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Flu + La Nina = Pandemic?
New submitter MrEricSir writes with some scary speculation from a BBC article about the confluence of climate and disease: "A correlation between illness and cold weather is nothing new but this one is very specific: La Nina changes the migratory patterns of birds which can (and often does, according to this theory) cause flu pandemics."
The ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) usually exhibits a period of three to five years - so it's not exactly like La Niña is an uncommon event. If there's a correlation, it's pretty weak.
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Supposed to? I think you need to take statistics 101.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"dang warm I can't catch it at the mall because I'm playing outside in the beautiful weather."
Just watch out for the West Nile virus. Dengue fever is starting to show up in higher latitudes as well. Better yet, just don't leave the house. And disconnect the computer from the internet so you don't catch a virus that way either.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think you're mixing up Spanish with Wingdings.
That's not what pandemic means. (A flu which affects a wide area and makes people sick is just regular old seasonal flu.) A pandemic is an epidemic of a single flu strain which occurs on a global scale.
Don't make me define "epidemic" for you.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The pandemic word is used to create terror. With two patients of the same desease in different continents you have a pandemic.
Oh shut up. Pandemics are real. And potentially very dangerous. Not everything is hype. Take some more happy pills or go over to one of the copyright threads and angst there.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Get the Vaccine.
It just works out mathematically.
-1 You suffer pain
0 Pain and suffering are negligible.
1 You feel joy
Value of not taking the vaccine.
1. You don't get the Vaccine and you live in fear of getting the flu: -1
2. You don't get the Vaccine and you Don't get the flu: 0
3. You don't get the Vaccine and you get the flue: -1
4. You don't get the Vaccine and you save like $10: +1
Sum of Risk vs. Loss is -1
Value if you take the vaccine.
1. You get the Vaccine and feel good about being immune: +1
2. You get the Vaccine and you get the flu: -1
3. You get the Vaccine and don't get the flu: 0
4. You get the Vaccine and you spend $10 (Not that much): 0
Sum of Risk vs. Loss is 0
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It does not have to be "global scale". Here is a quote from the WHO criteria for declaring a pandemic.
"The Pandemic will be declared when the new virus sub-type has been shown to cause several outbreaks in at least one country, and to have spread to other countries, with consistent disease patterns indicating that serious morbidity and mortality is likely in at least one segment of the population."
So a new flu strain in two countries that could cause death in elderly people would be considered a pandemic. That is far from a global scale. It may eventually become global but does not need to be global to be declared a pandemic.
Yes, they are real but we have to learn to stay calm and don't panic.
Well that takes all the fun out of it.
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Well, it would be hard for the next flu pandemic to not be worse that the last one, since the last flu pandemic killed fewer people in the U.S. than the flu usually kills each year (I do not have worldwide numbers, but my impression is that they were pretty low as well).
The problem with discussions of flu pandemics is that a significant number of people trot out the 1918-19 flu pandemic as what we should be afraid of. The problem with that is twofold. First, it came right on the heals of WWI, with most of the developed world not yet having recovered from the devestation of that event. Second, and more importantly, it was the last flu pandemic before the development of modern medicine (which I date to the development of the first antimicrobial drugs in the 1930s, the sulfonamides). Unless there is a complete collapse of our modern medical establishment, we will not see a repeat of the 1918-19 flu pandemic.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Vague much?
I love the specificity of this sentence.
No, not getting the Flushot for yourself is also irresponsible. The Vaccine only works on "some" people. If you fail to get the flu shot yourself, catch the flu and then pass it to some vulnerable child or elderly person that the flu shot did not have an affect on and they die, you're directly responsible for their death.
I don't suggest we make it a law. You're body is your body. But you should know exactly what you're doing when you decided to spout this anti-vaccine nonsense fad. You're risking lives. Not just your own, but your entire family and everyone you meet. You should be shamed, shunned, and generally hated. I wont let un-vaccinate kids anywhere near my kid. I may very well start doing the same with adults.
People can mock WHO all they want, and hide their heads in the sand, but eventually we're going to get hit with another pandemic like the 1918 flu pandemic, and we'll see where these various types of antivaccers assholes sit. Maybe the seasonal vaccine doesn't do fuck all, and I'm no worse off than I was without it. But even reducing the odds of getting a virulent flue strain seems like a goddamned good idea to me.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well, you need to take into consideration of two other factors:
1) Potential side effects. The cure could kill you, so to speak.
2) NPR had a story on the manufacturing of a pandemic panic, and it seems the flu shot is only 60% effective.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
There is a few "risk factors" that are missed.
1. Get the flu from the vaccine even though the virus never reached your area.
2. Force Governments to spend billions of dollars on vaccines that are never used.
3. Avoid people, cancel vacations, etc in hopes of not getting disease even though disease is not present.
My issue with the use of pandemic is that the threshold is so low for it's use but people equating it to to events like the Black Death. Fewer people died from the "Bird Flu Pandemic" a few years ago than normally die each flu season. Most people equate pandemic with mass death and that is just not always the case. Pandemic is mainly defined by mutation and spread and not virilance and mortality.
A World Pandemic is eventual, and probably will be worse than previous Pandemics. With Climate Change increasing rapidly, Polution getting worse, and Population on the rise, I'm surprised a global virus hasn't killed millions of people yet.
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with HIV?
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
The Vaccine only works on "some" people. If you fail to get the flu shot yourself, catch the flu and then pass it to some vulnerable child or elderly person that the flu shot did not have an affect on and they die, you're directly responsible for their death.
No, by definition, you're indirectly responsible. Not directly.
Death due to influenza (or pneumonia) varies seasonally but tends to be in the 7% range (of all death types). (Probably only 2% to 8% of those P&I deaths are actually one of the major strains of influenza - also from the CDC). Serious adverse reactions to a flu vaccine is typically less than 20 per 1,000,000. Death is a very small subset of serious adverse reactions.
I'm not going to walk the numbers all the way to apples and apples because it should be obvious from here.
Or you could learn some HTML so you could write “La Niña.” It's pretty easy to look this stuff up...
Why in the fuck would you use an HTML entity for a perfectly valid character?
It's SLASHDOT'S fault that anything unicode gets fucked to hell.
HTML entities are for ESCAPING special characters like < via < so they're interpreted and rendered as text and not code.
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