Swine Flu: Blown out of proportion or Global Pandemic? Thread

The symptoms I heard on the news sound just like the symptoms for the common cold.  To the best of my knowledge, swine flu has killed only one person in america and that was a baby.  Looks like paranoia to me but I doubt all the healthy kids who got a break from school had a problem with that.

On another note, while I was at work the other day I met a guy with asthma.  He said that every time his asthma acted up people would think he had swine flu and shrink away from him.

Swine flu:
The good:
Not hugely worse than normal flu, most people will just suffer with a fever and general illness lasting from a few days to a few weeks, not in the least bit dangerous enough for any "end of the world" scenarios.

The Bad:
Normal flu is still a pretty ugly illness, with a death rate between 0.1 and 0.35%, and kills about 12,000 people a year in the US, mostly from pneumonia, swine flu looks slightly worse, and is definitely more virulent, causing large numbers of infections and a measurable number of deaths in a period that would otherwise be flu free. Large numbers of people with the illness also has the potential to disrupt schools, other health services and a number of other facilities.

The ugly:
Since  immunity in the general population is low, its all very well saying 99.7% of people who get it don't die from it, but that still leaves the 0.3% that do, and with it spreading so quickly 0.3% of very large numbers of people is still a large number - WHO reckons 30% of the population will be infected by it before it turns into a normal seasonal illness, thats some 2 billion people, 0.3% of 2 billion is not exactly insignificant. What's worse, is normal influenza has a mortality rate of some 30% in the elderly population, who just don't have the immune system to cope with prolonged fever, it remains to be seen how this will translate with this strain of h1n1.
This could be really messy over the winter, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Yes. Except this is a real pandemic. As a pandemic is defined by WHO.

I dont think it is a big problem. Sure it is something to be cautious of but it really isnt that much of a big deal. The standard seasonal flu is very similar, but you dont see a huge stir-up due to that. I think alot of the swine flu stuff is hype. It is not as dangerous as something like the Spanish flu as mentioned above or even worse the Black death in 1300's

They ahve already issued vacines which prevent it. It is obvious not to hang around someone who is coughing and spluttering etc. We know that.

Nice post there

Edited by: robtai

nah, the swine flu epidemic is just an overhyped subject brought to you by the media ...

Or the less the government tells you... :\

--

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."

The media makes money by showing interesting stories ... so they over hype everything ...

I'd say a handful of news sources telling the same "story" are about as powerful as a entire branch of the government ... simply because they can manipulate minds much easier than the government can ...

(lol ... that's fun)