I’m not freaking out half as much as my mom is. She made sure we all had hand sanitizer when we left the house, as well as surgical masks that none of us ended up wearing. No one at work had masks on, or at the dentist, except for the actual dentist and her assistants. Personally, I’m going to wait awhile before I pack up to go join Mother Abagail.
I’ve started a campaign to take Babe off the shelves as I think it encourages at-risk populations to fraternise with swine.
I’ve ordered some filtration masks. I can always use them to strip furniture or something if there isn’t a pandemic. 
My husband and I both interact with the public a great deal, so I’d rather have them available from the beginning rather than relying on the government to distribute them to us if there gets to be a widespread flu problem. And it’s not like they’ll go bad.
I’m going to pick up some extra hand sanitizer soon, too. Again, useful for other things, and it’s not like it’ll go bad.
Well, there were concerns over the others, but with swine flu, it’s crossed the border into the US with confirmed cases. It’s also already killed at least 81 people (in Mexico); the pertinent strain of bird flu, according to Wikipedia, took 7 years to kill 257 people. Plus the last SARS pandemic was several years ago. This is the emerging disease at the moment, there is no vaccine, and it has a known potential to be deadly - that’s why it’s become a concern lately.
Nothing.
Human civilization has progressed to where we have the hubris to think we can either prevent or stop a pandemic. I think there are some itching for the opportunity to prove it. Then there’s the media - nothing sells like disaster and if there isn’t a legitimate disaster they’ll make a sneeze in a town of 22 people look like one just to sell corn flakes. That’s their job.
Yes, this could turn into a major pandemic - but right now it isn’t one. I’m not changing my routine, which includes routine hand washing and avoiding sick people anyhow.
Precisely! :dubious:
For the record, working with pigs is NOT a risk factor, unless those pigs have recently been acquired from Mexico City. Your local pigs aren’t any more likely to have the virus than your local humans. It’s not like it’s going to spontaneously arise from swine around the world simultaneously. It popped up in one place and spreads from there.
Snuffle, grunt
But didn’t you do that anyways beforehand? 
NYC is by itself dirty, I found that out years ago. From then on, I wash my hands after coming from outside. Particularly if I’m visiting NYC.
It’s not a threat of bacteria or anything, but I just don’t like dust and dirt that makes the water run gray on my hands while I lounge around my house.
I thought I read somewhere that Tamiflu and some other anti-viral drug that began with an “R” were considered quite effective against the swine flu and that the wheels have been set in motion to mobilize existing stocks of these drugs as deemed necessary.
I also wonder when and if scientists will be able to answer the question as to why this virus is killing people in Mexico but the very same strain of it is only making people in America sick?
Well, for starters, there have only been twenty-some-odd cases in the US so far. That’s a small sample size. Additionally, I’d venture to guess that the overall standard of care in the US might be slightly higher than in Mexico. And on top of that, the US had Mexico as a warning - we were prepared and looking for it, while they were caught off guard.
I believe that’s GlaxoSmithKline’s Relenza.
I refuse to waste my time on the fear of the month.
It does appear to be effective as a preventative, unlike with most influenza (to the best of my knowledge), but it’s different from a vaccine. One concern is how long does it protect versus this new “swine” influenza strain (there are elements of avian and human influenzas in its genetics too) compared to what a vaccine would do.
The level of severity is a good question but there’s a lot we don’t know yet about the outbreak in Mexico - is it sanitation, difference in health care systems, types of people exposed? Plus a lot more people in Mexico have been exposed, while most US sufferers are people (previously) healthy enough to go vacation in Mexico, or those who interact with them. It may well change if the virus gets out to more people here.
I don’t know where in NYC you were, but I have never had water run gray off of my hands living in NYC. I’ve always washed my hands after going to the bathroom and before preparing food and stuff, but I’ve never gone Melvin Udallabout it. I firmly believe that some exposure to germs is good for my immune system and allows me to build up natural immunities. For now, washing my hands is the very first thing I do when I come in the house simply because this disease is fairly unknown and has killed a bunch of people in Mexico, but I’m not overly worried about it because according to the CDC website there have been 40 total confirmed cases in the US, 28 of which were in NYC. Not one of those 40 cases has been a fatality and only 1 of them required hospitalization of any kind. Because it is a minor concern I make a point of washing my hands before touching my face, eating, or after coming inside from largely populated surroundings, but I am not about to become one of those paper-mask wearing people who are afraid of dying from something that has yet to kill a single person in our country. I’m not saying washing your hands more often is wrong or that there aren’t cleaner places in this world, just that it doesn’t concern me as much as it does others apparently.
I’m not talking about being obsessive about it. It’s just that I grew up with “washing your hands when you get home from touching things and dirt outside” and “take your vitamins everyday” were/are routine, so I don’t get the thing about doing this NOW, instead of, you know, just healthy habits learned (like some poster said above about doing exercise, eating healthy). YMMV
I got the point of washing my hands once I get home in NYC because, after walking through museums, and using the handles all through the subways and stairs, I got to my sis’s home (that time in El Barrio, but we’d gone all through Manhattan that day) and my hands were really dirty. Lesson learned.
Zero deaths in America. tTat does not get much attention. We have old people and young people too. They seem to be weathering the flue quite well. It is way to early to get fired up.
My husband came home yesterday and asked me if I was set up to work from home in case this turned into a pandemic. :rolleyes: Because of his job responsibilities at a pubic utility and his degree in Environmental Science, he tends to get a little worked up over this kind of stuff. I just smiled and said, no, I would take my chances at the office and if it came to that, I would just take some time off. But the best part was his delivery, a very calm, measured, drawn-out, PC manner as if he was talking to his staff and trying not to worry anybody. After about 30 seconds of preamble that made me think he was going to tell me he had lost his job or something horrible like that, I had to stop him and make him just tell me what the heck he was talking about.
Of the brat variety;)