I'm confused. IE: Swine Flu

[Texasgal]

according to the CDC 36,000 people died from influnenza type A last year.

The FLU kills. All strains KILL.

Why is the media freaking out? :shrug:

[itsrobert]

1. Pandemic sells advertising/ratings

Torture is bad for business.

[graywarrior]

3. Nail on head.

[mod mom]

2. Get's torture off the front page?

[Maru Kitteh]

4. The novelty of the word swine, primarily. Nobody cares about the boring old "normal" flu

PIGGIES!

BIRDIES!


It's EXOTIC.

[Avalux]

5. Because this particular strain is new and there are a lot of unknowns.

No one knows if it will continue to spread and how virulent it will be. This strain, H1N1, is the same as the flu that caused the 1918 pandemic. The WHO admits there are "big gaps" in what they know about this virus. Encouraging that so far it appears to be mild.

Take the media reports with a grain of salt but do please pay attention to news from the WHO the CDC and your local health authority. :hi:

[luvspeas]

6. FEAR SELLS!

No blond children missing
No dead interns
President generally liked
Bo seems to be in hiding
confiker didn't do much
car chases on the decline
celebrities wearing underpants

teabaggers have moved on, they needed something

[BlooInBloo]

7. Because so many people are just dying to get on the zomgtheworldisending bandwagon.

[anonymous171]

8. Young and healthy are dying. Plus the NWO told them too.

[napi21]

10. I would bet that the young who are dying are NOT healthy!

You don't have to be old to have compromised health! Every year suring the flu season SOME young & apparently healthy young people die. When the cases are investigated, there are underlying problems found that had already compromised that individual's health. Wash your hands, keep your hands out of any body orfices, and stay away from large wrowds and you'll be fine.

[Joe the Revelator]

12. Look up cyokine storms...its the reason that the young and HEALTHY die in greater numbers with

pandemic flus.


http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Science.PrimerCytokineStorm

[Joe the Revelator]

14. Also, this CDC graph shows how the spanish flu affected the young in disproportionate rates

[Chemisse]

9. Kills how many though?

If 70 people out of 1200 died in Mexico, that is a pretty high fatality rate (nearly 6 %).

If you planned a wedding for after the flu passed through, and you invited 200 people, 12 of them would be unable to attend because they were dead.

Plus if nobody has any immunities to this, then a high percentage of the population would wind up getting it. So worldwide, millions could die.

That said, I am wondering why it doesn't seem too serious in this country so far. Maybe far more people in Mexico were infected than what was reported. That would mean the deaths are a much smaller percent of those infected. (Let's hope!)

[luvspeas]

15. 12 of them would be unable to attend because they were dead.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Chemisse]

16. Yep, nothing quite so funny as 12 dead wedding guests :D

[luvspeas]

19. They might still attend...

If this flu mutates into the zombie bird pig flu, who knows?

[Joe the Revelator]

11. At the moment this flu has a 7% mortality rate and is resistant to the flu vaccine

Any other questions?

[willing dwarf]

13. Well do you remember hearing about the Spanish Influenza of 1918

It killed something like 10 million people around the world? That was a Swine Flu. Unlike the bird flu in Southeast Asia which appears not to have achieved human to human transmission, this one passes easily from animal to human and mutates to suit its new situation.

Also, I think the surprise of starting with a brief report on two boys in California and then discovering that there was something big going on in Mexico-- and then discovering that the virus in Mexico matched the one in California -- it came as a shock.

The Swine flu in 1918 almost killed my father and grandmother, so I have a personal awareness of what can happen. You know that the epidemiologists are watching it closely.

[NutmegYankee]

17. Actually more like 40-100 Million, and it was shown to not come from Pigs.

http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

Scientists reconstructed it a few years back from samples buried in the permafrost up north. They found it was a bird flu, but a typical H1N1 versus H5N1 of media popularity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1N1

[Warpy]

18. Probably because they were bored with legal action against

the last administration for violating as many laws of the country and of common decency as they could.

"The sky is falling! Run for your lives!" sells papers, soap, cars, and beer.

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. One word -

Torture.

[Garbo 2004]

21. Well the media does what it does. But it's not just ordinary swine flu, it's new & different combo

genetically that apparently hasn't been seen been seen before in pigs or humans. And seems to be transmitted rather readily from human to human.

From CNN: "The new virus has genes from North American swine and avian influenza, human influenza, and swine influenza normally found in Asia and Europe, said Nancy Cox, chief of the CDC's Influenza Division." http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/24/swine.flu/index.html

Typically, regular flu hits hardest those with weak immune systems, the very young and the very old. If reports that this bug hits hardest those young adults with healthy immune systems are indeed true, this is quite different. That would suggest it's turning their strong immune systems against them which is not what the ordinary flu does. This apparently was a characteristic of the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918. So it's a concern.

From World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_04_24/en/index.html