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WHO Raises Swine Flu Threat Level
Solarch writes "Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, the WHO raised the pandemic threat level for H1N1 "swine flu" to 5. Global media outlets(such as CNN, Fox News, and the BBC) preempted normal broadcast coverage and immediately published stories on their websites. To clarify, the WHO's elevation is mainly a sign to governments that the virus is spreading quickly and that steps should be taken on a governmental level to stage supplies and medicines to combat a possible pandemic. Unfortunately, broadcast coverage focused on phrases like 'pandemic imminent' (CNN marquee).
In other news, patient zero, the medical term for the initial human vector of a disease, has been tentatively identified in Mexico."
Who does raise the swine flu threat level?
I get the feeling that Media outlets are DESPERATELY Hoping that this will be a Pandemic... as if they're bored or really really really like human suffering... oh wait, what's that saying about if it bleeds it's frontpage news? Sigh. --Ray PS> Would hate to die of Swine Flu, just because of what it's called... and all that it would imply if I caught it...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
The sad thing is that it will affect the poor and the Third World most of all. Only the extremely ill, old, young, and those with compromised immune systems will have a problem in more developed countries where antiviral medicine is available.
$50 for some medicine is pretty much nothing in the U.S., for instance. If you're in India or China, well... life's going to get rough for a lot of people there.
""Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, the WHO raised the pandemic threat level for H1N1 "swine flu" to 5."
Wow. I knew they had good music but I did not know Peter Townshend was in charge of changing pandemic threat levels.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
his is getting absurd. Mexico's response has been so disorganized they have no CLUE who "patient zero" is. But it sure is a good opportunity to rail on "factory farms". US-owned, no less! I suppose US owned factory farms also caused the other flu pandemics since the 1500s...
I read an article a couple days ago, apparently there was a swine flu outbreak in 1976, and the US was quite proactive in stopping it, encouraging everyone to get vaccinated. The problem came when more people died from the vaccine than from the flu. So the correct path of action is not always clear, how far should you go to try to prevent this? Wall Street Journal has an interesting article dealing with these issues.
As for me, being young and healthy, looks like I'm about to roll one of my d20. Whatever happens happens, I'll enjoy it to the end.
Qxe4
Nigel Tufnel: You see, most organizations, you know, will be warning at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your warning. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One warninger.
Everyone knows nerds are pigs.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The media can do what they will with this non-story.
I'm safe - I don't believe in that e-vo-lution crap, so this new disease could not have evolved from swine! It's all just pig nonsense.
I'm going back to prepare a round of raw bacon sushi!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Bah, we all should know this "swine flu" is actually a well orchestrated distraction from our real threat.
ZOMBIES!
Fear not the Swine Flu pandemic. Fear instead the imminent Zombie pandemic.
Unless of course this is just phase 1...
and for big drug companies to capitalize on, is what 99% of this is...
Only 7 swine flu Deaths, not 152...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
There's nothing newsworthy about the flu. Not even remotely.
"Citation needed."
Seriously, I see Internet doomsdayers saying this, but I don't see the CDC saying this. So, can you provide a link to a reputable source for this? I'm genuinely interested in reading one. If not, then perhaps you should stop spreading it.
WHO the hell was the idiot who made that decision?
Fox News counts as global?
I thought only the redneck subset of America watched it.
One of the remarkable facts about this outbreak is that the deaths in Mexico are primarily among healthy adults between 20 and 50--similar to the profile of the Spanish flu of 1918. However, one of the yet unresolved puzzles about the virus is why the mortality figures in Mexico are proportionally so much larger than in the USA, so yeah, we just don't know what's going on yet...
Are you adequate?
in the US alone there are An estimated 100,000 hospitalizations and about 20,000 deaths occur each year from the plain old flu or its complications... so what is the big deal?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/egypt-orders-slaughter-of-all-pigs-over-swine-flu-1676090.html
Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precautionary measure against the spread of swine flu... Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza told reporters that farmers would be allowed to sell the pork meat so there would be no need for compensation.
Yeah, what's the price of pork in a vastly flooded market. Other stories on the subject report riots by the pig farmers and also note that the WHO says that you can't catch it from eating pork. This is more a case of the non-pork eating religious majority using this as an excuse to crap on the pork eating religious minority (and 'unclean' pig farmers.)
