I feel like the major news outlets have all regressed to their pre 9/11 sensabilities. Swine flu is this weeks boogey man. It's kind of shitty from an entertainment perspective. When is shark week coming back? I want to see video of people's limbs being torn off. I want to see an angry public demanding to know what the government is doing about the toothed menace.
On the one hand it's kind of the typical fear mongering motivated to make advertising sales. On the other hand, this kind of hype and paranoia is arguably a valuable public awareness tool that in the cases of infectious diseases can make a significant contribution to spreading the word about containment practices.
Is it an effective tool taken in context with what's considered typical? Are the major news sources making valuable contributions or are they just telling us to buy duct tape, painters' masks, and whatever other products their parent companies may profit from?
Maybe I'm just bitter after so many years of being jerked around.
There's probably little reason to panic. On the other hand, H1N1 is a little different than other strains of the flu. For one thing, whereas regular variations of the flu only pose a danger to the old, infirmed and very young, H1N1 is more likely to kill someone in good health with a strong immune system. This is because it kills by engaging a cytokin storm. Essentially, this is an overreaction of your immune system that floods your body with T-cells and macrophages which can induce severe organ problems and out of control swelling and filling of the lungs with hyper pneumonia symptoms. Additionally, H1N1 has proven to be 100% resistant to tamiflu in Australian and South African cases.Chances are there's little chance of dying from the swine flu if you have access to quality medical care. Most of the deaths related to the last break out of H1N1, the 1918 Spanish Flu, were the result of poor medical practice and unavailability of modern medicine. Despite that, it's still a highly contagious strain, and has the chance to spread rapidly
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You might want to recheck your facts. The group H1N1 covers a lot of different flu strains. The one that was resistant to Tamiflu in South Africa and Australia last year (from the article you linked) is a different strain from the swine flu. The cytokine storm effect is not present in all flus, and in the swine flu, that effect been limited to cases in Mexico (for so far unknown reasons). The bottom line is that while this one is killing some people in Mexico, it's not behaving the same way here, and it's treatable with Tamiflu even if you get very sick, so no reason to panic.
Which is why I led off with "there's probably little reason to panic." Even so, not panicking shouldn't be taken as a license to be cavalier about the potential for transmission or the impact to those communities that don't have access to remedies.
It still spreads via droplets, and is not airborne. While I would ammend the tone of my original post some to say the swine fly is cause for concern, I don't think it's cause for the kind of panic and around-the-clock news coverage it's gotten. However, if this makes people rethink their cleanliness standards, that's not all bad either.
I'm not panicking about swine flu, but - rickets is actually caused by a vitamin D deficiency, and while it isn't that common here in the first world, it is not unheard of among certain populations. I nearly had it as a child, as I apparently don't absorb vitamin D well. Also, we're seeing more cases of measles etc. due to parents electing not to immunize their children, but that's a whole other ball of wax.
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Maybe I'm just bitter after so many years of being jerked around.
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http://www.smh.com.au/world/only-7-swine-flu-deaths-not-152-says-who-20090429-aml1.html
It still spreads via droplets, and is not airborne. While I would ammend the tone of my original post some to say the swine fly is cause for concern, I don't think it's cause for the kind of panic and around-the-clock news coverage it's gotten. However, if this makes people rethink their cleanliness standards, that's not all bad either.
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