I tend to have problems with media hype, and wonder what we really need to know about this besides just being freaked out by fox news network? :smack:
Any feedback is much appreciated… 
BTY this is my first post, and look forward to “chatting” will you!
Yes, the media hypes everything; that’s a given.
However, world health authorities do worry about influenza a lot because of it’s pandemic potential: some strains of it, most infamously the post-WW1 “Spanish” flu can be lethal even to young healthy adults; and it’s about as communicable as a disease can be. It’s particularly worrisome because domestic animals like birds and hogs can serve as reservoirs for related strains, and there’s some evidence that mutant strains arising suddenly from these animal reservoirs might be especially virulent (no pun intended).
For what it’s worth, the hype over previous flu outbreaks turned out to be inflated. We can hope that remains the case for the forseeable future.
Who really knows. No one can predict the future but my guess is that it may be the case that there will be no more worldwide pandemics like we have seen in the past because of modern communications, hygiene, and quarantine policies. Or limited to countries with a lack of these things. Life in Mexico City isnt the same as life in New York.
I think the hype over this type is that the common strain (H1N1 type) is indeed the same as the one responsible for the pandemic in 1918. One’s body would overreact and lead to destruction of lung tissue and fluid build up. This one seems to be deadly to healthy people with good immune systems…and there-in lies the rub. It’s your healthy and ready-to-react immune system that winds up damaging your own lungs. So, while the regular flu we all know and hate makes us ill and really is a danger to the very young, the elderly and the weakened, this one actually gets healthy people and prompts their immune system to react in a very dangerous way.
So, healthy people are out and about, and vulnerable… not just to feeling really, really sick…but to death. So, when healthy people are dropping like flies, it tends to get attention.
The problems of more immediate concern in Mexico are people self-medicating rather than seeking professional medical assistance until they’re in untreatable advance stages, and a lack of administrative technique at public hospitals (failure to follow through with interviews with families of the infected/sickened, fudging cause of death on medical records, etc.).
They say that the concern with this flu is that it is killing young, healthy people who normally fight off of the flu. But other reports show that only a very small portion of the people who get it actually die.
So, what determines whether you are in bed with the flu for a day, or you die? I would think that age and health would be important, but it seems not.
I see it the exact opposite way. Even in 1918, you wouldn’t have had a bunch of college kids from NY partying in Mexico city. When you can bring a Mexico City disease to NY, our different conditions don’t help as much. Any pandemic is likely to be a worldwide pandemic simply because of the amount of travel going on.
That said, I think we can put our efforts to better use. Let’s say swine flu kills 100,000 or even 1 million people - is that really all that many in the grand scheme of things? It’s tragic and devastating to the individuals, but 150,000 people die every day. Many of those die from things that are more easily prevented than the flu, like lack of drinking water or mosquito nets. We need to stop jumping at shadows and solve real problems.
So what you’re saying is we should not take steps to minimize or even eliminate this just because of the relatively low amount of people flus like this have killed in the past?
It’s something to keep our eyes on, be aware of, and treat. While it has the potential to do a lot of harm if it rages unchecked, that hasn’t happened, and it’s unlikely to. Don’t start to panic until, say, CNN goes off the air.
OP: for non-hype go to CDC.gov
The major factor in the widespread 1918 flu was that the disease originated near a middle-America military staging point. Despite the outbreak, the soldiers continued to be sent out far and wide, with each new post, port or ship becoming a new distribution point. There was no real attempt to quarantine the sick until it was far too late. In some cases local officials tried to downplay the seriousness of the situation, continuing to sponsor local war rallies, etc.
This is a great book on the subject.
It’s not what I’m saying at all. I’ll divide my point into two sub-points:
How many people died from malaria yesterday? One every thirty seconds, or about 3,000 per day, 700,000 per year (cite). Where is the media frenzy for that? What we’re responding to with swine flu is not a reasonable, logical approach. It’s a highly emotional approach based on a skewed perception of immediacy and danger. There are real diseases killing today - right this instant - and yet they don’t get into the news.
How cost-effective are the measures we’re taking? I’m not sure what the cost is relative to swine flu in particular, but I know that there are very large Tamiflu reserves and other expenses related to the general issue. The US in 2008 had 50 million doses of Tamiflu at a cost of $300 million per year (source). Lives saved? 0. If the first article has correct stats, 60% of malaria deaths can be prevented by $5 mosquito nets. The cost of the Tamiflu reserves could buy 60 million mosquito nets. I don’t know how to translate that into actual live saved, but enough nets could reduce deaths by 60% - that’s 400,000 lives saved every year.
Now, again, I’m not saying that we should ignore swine flu or other flus. I’m just saying that we’re pouring large amounts of mental energy and monetary resources into combating a hypothetical threat based on fear, not reason. To me, it sounds like a fireman saying “Sorry, I can’t put out the fire in your house. I have to save water in case my house catches on fire.”
I guess it depends upon whether I live next door to the Fireman or the other guy.
Quoting from the http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/index.htm
I think that says very well why I think the current hype about swine flu is overblown. How many have died so far of swine flu in Mexico? Out of a country of how many million? How many have been infected in the US? How many died?
Sorry - there are so many far more dangerous things going on all the time that I just get amused at hype about things like this. FWIW, I felt the same way about SARS several years ago and would have been perfectly willing to travel to Toronto (one of the places where it was a big concern) during that episode.
I know I don’t evaluate risks in a completely neutral fashion myself, but I do try (not always successfully) to worry about things in proportion to their actual risk. That’s not to say that CDC, Health Canada, and friends shouldn’t keep an eye on it - of course they should; just that it’s way too premature for everybody else to get their knickers in a twist over it.
If swine flu is going to cause problems, it will be economics and politics. Taking the hype to the extreme, there is the potential that the economy can stall, if not further decline because the “social distancing” caused by the illness prevents people from interacting and conducting business.
For the northern hemisphere at least, thank you lucky stars this is taking off as the weather warms and summer vacations are to start in a month or so. Had swine flu started in November or December and in all likelihood, the hype would be justified.
You mean instead of being crowded up in their neightborhood in contact with each other, they will be crowded up in motels in contact with people traveling to and from different areas?
I posted this in a thread in MPSIMS - the short answer to your questions:
Currently, ~150 people in Mexico have died from suspected cases in the past two weeks. There are 109 million people in Mexico, vs 303 million in the U.S. However, currently there have been around 57 deaths just in the Mexico City area, an area of around 8 million people.
The problem is that influenza mutates every couple of years, and there are at least three strains. It’s looking like this strain probably mutated recently and got a foothold in Mexico City, and the strain is spreading from there.
Don’t forget airplanes and airports. :eek:
This may be an issue of Mexico City health institutions having better healthcare facilities in general and better reporting protocols than the outlying areas, rather than a geographical spike in morbidity.
There’s no point in trying to quantify this thing yet, nobody knows what the true spread of it is or the true mortality rate. And there aren’t enough data points to extrapolate. On the other hand, it’s not a hypothetical threat - it’s obviously real - it’s more an unknown quantity.
No, I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to take steps to combat this thing. If for no other reason, than it will prepare us for future spreads of emerging viruses that are bigger threats in the future. Say what you will about the avian flu, but the hysteria over that and SARS are the reason that we are able to surveil for novel flu strains like this internationally to begin with and they’re the reason that we can even talk about having a vaccine for this within a few months.
So this may be another overblown panic, but at some point we will be dealing with another deadly pandemic. Imagine if the kind of global public health infrastructure that exists now existed at the emergence of AIDS? How many lives potentially could have been saved?