Warp wrote:
>   Regular seasonal flu kills about 250000 - 500000 people every year
> (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/2003/fs211/en/). Swine flu has
> killed so far less than 7000 people.
> 
>   Exactly what is it that makes the swine flu so special as to cause a
> worldwide panic?
> 
>   (If I have understood correctly, the difference between the swine flu,
> and the H1N1 strands in general, compared to other more common influenzas
> is that it can kill healthy young people more easily. But look at the
> numbers. Is a healthy young person worth 100 sick and old peeople?)
> 

http://www.bunniestudios.com.nyud.net/blog/?p=353 This page sums it up
much better than I can. The fact that changing a single base pair would
make the virus much more deadly, and the speed that flu viruses mutate,
means that when this becomes wide spread, the chance for a very bad
situation becomes much more possible. On top of that, there was some
speculation that it could cause a cytokine storm in the immune system of
the infected. This is what is suspected to have caused the strange
fatality pattern of the 1918 flu, where it was mostly the young and
healthy that had the worst of the flu.

While it has killed less than 7000 people, it did that at the time of
year that the flu usually doesn't even get passed around much.

The death toll, at least in the USA, is because someone decided that
testing all flu victims was a waste of money. So, if someone dies of
"the flu" it is not getting added into any count of how many people are
dying from H1N1.

As for panic, it does nothing. If the virus becomes a pandemic, there
isn't much to be done. No closet full of canned food and water is going
to make a difference. And if it doesn't, then all that preparation
wasn't needed. I would hope that the media panic might have caused more
people to get the vaccine, but I fear that having several months to
prepare has just given them more ammunition that the vaccine is just a
government plot to control minds, or has elemental mercury, or causes
the same auto-immune reactions that any other vaccine or illness has a
chance to cause. I haven't seen the numbers, but if I had to hazard a
guess I would suspect that the percent of people getting any flu vaccine
is lower this year than last or perhaps even than a long term average.

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