Slashdot Mirror
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
""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.
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
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.
Actually, the virus strikes people with healthy immune systems, and the causes of death are an immune system overreaction. Translated: People with excellent immune systems are more likely to die than those with weaker ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm
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...
"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.
It it is most dangerous to those with strong immune systems because of the potential for cytokine storms
Which is pure speculation at this point. The truth is nobody knows why it's mostly killed young people so far. Pointing to a cytokine storm as the cause is possible, but very misleading.
AccountKiller
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.
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!
For example, Madagascar has just closed its seaport. And here I was, so close, to winning :(
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.
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
That page is riddled with [citation needed]. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Please STOP spreading this racist, unfounded meme. While Mexico is a developing nation with a "poor" health care system, hospitals in Mexico City and elsewhere are modern, with up-to-date equipment and well-trained personnel. While pollution is a problem, not necessarily more so than in parts of New York City or LA, especially in the downtown zones under the new environmental rules. Significant advances in air quality have been made in the past 10 years, under AMLO and Ebrard.
There is no clear, obvious reason for a higher morality rate across Mexico, including and especially in the downtown Mexico City hospitals, than in the US.
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
And this is the ONLY real story here.
If this is an average flu season at least a couple dozen kids in the US have died already from the standard A/B/whatever strains vs 1 for the swine flu.
I'll leave you to figure out i gave an very conservative guess according to the CDC. Mexico i have no clue.
It is still much more dangerous to cross the street for lunch, how about a banner to Stop for Pedestrians :(
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.
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.
Swine flu is a horrible name.
I'm going to call it "bacon lung".
Everything's better with bacon.