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."

Comments

Please let it be!!

[happy_place]

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...

Re:Please let it be!!

[rasper99]

The saying is "If it bleeds, it leads" as in leading story.

Re:Please let it be!!

[smaddox]

Back when there was this method called "investigative reporting", there would be crazy things going on all the time, and yet exposing them actually brought improvements.

Today, "investigative reporting" means blowing trivial and menial things completely out of proportion, asking non-experts their oppinions, and twisting experts words into doom and gloom. It's pathetic how hard these people work to do nothing.

Re:Please let it be!!

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it insulting?

The 1918 flu pandemic was known as the Spanish Flu because it was first widely reported in Spain. Other countries with earlier infections had been at war and were censoring news stories but Spain was not (In Spain it was known as the French Flu).

This outbreak was first recorded in Mexico so it makes sense to call it the Mexico Flu.

Re:Please let it be!!

[V50]

I agree with you to a degree, there certainly is a human element that enjoys other people's suffering. Not too complex though, it makes us feel better in comparison. :)

What I meant though, to use an example, is having part of you wish a destructive news event to occur, more for entertainment purposes.

To use an example, back in 2003, (when I was 15) I was a strong supporter of the Iraq war. I made all sorts of justifications based on human rights, WMDs (laugh all you want), Saddam being a dick, etc. The real reason I supported the Iraq invasion in '03 is because I wanted to see a war take place, I wanted exciting footage of missiles hitting Baghdad, I wanted propaganda from both sides, I wanted maps on Wikipedia with how much each side held. Part of me was even disappointed when Baghdad fell quickly. I wanted to see a nasty battle.

Criticise me as a deranged sociopath all you want, but treating the news as entertainment is far from limited to me. Most people dress it up with other reasons though, like I did. The difference is that because I was 15 at the time, I didn't really hide my true motives for supporting the Iraq invasion very far, knowing the whole time I really just wanted a big expensive exciting war drama to be broadcast over CNN.

And for all it affected me at the time, (15, Canadian, knew no Americans, let alone military personnel.), it may as well have been a war movie. Being older, (hopefully) more mature, and knowing several people who have served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, perhaps my opinion would be a bit different, but at the time, Iraq may have been a war movie to me, and good entertainment.

Re:Please let it be!!

[timeOday]

No, I think it's mainly just wanting some stimulation or excitement, or to be part of something historic, and not particularly happiness at others' misfortune. There is something very rousing about feeling you are part of history, or in an epic battle.

Re:not easy to know how to respond

[DragonWriter]

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.

That's not really the right comparison to judge a "problem" with the course of action. It would clearly be, in retrospect, the wrong decision if more people died of the vaccine than would have been expected to have died from the flu had the vaccination not been carried out, but the fact that more people died of the vaccine than died of the flu when the vaccination was carried out does not appear to be a valid basis, on its own, for criticism.

Otherwise, a vaccination program that prevented all deaths from a disease (even if, unchecked, it would have been expected to kill billions) would be the wrong decision if even one person died from the vaccine, a result that is clearly ludicrous.

Just what is a pandemic?

[night_flyer]

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?

Re:Just what is a pandemic?

[et764]

From what I've read the fears over this one are that so far it is killing a lot higher percentage than the flu normally kills. This flu also seems to kill a disproportionate number of people in the 20-50 age rage. Normally flu deaths are mostly confined to infants and the elderly.

From a pure numbers standpoint it's not so bad. What's scary is the similarity to earlier flu pandemics. No one's really sure how bad this may get, so people are taking extra precautions.

Re:Semi-Pandemic

[Plekto]

Wow. You have just far too much faith in the governments of the world, and medicine
****
We've had one death so far in the U.S., and it was a baby. Two of the drugs that we do have available are effective, and I heard that there are roughly enough of those two to treat 30-50 million people in the U.S.

My comment wasn't about the people in the richer nations being so much better off so much as it being a commentary on the sad state of affairs where the poor get hit the hardest, like they do pretty much any time a disaster happens.

I don't have much faith in governments, but those populations without ANY modern medicine at all are going to suffer a large number of deaths. Be it from overactive immune systems or compromised ones - both extremes seem to be a problem in these sorts of situations.

In India, you have millions of people who are so poor that they burn garbage to keep warm. When droves of them start dying, secondary diseases and epidemics become a real worry as well. No, not everyone in India is like that, obviously, but with nearly a billion people all living in a pretty close proximity to each other, it's not likely that things will be good, either.

Re:Semi-Pandemic

[MartinSchou]

Very true.

At this point we're just using hypotheses and another one that I just dreamed up is that ths strain needs a certain industrial polutants to be between certain points (sweet spot) for it to be lethal.

Since more people have caught it, and more people have died from it in Mexico, this is also plausible, since the polution levels are easily higher there than in the US and Europe.

I say plausible, but very unlikely, as I just came up with this halfassed idea. But if it ends up being true, I want credit!

Re:I'll repeat what I heard elsewhere

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

With the grand WHO total of deaths being caused by H1N12009 being EIGHT, and the most well documented death so far being a 23 year old, the whole idea that this is killing otherwise healthy (a BIG assumption, this is Mexico, not the US, the health care system and environmental conditions in Mexico City is not very good in the former and absolutely terrible in the latter case) adults is isn't founded at all.

The WHO grand total of confirmed deaths is low because confirmation of which strain was involved in each specific case is slow. The actual number of deaths so far by the strain is almost certainly significantly higher. To put it more precisely, a large proportion of the cases that have been labeled as suspected swine flu deaths will turn out to be so.

Also, I don't think your Mexican health care and environment objection holds. Given no other data, you would expect that to increase the number of deaths, but not the distribution of deaths across age groups. You need a stronger hypothesis: that the poor health care in Mexico increases the risk of death from H1N1 disproportionately among young adults and middle-aged adults will die from H1N1, compared to children and the elderly.

The one thing that's sure at this point is that our information is quite likely to have very serious holes yet, however.

Re:From a Hot Zone

[FatFreeCelery]

So long as this is going on, I'll make sure to was my hands with soap and water after using the bathroom

I hope that you continue your newly found routine even after this has gone on.

Re:Leftover Bush Fearmongering plus some reality

[regular_gonzalez]

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.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Semi-Pandemic

[houghi]

It is still much more dangerous to cross the street for lunch, how about a banner to Stop for Pedestrians :(

The active word is still and we must see that it stays that way. When a person gets killed while crossing the road, he does not let 8 others cross the road to get killed and who then force others to get killed crossing the road.

The problem is that we do not know how dangerous it could become. 1 or even 100 cases (or more?) cases can be easily controlled and if that means 100 or 1000 people dying, that means nothing.

Look what happend in 1918 It is estimated that anywhere from 20 to 100 million people were killed worldwide. 20 million (when looking at the low numbers and not calculating a higher world population) would be a tad more then people who get killed crossing the road.

So we must not look at what happend, but what might happen. We just do not know how dangerous the wolf is and if we should cry wolf.