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
The Stonecutters!
I was once a horse.
Allow me to explain my bias before embarking on this rant: I currently attend University of Delaware. At present there are 10 unconfirmed cases among the student body. Not a big number (total student number is ~13,000), but diseases do have a tendency to spread quickly among student populations.
What bothers me about this isn't that people are overreacting, which they are to a large extent. I don't feel the need to wander around with a surgical mask and I'm right in the middle of a hot zone. Rather, what bothers me is that people are underreacting. There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that says that swine flu won't cause any sort of devastation; that it's not something to worry about.
The fact of the matter is that while they're probably right, there's no reason not to take simple precautions. So long as this is going on, I'll make sure to was my hands with soap and water after using the bathroom, to try to avoid sick people, and to go to health services if I start showing flu-like symptoms. On the other hand, I hear plenty of people at school saying that they don't care, that if they get it it's "just the flu." I see a lot of people here on /. saying that this is just a media circus and just for drug companies to capitalize on. Maybe you guys are right, but what if you aren't?
As I said, I'm biased since I'm in a hot zone, but I'd rather be safe about this than contract it.
It's the Aporkalypse!
SHUT! DOWN! EVERYTHING!
For example, Madagascar has just closed its seaport. And here I was, so close, to winning :(
Damn Congress, we told them to cut the pork, and the jerks bring the plague on the House instead.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
1) more than 1% .1% to 1% .1%
2)
3) less than
We still don't know which range we're dealing with and, uh, like, it matters.
All it would take is to focus on a standard sample like Mexico City hospital interns, process their swabs STAT and count the deaths so far.
Seriously, folks, where are the adults?
Seastead this.
Patient Zero?
I know that, I'm asking for a source that swine flu is killing via it. Not a blog post, or a speculative news media story, a source from someone like the CDC. Doesn't have to be the CDC, but a group that would know what the hell they are talking about.
Shouldn't we kill patient zero, just in case that cures everyone else? It's a long shot, I know, but if we did that for every major disease and it worked just once, it'd be worth it.
People, stop spreading this stupid, unfounded meme. The folks who have been verified to have died from H1N1 2009 have been from a country with a poor health care system and a city that is horrible in terms of air pollution and other environmental conditions. No one except the Internet whargarbl squad is stating that the EIGHT people that the WHO has verified have died from this virus(the most well documented death being of a 23 month old, the very definition of those at-risk for dying from influenza) are adult, healthy people by first world standards. Even the guy who "died from the swine flu" and gave Obama that tour, turns out to not have had "swine flu" at all.
Yes, it is alarming in the sense that it is spreading so quickly off-season and it certainly is getting a lot of media attention, but I've seen people using the phrase "cytokine storm" who couldn't tell you what a deviated septum was last week. Knock it off already.
the secessionist talk in Texas--the proud Texan has switched from public talk of making 5 states out of Texas to seeking federal assistance and stocks of Tamiflu to help keep the swine flu pandemic from overrunning the Texas border. Now we are talking about the sane goodness of having sound public health policies along with preparedness planning and funding. What next? Public vaccination programs coming into favor again?
There's something vaguely comforting and familiar about medical professionals also starting their indexes at 0.
Most of the deaths reported in the press have been non-elderly adults, as opposed to the regular flu where 90% of the deaths are already-sick old people and the rest are mostly kids who are too young for flu shots. Until the latest news articles (which said that "150 deaths" was "maybe actually only 7-8 confirmed to be swine flu"), the number of deaths from swine flu was about 1% of the total number of regular-seasonal-flu deaths during the past week.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
To whomever tagged this with suddenoutbreakofswineflu: genius. haha
Members of police force around the world call in sick following the news that 'pig' flu has reached pandemic proportion.
A concentrated solution of silver ions is the most effective antiviral and antibacterial substance known. Please see http://www.pstca.com/silversol/index.htm for more information. Check "Examples of SilverSol Generators" at http://www.pstca.com/silversol/use/csgen.htm I just finished updating it with somewhat detailed instructions on how to make and use your own system.
Mike Monett
P.S. No worries about Aryyria. Use sublingual absorption and spit most of it out.
This is how it always starts...
