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From: Warp
Subject: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 15 Nov 2009 14:57:07
Message: <4b005d13@news.povray.org>
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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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From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 15 Nov 2009 15:25:23
Message: <4b0063b3@news.povray.org>
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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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From: Neeum Zawan
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 15 Nov 2009 15:33:01
Message: <4b00657d$1@news.povray.org>
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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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From: somebody
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 15 Nov 2009 18:00:53
Message: <4b008825$1@news.povray.org>
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"Warp" <war### [at] tag povray org> 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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From: Neeum Zawan
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 15 Nov 2009 18:26:44
Message: <4b008e34$1@news.povray.org>
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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.
--
Why is the person who invests all your money called a broker?
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From: Sabrina Kilian
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 15 Nov 2009 21:05:27
Message: <4b00b367@news.povray.org>
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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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From: scott
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 16 Nov 2009 05:05:54
Message: <4b012402$1@news.povray.org>
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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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From: somebody
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 17 Nov 2009 20:49:35
Message: <4b0352af$1@news.povray.org>
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"scott" <sco### [at] scott com> 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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From: somebody
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 17 Nov 2009 20:51:20
Message: <4b035318@news.povray.org>
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"Neeum Zawan" <m.n### [at] ieee org> 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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From: Neeum Zawan
Subject: Re: Exactly what is it with swine flu that makes it so special?
Date: 18 Nov 2009 01:04:38
Message: <4b038e76$1@news.povray.org>
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On 11/17/09 19:51, somebody wrote:
> "Neeum Zawan"<m.n### [at] ieee org> 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
--
I didn't know my husband drank until one day he came home sober.
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