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?)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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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?)
> 

The fact that it *has* reached epidemic proportions at least once, and 
killed 10 times what normal flu has maybe? " An influenza virus called 
influenza type A subtype H1N1 is now known to have been the cause of the 
extreme mortality of this pandemic, which resulted in an estimated 25 
million deaths, though some researchers have projected that it caused as 

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/287805/influenza-pandemic-of-1918-19

The fact is that its notable in carrying much deadlier payloads, 
sometimes, due to it trading off to another species as part of its life 
cycle (Swine can be infected by both human and avian flu, so its at 
least "possible" you could get a dangerous normal flu, and have it 
"borrow" DNA, in a cell infected by both, from the avian flu that hit 
Asia recently. We may not be "which" one has the payload, but the cost 
of getting it wrong would be far worse than with the normal flu. The 
problem here seems to be that the current strain may be a dud. The 
problem with all the idiots whining about vaccinations, and people 
getting sick from having them, etc. is that..

Well, lets say this was an unexploded 5,000 lb bomb. Taking the vaccine 
is the equivalent of hiding all the hammers from the neighbor kids, and 
what ever else you can think of, so that the morons that don't get what 
"bomb" means won't go hammering at it, to see what happens, before 
experts show up to take care of the problem (or the virus passes back 
out of the population). If you are lucky, the mechanism in it is broken, 
not just stuck, and they can hammer on it for days without it going off. 
If you are not so lucky, the first idiot with a rock turns the 
neighborhood into a crater.

Which, given such a clear possibility, would you pick?

Then imagine that this is some city some place where people "collect" 
hollowed out, and non-functional bombs, most of them small, so when one 
turns out to not be, it only blows up the moron that collected it. An 
army truck rolls through with a 5,000lb bomb, which tumbles off the 
truck, without the driver noticing. What would the reaction to an entire 
town full of people like that be? Probably - "Ah, it can't be a live 
one, we got hundreds of the damn things as lawn decorations, so this one 
has got to be empty, or why wouldn't it have been tied down better?" The 
local, "Maybe you should let me look at it first.", expert tells 
everyone, "Lets just be safe and keep clear of it until we are sure." I 
am betting you would get the same reaction you get to the morons who 
think H1N1 isn't more dangerous than the normal flu. What they don't 
bloody get is that ***if they are wrong this time*** their insistence 
that its all unnecessary could be wrong on a scale that would send half 
the religion fanatics on the planet staking out barns all over the 
planet, in case it was the one Jesus reappeared in. I.e., plague level 
infection and death rates.

You are looking at it wrong. Its not, "Are a few healthy young people 
worth 100 sick people.", its, "Are 100 sick people worth 500,000,000 
dead people?", which is the possible outcome if one of these things gets 
a particularly nasty mix of genes, from mixing some seriously nasty 
avian flu, with, say, an already high death rate "human" flu, before it 
starts spreading.

Unfortunately, we can't know, until "after" people start dying, how bad 
any given flu will be, and so we hedge our bets, by trying to make sure 
as few people die, instead of just being miserable, as possible. If we 
do it right, we *never* know how bad it would have been without it. If 
we do it wrong, and guess *very* wrong, you better be locked in a 
basement for 5-6 months, with your own food supply, because you don't 
want to "catch" the result.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 11/15/09 13:57, 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.

	While I agree that the swine flu fears are probably overblown, I'll 
point out that you also need to look at mortality _rates_, and which is 
more contagious (I don't know).

	According to one page on Wikipedia, the mortality rate (assuming 
infection) for swine flu is at least 10 times higher (this calculated by 
taking the worst case mortality rate for the seasonal flu). The numbers 
may well be skewed for various reasons, though - I don't know how many 
of these had actually been tested for swine flu.

	Also, while the newspapers keep mentioning it (vaccines just arrived 
here, etc), I haven't come across a single person in my actual town who 
is at all concerned - beyond the general consensus that if you have a 
flu and the doctor says it's likely swine flu, then you better stay home 
for a week. No one in my town died so far - a few months ago over 600 
had been suspected of having caught swine flu. I'd expect the number to 
be over a 1000 now.

	Of course, people may be more worried in other parts of the country/world.

>    (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?)

	While I don't know about the vaccine, isn't medication for swine flu 
the same as for seasonal flu? So it's not as if the worry over swine flu 
is taking away from people who get the regular flu. Which is perhaps one 
reason why only a tiny percentage of people diagnosed with swine flu 
have actually been tested for it...
	
	OK - Just read that there were concerns that the drive to produce swine 
flu vaccines would affect seasonal flu vaccines - so it may hurt the 
seasonal folks. I'm too lazy to read the rest to see if the swine flu 
vaccine is also effective against the seasonal one...

-- 
Why is the person who invests all your money called a broker?

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4b005d13@news.povray.org...

>   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?

What's special is that it's new. Pharma, govts, medical researchers, doctors
cannot keep on using old names like the "avian" flu or SARS to milk people's
fears year after year.

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On 11/15/09 17:01, somebody wrote:
> What's special is that it's new. Pharma, govts, medical researchers, doctors

	It isn't. There have been outbreaks before.


-- 
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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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>  (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. 

I think you just answered your own question.

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message
news:4b012402$1@news.povray.org...

> >  (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.

> I think you just answered your own question.

IANAMD, but I don't think that's been true outside of Mexico, and even
there, I have my doubts that that's the whole story.

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"Neeum Zawan" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message
news:4b008e34$1@news.povray.org...
> On 11/15/09 17:01, somebody wrote:

> > What's special is that it's new. Pharma, govts, medical researchers,
doctors

> It isn't. There have been outbreaks before.

Correct. I should have said that it's new in the limelight.

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On 11/17/09 19:51, somebody wrote:
> "Neeum Zawan"<m.n### [at] ieeeorg>  wrote in message
> news:4b008e34$1@news.povray.org...
>> On 11/15/09 17:01, somebody wrote:
>
>>> What's special is that it's new. Pharma, govts, medical researchers,
> doctors
>
>> It isn't. There have been outbreaks before.
>
> Correct. I should have said that it's new in the limelight.

Not even that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swine_flu#1976_U.S._outbreak

-- 
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