If you look at that CDC search, one article that jumps out is this one, which says that based on later research, it looks like the big killer wasn't actually the influenza itself or related cytokine storms, but secondary bacterial infections causing pneumonia among people weakened by the influenza. That's actually fairly good news, because it's much more likely that we can treat those in a hurry with existing antibiotics (as opposed to waiting 6 months to get a newly-tuned H1N1 vaccine or using the increasingly-ineffective antivirals like Tamiflu), and because quarantine also reduces the spread of bacterial infections so people who do get the flu are less likely to get the secondaries.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
sorry, I did.
I loved the scene in Outbreak, where they're showing the different biocontainment levels. Level one show people walking around without masks, it was only the people working the chemicals that hand any sort of protection. Level two had masks and rubber gloves, but people were still walking in and out without masks. Level three had people with masks, rubber gloves, white cloth body suits, and working in fume hoods. Still, doors were left open, and people walked in and out without masks. Then biohazard 4: Armed guards, security keypad and fingerprint scan, a second set of secure doors, then a rubber body suit, then an air lock, then you get to the lab.
Hollywood!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I wish North Korea would send all their little choreography dancing midgets to level the UN building to the ground.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
The vector that propagated the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic was soldiers returning from The World War, and people who were exposed to them, so young people with healthy immune systems were the primary people exposed to the flu, especially since they tended to be crowded together in barracks, ships, and trains where it could easily spread. So the fact that most of the deaths were younger people doesn't tell you as much as it might.
On the other hand, the world population is much more mobile than it was in 1918 - travel's radically cheaper, and most people aren't farmers who stay home or occasionally go from their villages to small towns; everybody's on the move all the time, so it's easier for infected people to spread disease around than it was for most people in 1918.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Flanders! Open up!
Yes yes. I suppose Obama paid for all that Tamiflu out of his own lined pockets...
Oh... wait...
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Yup ..., oh well maybe, but I'm realy sure Conficker is to be held resposible for the pandemic. If only we could detect where it downloaded the swine virus from?....
Not to fret, V50 things will continue to go downwards - and increasingly so - thanks to NO ACTION YET taken on those factors leading to the present financial meltdown (namely financial regulation measures) which will only continue to get worse...and worse....and worse....we are quickly reaching the point of critical mass, if we haven't already arrived - in America - for offshoring of American jobs. There simply aren't that many left to offshore anymore. And eventually the college system will only cater to the super rich and foreign students as America students who can afford it will have all but disappeared - after all, who can spend a small fortune for college when loans can never be repaid?
Can you imagine any possible news story where you would not find it relevant to bring up Bush? Let it go already, it's over.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
I say we tar and feather 'patient zero'. Make him look like a chicken, it'll confuse the virus and the cure will spread down to all infected.. it'll work opposite of infecting the mother ship with a virus like we saw in Independence Day!
And as I've been saying, it's extremely likely that people with those secondary problems seek attention. And we have a ton of options to treat pneumonia and asthma in the U.S. and Europe. So far, almost none of the 90+ cases in the U.S. are proving to be fatal. We are well taught to take drugs for any serious illness by now.
Too bad people in Africa, Asia, South America, and other places with a larger population that's more rural don't have the ability or access to deal with more than a handful of serious cases. Note - this also would apply to rural and hard to reach areas in the U.S., like Alaska. It appears that survivability is directly based upon how quickly you can get to medical help.
I was in class drinking a Pepsi. The teacher said if I bring it to class I better be prepared to share it, and I said, "I CAN'T, THERE'S SWINE FLUE GOING AROUND!1|1!"
Help fight spam
Fine, enough already. Bush was Satan and Hitler's love baby. Happy? We get it. You hate Bush and all that are different than you. Conservatives are evil because they have different opinions. We all know that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong, evil and stupid. We all must keep an open mind and hate conservatives equally. We get it.
Now STFU and get on with your life.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The Bush Administration's stock in trade was to keep Americans, and if possible the rest of the world, as afraid as possible of all the horrible things that could be about to happen to them, so we'd give all our rights over to Big Daddy Government to protect us. That's why the National Threat Level kept bouncing from Yellow to Orange any time any terrorist chatter said "booga booga" or any Democrat said anything critical of the Bush League, or there was a holiday coming up when Terrorists might attack [Your Local Landmark Here].
I mean really. What kind of idiot actually believed that there was a terrorist threat. We all know that terrorists have never hurt anyone and just want to talk. And if they did want to hurt us, we are protected by our oceans.
