
On the other hand: First trip to the US with a high chance of getting pig flu.
No, I don't think you are any smarter. I'll keep calling it swine flu because: that's what everyone else is calling it and H1N1 doesn't actually narrow it down, you're just using letters and numbers to describe the same thing.
Canada is confirmed:
Interesting how many of the non-Mexican cases have been students.
You were going to NY right? There seems to be 20+ confirmed cases in the entire U.S. so far, there are what like 11 million people in NY alone? The risk is very low, at least now.
If there are like 1,000 confirmed cases in New York next week I'd probably wear a face mask. If there are less then I'd most definitely not worry at all. Considering the population and the amount of cases, if I have those figures right, tells me that the risk of catching it seems low.
Then again, I guess they don't want to start a panic.
Because they had gone to Mexico recently, spring break and whatnot. That's at least what my radio told me, not very far fetched.
I think you can just listen to the CDC for this one. It is just flu, and unless people start dropping like flies in the US it seems like its going to turn out to be not much different from regular seasonal flu.
That and Mexico is the #1 destination for Canadians (don't ask me why) traveling abroad. We were bound to get it sooner or later.
I don't understand that attitude. This is here now. Just because there are only a few confirmed cases, doesn't mean there aren't more out there that just think they have the regular flu and don't care to check it out. Not saying there are, but why not just start it now and delay any further chance of it spreading?
I'm not really sure what's to be worried about at this point--the cases outside of Mexico have all been mild. So unless it has yet to show us its true form it seems like it won't make a significant impact on any of our lives.