Its easy to not know about it. Just dont watch the news.
I watched CNN for 4 hours last week in a waiting room. Topics covered?
How evil was obama for shaking Chavez's hand
A minor snip about a crazy guy on a plane
DID MISS CALIFORNIA LOSE MS USA BECAUSE SHES A HOMOPHOBE?
And one other stupid thing that I cant remember.
Honestly, whenever national news mentions the flu, I shut down.
SARS?
Avian Bird Flu?
Monkey Pox?
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.
The fact that it's infecting many people in Mexico in a short amount of time and killing many of them and why it's not doing that in the US isn't really curious when you consider that, well, it's Mexico. You have a lot of people packed in together in some pretty terrible living conditions with poor medical care.
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.
Been reading up on this and this swine flu is killing those in their 20s to their 40s, not just the elderly and young. There should be major concern here.
Been reading up on this and this swine flu is killing those in their 20s to their 40s, not just the elderly and young. There should be major concern here.
Yes.
In Mexico.
Not exactly a shining example of health care in the best instances.
I know I'm going to be that guy, you know the one from every epidemic movie that they later mock when 98% of the world is dead or zombies...but. 36,000 people die from normal flue every year (estimate just for the US), when manbearpig flu reaches even 10% of that number, I probably still won't be concerned.
But oh well, I do like myself a media generated epidemic.
Been reading up on this and this swine flu is killing those in their 20s to their 40s, not just the elderly and young. There should be major concern here.
Yes.
In Mexico.
Not exactly a shining example of health care in the best instances.
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.
“We’re dealing with a new flu virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic that so far is controllable,” Mexico’s health minister, José Ángel Córdova, told reporters after huddling with President Felipe Calderón and other top officials on Thursday night to come up with an action plan. He said the virus had mutated from pigs and had at some point been transmitted to humans.
The fact that it's infecting many people in Mexico in a short amount of time and killing many of them and why it's not doing that in the US isn't really curious when you consider that, well, it's Mexico. You have a lot of people packed in together in some pretty terrible living conditions with poor medical care.
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.
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.
Phoenix-D on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
It would be great if we could not be morons about calling the H5N1 virus "bird flu" like all the fuckers on the news did.
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"
It's got to have a name so you can picture where it came from, so they can hate that place or thing.
Endomatic on
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
edited April 2009
I'm not going to get on a stupid high horse and type H1N1 every time. Its current popular name is 'Swine Flu', and I don't feel posh enough to correct everybody who refers H1N1 as 'Swing Flu'.
It would be great if we could not be morons about calling the H5N1 virus "bird flu" like all the fuckers on the news did.
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"
"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...
Phoenix-D on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Well then shouldn't they have called it "Slanty-Eyed Flu?"
'Swine flu' is just as pointless as a term as H1N1, since neither of them are actually descriptive enough for anyone who needs to talk about flu-related topics more than once every goddamn year. One of the vaccines chosen yearly is of the H1N1 strain. H1N1 strains infects millions every year. Calling this "the H1N1 outbreak" makes you sound just as silly as anyone else (OK, probably more silly, since you're calling them out :P).
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.'
Delicious Toad! on
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
Contrarily, I'm thinking that it's spreading like wildfire but the virulence is so low that very few people are developing symptoms. At least, here in the United States -- it's possible that a mutation could sorta undo that, but honestly unless you are out in the middle of nowhere and intend on staying there for a month or so you are probably going to get a once-over from this strain. Maybe you have the antibodies already, maybe you just pick them up without developing symptoms, but trying to avoid it isn't realistic unless we both had more information and some pandemic protocols were in place.
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.
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.
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?
Yeah.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said eight students at St. Francis Prepatory School in Queens have tested positive for swine flu. More than 100 students at the school were absent with flu-like symptoms last week, he said.
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...
Legacy on
Can we get the chemicals in. 'Cause anything's better than this.
They quarantined the family of one teen after he got this. He's one of the eight that has recovered.
'sup from San Antonio. Specifically, the school that the outbreak came from.
This kid is not officially quarantined, as far as I know. Both of the guys that had it, they had it two weeks ago and had been back in school, and now apparently the family from the article just isn't letting anyone in their house (so they are basically quarantined, but by choice).
No school for a week! Thanks, CDC!
Wait, from San Antonio myself, what is going on in the area?
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.
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?
Yes, some students. Its been all over the news since yesterday.
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...
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.
Cristo on
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LegacyStuck Somewhere In CyberspaceThe Grid(Seattle)Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2009
It's not really a high chance quite yet, but it's starting to look like it could happen, so why not just take precautions now?
Legacy on
Can we get the chemicals in. 'Cause anything's better than this.
It would be great if we could not be morons about calling the H5N1 virus "bird flu" like all the fuckers on the news did.
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"
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.
TORONTO (AP) — Nova Scotia's chief public health officer says the east coast Canadian province has four confirmed cases of swine flu.
Chief Public Health officer Dr. Robert Strang says Sunday four students from King's-Edgehill School in Nova Scotia ranging in age from 12 to 17 or 18 are recovering. All of them had what he describes as "very mild" cases of the flu.
Interesting how many of the non-Mexican cases have been students.
[Tycho?] on
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
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...
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.
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.
Honk on
PSN: Honkalot
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LegacyStuck Somewhere In CyberspaceThe Grid(Seattle)Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2009
No, but people don't seem to be taking it seriously yet and I think the name 'swine' flu isn't helping. I posted the link on my facebook about it and one of my friends replied that it reminded him of mad cow and thought that the media was trying to make pigs look bad. They need to emphasize the flu part of it and not the Swine part.
Then again, I guess they don't want to start a panic.
Legacy on
Can we get the chemicals in. 'Cause anything's better than this.
0
HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
TORONTO (AP) — Nova Scotia's chief public health officer says the east coast Canadian province has four confirmed cases of swine flu.
Chief Public Health officer Dr. Robert Strang says Sunday four students from King's-Edgehill School in Nova Scotia ranging in age from 12 to 17 or 18 are recovering. All of them had what he describes as "very mild" cases of the flu.
Interesting how many of the non-Mexican cases have been students.
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'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...
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.
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.
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.
[Tycho?] on
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
TORONTO (AP) — Nova Scotia's chief public health officer says the east coast Canadian province has four confirmed cases of swine flu.
Chief Public Health officer Dr. Robert Strang says Sunday four students from King's-Edgehill School in Nova Scotia ranging in age from 12 to 17 or 18 are recovering. All of them had what he describes as "very mild" cases of the flu.
Interesting how many of the non-Mexican cases have been students.
Because they had gone to Mexico recently, spring break and whatnot. That's at least what my radio told me, not very far fetched.
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'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...
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.
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.
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?
Legacy on
Can we get the chemicals in. 'Cause anything's better than this.
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.
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.
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"
"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.
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.
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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.