You're right. It would take a real asshole to say that terrorists might want to kill us and try to protect us from such a non-existent threat.
And all organic.
As a bonus, it's "green". Anyone who succumbs to this will naturally reduce their carbon footprint.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I would think government officials should be up in arms about swine flu.. a pandemic would sweep through capital hill like a brush fire, dropping congressmen and lobbyists like sacks of flour.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Nah, we jailed that 22 month old infant!
The almost two year old terrorist was protesting a wet diaper by crying...outside of any 'Free Speech Zone'!
That jail time will teach this dirty diapered terrorist that you just can't just do as you please in this country!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
In all seriousness, I'd rather take my chances with computer viruses.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Dr and Rose appear on a spaceship cunningly disguised as a planet only to find there's a mysterious disease that's killing spectacularly low numbers of people who all happen to live in the same city. Normally he wouldn't worry about it but Rose manages to get infected so the Dr raises the threat level to OMG. He works night and day to find a cure only to be forced to infect himself, die from the disease, but not really as his seemingly magic, but really explainable in materialistic terms, Time Lord powers cause him to regenerate in the form of Tom Baker.
He draws some of his own blood with his sonic screwdriver and, treats Rose, who makes a full recovery. As a gesture of good will, and for the episode to end on a relative high note (despite Tom Baker's haggard appearance), he takes the TARDIS into a low "earth" orbit and sprays the serum into the jet stream, thus curing and inoculating most of the world. The Dr and Rose leave for better times.
Just moments later the Vogons appear and destroy the world to make way for hyperspace bypass.
Rationale : Governments of the world decided they are not paying retirements to baby boomers and that the world cannot sustain so much people so they decided to eliminate some. Neither Capitalism or socialism are interested in this many people.
They infect Mexico with some Baxter cooked mixture of bird, pig, and man flu. See the news of how Baxter sent some contaminated diceases.
People get infected in Mexico but the pandemic is not as big as premeditated, so they get HAARP or some other EMP space weapon to shake the earth, in order for them to come out. As an exercise on the probability of an Earthquake on mexico, check google earth and view all earthquakes on Mexico, not so much quakes right.
Next (Monday) is the backup presidential plane flying over NY(business centre) and spreading the flu virus, and since people would remember that the flu started in Mexico nobody would associate the two facts
.
Big holiday coming Friday, workers day, that means that many workers will come to the street to demand jobs, and only get the flu, that already already has matured since monday.
Fast forward to Monday a level 6 pandemic is going on.
Time goes on, and by 2012, in London during the Olimpics, Gordon Brown, talks about the glorious Brave New World Order
. Feel free to add to my humble conspiracy, and check others at http://abovetopsecret.com/ .
Now STFU and get on with your life.
Can't. Not with the threat level being orange and all. Wait 'till it's yellow.
Just callin' it like I see it.
The swine flu program has almost ruined my graduation. I was supposed to travel abroad to Mexico for my final two classes, and *poof* out the window.
Yet again, us poor Americans are suffering the consequences of our own blind greed. Drug cartel violence is spilling over our border because we're too stupid to put them out of business by legalizing a pretty harmless plant. Instead, we continue to legitimize their business by making illegal something that over half the adult population has tried.
Now, we have an infulenza epidemic. Where did it start? A commercial pig farm called Granjas Carrol in Veracruz. Wanna take a guess at the owner? Smithfield Farms. And why, pray tell, does Smithfield have a commercial pig farm in Mexico? Think about it! Cheap labor, cheap animal drugs, and above all, no USDA. Just stuff the pigs in a room, let em wallow in their own waste, and call it a day!
Smithfield, of course, says it's not their fault. Fuck 'em. Americans as a whole need to stop buying products from companies that exploit other countries. You're tellin' me that American farmers can't raise enough fucking pigs for all of us at a decent price? Christ, they'll eat anything you give em! Build a big pen, throw in... well, anything for them to eat, and bam, a year later, BACON!
So fuck you, fellow Americans. Thanks for being selfish and ruining my study abroad. I'll continue to smoke my made-in-America mota and, well, eating pork from my local fucking Pennsylvanian farm.
Except that the US mobilized 4.3 million soldiers and 50 million people died of the flu.
