Reply #16: Poeple are scared and conflate other issues and govt lies, BUT, self education is a start

[bluedawg12]

an open mind requires accepting the possibilty that past events will repeat themselves, meaning other pandemics have already occured, in a less mobile world with a smaller population to spread disease.

Simply because no one knows when it will happen and that it has not happened yet does not remove the risk of it happening.

There is already another fact established, people are infected getting sick and dying, the only other question now is, how far and fast and to what extent will it spread. Because, it has already spread.

The job for science is to remain alert and attuned and to be pre-emptive. This is one instance where pre-emptive safety measures are a good thing.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/352/18/1839

"An influenza pandemic has always been a great global infectious-disease threat. There have been 10 pandemics of influenza A in the past 300 years. A recent analysis showed that the pandemic of 1918 and 1919 killed 50 million to 100 million people,1 and although its severity is often considered anomalous, the pandemic of 1830 through 1832 was similarly severe — it simply occurred when the world's population was smaller. Today, with a world population of 6.5 billion — more than three times that in 1918 — even a relatively "mild" pandemic could kill many millions of people.

Influenza experts recognize the inevitability of another pandemic. When will it begin? Will it be caused by H5N1, the avian influenzavirus strain currently circulating in Asia? Will its effect rival that of 1918 or be more muted, as was the case in the pandemics of 1957 and 1968? Nobody knows."