Mexico fights swine flu with 'pandemic potential'

You just scared me mino. I'm sick right now too and have the symptoms described

i got sick last week as well, though i don't reckon it's the swine flu.

its just the media trying to scare people....OMG IT CANT BE CONTAINED !!!!!!!

i'm sure in 2 months nobody will talk about it anymore

Quote from kleinluka

its just the media trying to scare people....OMG IT CANT BE CONTAINED !!!!!!! i'm sure in 2 months nobody will talk about it anymore

it's gonna be like the bird flu i reckon... whenever they get the vaccine out and about, everything's gonna be a-ok.

i wonder what the creationists would do without science now

There is no vaccination to bird flu. It was because of extremely proactive prevention measures that a pandemic was prevented, similarly to what's happening here. The incredibly mutational nature of flu makes any kind of vaccine temporary at best, which is why even regular flu shots need to be taken regularly — and still aren't guaranteed to work.

I do agree that the media tends to go OTT with these things, but it doesn't hurt to spread awareness and to spur governments/etc into action. I'd rather than they put too much spotlight on it rather than something like bird flu hit the major epicentres of countries and tally up immeasurable body counts.

Quote from Thrik

There is no vaccination to bird flu. It was because of extremely proactive prevention measures that a pandemic was prevented, similarly to what's happening here. The incredibly mutational nature of flu makes any kind of vaccine temporary at best, which is why even regular flu shots need to be taken regularly — and still aren't guaranteed to work.I do agree that the media tends to go OTT with these things, but it doesn't hurt to spread awareness and to spur governments/etc into action. I'd rather than they put too much spotlight on it rather than something like bird flu hit the major epicentres of countries and tally up immeasurable body counts.

while it's true that there a no vaccines per se, there are vaccines that improve the antibodies in the blood against the virus. they aren't temporary for as long as virus doesn't mutate, which means as long as it doesn't gain a new strain.

Don't underestimate it. Sure everyone might have forgotten this in 2 months, or half the world will have died. It is not impossible that a flu virus becomes very deadly and spreads very easily. Don't turn a blind eye on the danger just because "yeah well nothing like that happened in the past 20 years so there is no issue!!!11". Which is exactly why the world as a whole is going to hell really. People don't seem to care unless it is already too late.

In 3 days time it also showed up in 4 states in the USA, possibly in New Zealand, and now possibly in France too. The flu started in Mexico City, a city with 28 000 000 people, of which 7 milion do not have access to up to standard hygiene. The 1918 flu killed more people in 25 weeks than aids has killed on 25 years. 40 percent got contaminated, 5 percent of the world died. 5 percent of the current population means 350 milion dead. Like this variant, the 1918 one too primarily killed young adults (thats us...). Two more flu's popped up since the 1950's, both killed at least 1 milion people in a short amount of time.

Media overhyping it or not, I think it is really bad to feel invicible because we got this thing called a health system. This is mexico, and this is one of the biggest and most dirty cities on this planet. We also got a very international world where this can spread super fast and likely already has. I read a story from someone who works in Mexico City, and two of his colleagues became ill with flu on monday. The doctor sent them back to work because he thought it was just flu... We only know this since 3 days, but the virus has been active for at least a week already.

And we never actually beated bird flu fyi. Bird flu just didn't mutate enough yet. That is the only reason why we managed to contain it so easily, not because we did such a wonderful job really.

Quote from Hourences

Which is exactly why the world as a whole is going to hell really.

The assumptions of that statement and the belief in pandemics tend to always go hand in hand...

"No sir. Just body aches and feeling cruddy, that's all."

"How are your children feeling?"

"Oh, they're feeling good. They're sleeping in today."

"Have the local government officials quarantined you?"

"No. They just asked us not to go out until we feel better."

Weird I still feel ill and felt really sick with body aches last night and today.

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I love the paranoid people.

They told us in the Army that one guy was in the hospital for Meningitis, told us the symptoms etc. and suddenly everyone felt ill for a while. The guy was cleared for everything and voila, not a single person felt ill.

Not knowing the symptoms really helps, cause if you think you are sick, your body acts sick.

Quote from st0lve

I love the paranoid people.They told us in the Army that one guy was in the hospital for Meningitis, told us the symptoms etc. and suddenly everyone felt ill for a while. The guy was cleared for everything and voila, not a single person felt ill.

Not knowing the symptoms really helps, cause if you think you are sick, your body acts sick.

ever heard of the placebo effect? it works well in reverse too.

I think the panic is way over the top at least for the western world. From what i know so far its not more deadly then the normal flu that we get every year and this one never made us freak out in panic even before yearly vaccines became common. Sure its possibly deadly under unfortunate circumstances and having the flu fucking sucks but it would be nothing that i haven't experienced a couple of times already in my life. I think at least in the west we are also better prepared medicaly and physically then lets say 1918. Remember WW1 was still going and the "healthy young" people who died like flies actualy were a bit underfed and had often no access to a healthy diet. The second and third world however, yea they are much more fucked in a pandemic due to bad hygienic situations, lack of healthcare, underfeeding etc.

From what I understand the Spanish flu would have killed its young victims regardless of diet, because ironically enough it was strong immune systems it affected the most due to causing an insane reaction where the immune system basically killed itself. Those of us in the western world with strong immune systems would probably be at the most risk of all to something like the Spanish flu.

It was pretty much a crazily deadly flu, which is why if there's any chance of something similar reappearing (nothing has since the 1910s AFAIK) we should very much be scared shitless and take whatever precautions possible to prevent it.

The whole frenzy about the swine flu is because it has the potential to mutate into a Spanish flu-esque virus, right? I've not been following it too closely.

Actualy you are right about the spanish flu. However last thing i have read about the swine flu is that the symptoms are that of a typical or mild influenza. The actual death toll is also way lower then news papers reported at the beginning of the outbreak.

Even if it killed half the population of the world everyone would get over it at some point. Probably would be the catalyst for a lot of good movies too !

People started wearing masks on the subway (NYC) so yesterday I broke out into coughing fits with my friend. After, we would have polite conversation about how we feel more sick than ever...a different kind of sick...we couldn't define it but it must be like what someone feels like when they're gravely ill. Then we would laugh it off and resume conversation.