Being crowded together could get all of those soldiers contaminated, but then each one of them would have to infect twelve other non-soldier people after being released from that togetherness.
The symptom of this flu is lack of appetite.
Is there somebody who feel like this?
Then you must be a suspect!!!
I guess we need the help of The Doctor, and Martha Jones. If it spreads to Wales, then Torchwood can help.
Seriously, we go through this every autumn when the kids go back to school and temperatures drop. Fever, chills, maybe nausea and some drippy poop.
Does anyone on this forum know-actually know-someone who has died from the flu?
For an up to date Google map of the Swine flue outbreak:
http://tinyurl.com/swinemap09
It's really incredible how quickly it's spreading around the globe.
On the bright side, due to the colossal stupidity of the public, pork prices are droping.
In down times it is good to have some cheap meat products at the store.
Pork, its what's for dinner. :)
The first symptom of this flu is lack of appetite. If you feel so, you must be the suspect!!
Swine flu is a horrible name.
I'm going to call it "bacon lung".
Everything's better with bacon.
And as I've been saying, it's extremely likely that people with those secondary problems seek attention. And we have a ton of options to treat pneumonia and asthma in the U.S. and Europe. So far, almost none of the 90+ cases in the U.S. are proving to be fatal. We are well taught to take drugs for any serious illness by now.
Regrettably, we're trained to take drugs for *any* illness.
[insert knock-knock joke on WHO]
...the economic crisis is no longer.
Right?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Is anyone else worried that Swine Influenza could combine with Mad Cow Disease to create the deadly "Mad Cone Flu"?
I hear it's quite bad...
"If it bleeds it leads"
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Wait, isn't Obama President now? Did I miss something?
If they do a concert to aid Swine Flu victims, I hope Robert Daltrey is there.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
With all the media hype you'd think everyone had the swine flu, but in reality there have only been 91 confirmed cases in the US. Not saying this isn't something to worry about, but it's only 91 cases in the WHOLE US!
New Drinking Game!
Anytime you hear a major news media talk about swine flu, Take a drink an speak pig latin until the broadcast changes subject.
Yep, I'm a Karma whore....
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
I never understood why talking about Bush is taboo. We have no problems with people talking about Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, etc. but when someone tries to remind us of the last eight years they invariably get shouted down.
My opinion is that we should analyze the Bush years and learn what we can from them. They were neither too sacred to mention nor too terrible to remember. Mistakes were made by many, and if we want to avoid repeating them we'd damn well better learn from them.
Given that the pigs farmers are almost all part of the Coptic Christian minority, which has a history of being oppressed, this doesn't surprise me at all. As parent says, it's not about the swine flu.
Coptic Christians have it very rough in Egypt; if they are the majority of pig farmers then this is a very plausible explanation for Egypt acting so silly over this.
"Current level of influenza pandemic alert raised from phase 4 to 5"
http://www.who.int/en/
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic/phases.htm.
Obviously as it spreads more, the risk is greater, but it isn't some "terror alert level" they're raising, it's the phase in the progression of the outbreak that they're tracking.
I am trained microbiologist and I know what stupid habits these are. It is not only a flu, it is also a HPV (human papiloma virus), and other infections.
If it is banned by an international law we could stop these epidemics. It can be substituted by a bow, like they do in Japan.
By the way, what other non-contact greetings exist in other cultures?
Politicians will never touch this topic as it may damage their rating. But still the handshakes and hugging-kissing at a meeting are medieval things, which came from the time when epidemics decimated up to 75% of population on a regular basis.
I think there is a drug for that! *ducks*
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
John Hodgman's blog provided this 1970s USA PSA: Too Fast For The Swine Flu
FSM, grant me the serenity to preview that which I cannot change...
Everyone says that it is not time to panic.
O.K. But how will we know when it is time to panic? Will President Obama make a declaration signed with the Presidential seal? How will we know?
When it is time to panic, what should we do? Run in circles and scream an shout? Or whimper in the corner? Should we gather frogs or should we release all of our frogs?
Where is the panic button, who is in charge of pressing it, and why have they not pressed it yet?
The Tom Baker episodes, from the 70's. You know, before Daleks could fly? You could elude them by finding a staircase.
BTW; The Swine Flu thing is a hoax. Only seven died.
"A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.
Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease."
http://www.smh.com.au/world/only-7-swine-flu-deaths-not-152-says-who-20090429-aml1.html
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnSX_jS0STA
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/183009-Previous-Swine-Flu-Outbreak-Originated-At-Fort-Dix
history repeating?
NWO? fear == control
Ring a ring of nachos
A pocket full of tissues
Arriba Arriba
We all fall down.
It is the law. The law of physics. You got to come to a complete stop before you can backup and run them over again!
What? Like you never did it!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
what a stupid narrow-minded fuckwit you are. Hopefully you'll die soon.
I was watching the morning news while drinking some hot coffee and almost had to sue myself. A "Doctor", qualified to discuss topics in and of the medical field, gave the following reason as to why this "Swine Flu" is so bad....
"We know this flu to be different because the common flu typically ends in March and this one is just arriving."
That was all the news crew decided to broadcast. Nothing about the variants of H1N1, H2N1 or even NBE1. Why not at least give an honest attempt at news instead of garbage. And people ask me why I hate watching the news and reading the paper.
LOL SWINE FLU!!!!!!!!
Swiney flu, flu for you
fluey McFlu, flu for me
I don't know, but here's my theory on this ...
I'm trying to think sober, no conspiracies, but with the technology of today and current states of affairs..
A lot is going on around the world with the year 2012. Hunderds of believers think the world will radically change that time;
A lot of believers also think there will be a world with many storms and many diseases...
Just think of the motive behind creating such virus towards the population and which they believe when you read the above two lines.
Couldn't it be such virus could be created to fine grain control, using mass-hysteria through science? It has proven to work before.
Or is this really a bad mix of influenza, just coming from 3 parts of the world? (Europe, North America and Asia)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Mission Accomplished!
Or, yes, it _could_ just be that Britney hasn't flashed her cooter recently and the news has to cover _something_. But I'm betting on the former.
N/T
what a stupid narrow-minded fuckwit you are. Hopefully you'll die soon.
Excellent example of left wing bigotry.
Doh.
hope border security is stopping those virus's without visa entry papers.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Speaking as a member of a family who could be devastated by flu (two of us could easily be killed by flu and resulting pneumonia), I am pretty worried. The United States keeps saying "Be concerned, but don't panic." They say it isn't prudent to close borders, schools, etc. To my thinking, isn't this a case of money trumping safety? Sure, there aren't a heck of a lot of cases yet, but I would think the prudent thing to do would be to isolate as many cases as possible, and try to keep this from spreading with every resource at our disposal! Yes, that means border closings. Get our citizens who want to come home back, but place them in isolation until we know they are not carrying. When a case is reported in or near your community, close schools and any non vital business. Tell people to not travel anywhere that isn't necessary. Place sanitiser anywhere in public where multiple people are touching stuff. Distribute medical gloves and masks. Some would say this is overreaction, but it is really the only way to stop this from becoming a pandemic. Serious issue, and we need to treat it as such, and not put the economy above the health of citizens. In Mexico it is hitting healthy people hard, and this should be a major concern. It is quite like the behavior of the last pandemic, although it isn't spreading as quickly. We should be taking every step to stop this now before it gets so large that we can't stop it, or is this a case where we really can't stop it, so we aren't bothering? I know, I am paranoid, but facing a pandemic flu is a very scary proposition for me and my family.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
What i can't make fun of Jew for being stupid here? When did slashdot start protecting religion?
wtf?
I keep hoping the era invoking racism to support your rant will end someday.
As my Dad used to say, the news is all about "fuzz and was".
Fuzz being slang for police, at least in the 60s/70s
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Fine, but, in the words of Bill Hicks, if Bush is old news, never bring up Jesus to me.
Hmmm... and just WHO are you to be doing that?
A /. editor let an inaccurate title through to provoke outrage at "the man". Now I've heard everything.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Yeah, you're panicking. That's not helpful. It's already in 11 states at least: it'll be in all of them, borders closed or no.
If you or yours are at risk, keep in mind that regular flu kills 36,000 a year: if that didn't scare you into staying home, why should this, where the survival rate is still unknown? Take a deep breath, away from others :) and make sure your family is retentive about hand sanitizer and staying out of closed public spaces. For as long as they're at risk.
It's good to see the DHS is being proactive...
About halfway down the page:
Anyone exhibiting symptoms is being referred to an isolation room
where they can be evaluated by a public health official before
proceeding to their destruction.
YIKES!
So now we're at Level 5. This seems like it might even be important in some way, but how the hell would anyone know?
What does "Level 5" mean?
It'd be standard criticism to blame /. for idiotically de-contextualizing important info, but in this case even the WHO web site makes you click around to fine a clue.
Their lead headline is "Current level of influenza pandemic alert raised from phase 4 to 5." So I guess it isn't levels, it's phases. Glad to get that cleared up.
On that page, or clearly linked from that page, there should be a link that defines Phases. Hey, they have a link to the FAQ. Nice.
Oops, it's not in the FAQ. It's also not linked from the FAQ.
Is this a scale of 1 to 5 (uh oh, we're fucked)? A DEFCON scale of 5 to 1 (sweet, no worries)? Scale of 1 to 10? A Spinal Tap scale of 1 to 11?
You can find if you're diligent. The key piece of info that gives sense to any of this is at least two clicks away. They've conveniently stored it in the "Avian Influenza" path.
I guess they get a few points for not scaremongering by splashing red warning labels all over the page, but if clear communication in the face of danger is important then this is a huge Fail.
And yeah, I'm not posting the link. If the WHO thinks you should work to get it, who am I to say otherwise?
I thought I had the swine flu, but it turns out there was just a pig in my chimney.
BTW, does 5 == orange?
FOX News is reporting that the "secondary bacterial infection" premise has been ruled out in why the Mexico deaths are young, healthy adults.
I am not a medical expert but from what I have read people "usually" (I wanted to use "never") do not die from the flu, they die from complications because of the flu - like a secondary bacterial infection from pneumonia (in the lungs) or something. People definitely need to see a doctor as soon as a fever develops to ensure that it is a flu and not something else. And usually maintaining steady body temperature by taking tylenol or something and maybe taking some NyQuil should do the trick. The flu will naturally take its course and your body's natural defense system will eliminate it, all you can do is manage the symptoms and not spread it. We have NEVER been able to cure a viral infection, we can only vaccinate against them and prevent transmission. Even if somebody is admitted into a hospital, its not like the doctors have a miracle medicine that can fix it. They probably at least do the above mentioned steps along with maybe prescribing Tamiflu or hooking up an IV or maybe prescribe something to manage other complicated symptoms that might result in death and maybe isolate the patients. Tamiflu is probably useless anyway.
I just don't understand the panic. For most normal average healthy people it's just a flu. You need to worry if you already have a weakened immune system due to HIV, or have asthma (I don't know for sure - not an expert) - just saying if you are already not healthy then you have cause for concern. Otherwise, it's just a flu. Take necessary precautions, which you should have even before this pandemic and don't panic.
I am certainly not giving medical advice (even though I am), this just my opinion and I defer to a medical professional for individualized advice.
Air quality has improved enormously. Mexico City has an objective measurement of air quality (IMECA), you can find historical data here: http://www.sma.df.gob.mx/simat2/index.php?opcion=69
If you play with the data you will see that air quality has improved around 25% respect to 10 years ago. Anecdotally speaking you surely remember the environmental contingencies, when birds died and children didn't go to school. We haven't had one of those for long time, and now once in a while you can actually see the volcanoes surrounding Mexico City again (I just did in my last visit there a couple of weeks ago).
But of course, you can ignore the objective data and allow your political biases to cloud your judgement.
Also medical coverage has actually being widened to people that do not have a formal job by means of a new health insurance.
Notice that air quality has been achieved by leftiest governments, while the medical insurance was promoted by the Federal (right wing) one...
So Mexico may be far from perfect, but there have been improvements and to deny this is misinformed, to say the least.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
i've have this page bookmarked:
http://www.theswineflufacts.com
they keep up to date info on this "pandemic", if that's what you want to call it.
i think the flu in general kills more people than this particular strand per year.
I think people are pretty ridiculous with how paranoid they're getting about this. To that effect, I made up a t-shirt to have a little fun with them. It simply states that I'm a Quarantined Volunteer from the DCD (Disease Control Department) H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Program. I've made them available if anyone else wants one.
It shouldn't be over! He and Cheney (among ohers) should be properly judged (in Haia, perhaps).