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US Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
mallumax sends word from the NYTimes that US government officials today declared a public health emergency over increasing cases of the swine flu first seen in Mexico. Here is additional coverage from CNN. From the Times: "American health officials [say]... that they had confirmed 20 cases of the disease in the United States and expected to see more as investigators fan out to track down the path of the outbreak. Other governments around the world stepped up their response to the incipient outbreak, racing to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases from New Zealand to Hong Kong to Spain, raising concerns about the potential for a global pandemic. The cases in US looked to be similar to the deadly strain of swine flu that has killed more than 80 people in Mexico and infected 1,300 more." Reader "The man who walks in the woods" sends a link to accounts emailed to the BBC from readers in Mexico. While these are anecdotal, they do paint a picture of a more serious situation than government announcements have indicated so far.
Here are my thoughts and actions. No I will not spend money or take your vaccine. No I am not afraid of a "pandemic" to many idiots here anyway. No I will not buy into this psychological fear mongering everyone loves to push on people. I don't believe in what anyone says much anyhow. Now how many takers do I have who in spite of what I think and feel are angry and want to control me somehow? Write a law, call the karma police? Lets see.
20 people died!?! Its the end of the world!
Seriously ...
This shit is not a pandemic, its just another WHO scaremongering tactic to get funding, other examples:
The west nile pandemic is evil and will be the end of the world if we don't act now. ... it wasn't. ... it wasn't. ... it wasn't.
The bird flu pandemic is evil and will be the end of the world if we don't act now.
The SARS pandemic is evil and will be the end of the world if we don't act now.
The pig flu pandemic is evil and will be the end of the world. ... it won't be.
The manbearpig flu pandemic is evil and will be the end of the world. ... possibly, Southpark is rather infectious, even my gf likes it now.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm about sick and tired of hearing things that kill 20 people called a pandemic, unless it kills 20 people in about 10 seconds and infects a large portion of the population of at LEAST one continent.
There are bus accidents, airline crashes, and sinking ships that should be called 'pandemics' by the logic of this bullshit. Hell I see a pandemic every season of Deadlist Catch, except its bad weather and not a real infection.
Just because we finally got our acts together and data shared enough to notice these things happening doesn't mean they are new or really anything to be concerned about in the grand scheme of things.
I'm not saying they shouldn't be monitored or that we shouldn't try to stop them, but the WHO and the news outlets sensationalizing this shit has got to stop. People have to stop believing the bullshit they see on the news and acting like its actually as bad as they say it is. Look at the last five years of 'scary' stuff on the news, if you didn't know about it from shitty journalism, it wouldn't have effected most of the world, right done to the 'economic problems'.
I've never known anyone to be infected with, let alone die from: West nile, bird flu, pig flu, SARs or anything else that has been used to put the public in a state of fear during my lifetime with the exception of AIDS.
The only 'pandemic' that has ever touched anyone I actually know is AIDs.
Can we please stop calling things pandemics when they say shit like '20 people have died because of it in the last '?
The common cold is a Pandemic by my definition, however it isn't by the WHO. The WHO considers anything new that spreads easily among humans to be a pandemic, regardless of how many people have been infected. Fucking high school mono outbreaks are pandemics according to the WHO because most are unique strains! Thats a retarded way of classifying something with a name that instills fear in people.
The WHO is a political organization that needs to scare people to get funding, they have cried wolf too many times and now no one cares, my self especially.
We need stomp their asses for this kind of shit so that when something that really IS bad happens everyone won't blow it off.
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For The Win!
For those who are trying to marginalize this one - give it time.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
This is bio-warfare. I would say that its possible that the Obama Administration released a bio-warfare agent. It cuts down the human population and cements their own hold on power.
The USA has been researching swine flu since the 1970s.
Environmentalists feel that the earth is vastly overpopulated. People will gravitate towards strong governments in times of crisis, trading freedom for safety, invariably. Free trade and open borders makes it easier for diseases to spread globally.
The political party that is both in favor of dominating central government, and most aligned with environmentalists, and is the party that pushed free trade on the world since 1916, and is in complete control of the US government.
It certainly makes a good conspiracy theory!
This is my sig.
I'm now wondering what bothers you the most at this point: the fact that I don't agree with your viewpoint, or the fact that religion is not my reason for disagreeing with you? :)
Neither. You haven't actually responded directly to what I was asking. That's fine because I don't believe you've really pondered much on how you've arrived at whatever sense of morality you may have.
You wrote "if enough people agree with it ...". I was asking how you determined what the moral standard was so I assumed that you were answering that question. Your response says you were not.
Many of the arguments about what makes something moral has more to do with self-interest than morality. Obviously I want to prevent murder for the sake of myself and family. I don't want murders out there endangering us. I want to help fight disease so neither myself nor my family will fall victim to it. This is all self-interest. It's no different than intervening in one country committing crimes against humanity because it is next door while ignoring (or standing by) while worse crimes are committed in some country in Africa e.g. Kosovo and Rwanda. I'm not saying that this is your position, but I think we often delude ourselves into thinking we are good and moral when we are just acting in what we see to be our self-interest.
BTW, I gave credit for the golden rule to those others than just Christians. My term "religious nuts" was sarcasm since I see so much religion bashing around here. I'm perfectly fine with the vast majority of religious people. The few extremists are another matter, but I don't equate religion with extremism.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok