Swine Flu and Ways to Deal with It
It's not that I don't think others have talked about this or know about this. I don't. I know very well how much the media has talked about swine flu and how much attention has been paid to it. However, I thought I'd go ahead and put by two cents forward.
First off, to reiterate the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... don't panic.
Panicking will help you very little and will do plently of harm. Consider this if schools close unnecessarily and people don't go to work in order to avoid infection, services will lose efficiency, curriculums will have to be shelved, our already precarious economy will lose further steam, and all the while you won't be able to prevent the possibility of infection by friends, neighbors, or family unless you lock yourself in a closet until it all blows over. I repeat: panicking will do very little to help while causing plenty of harm. Don't panic.
Not that I'm accusing any of you doing so. But once could hardly blame any of us for falling into such a state of hysteria. After all, the swine flu (or the Mexican flu or the North American flue or H1N1 or whatever you want to call it) seems to be all that anybody can talk about. The economy? Old news. The war in Iraq? Who cares? This is meaty, this is juicy, this is new.
It's also genuinely a threat. Don't be fooled by the fact that the infection rate so far has been low and fatalities have been even lower. These numbers may hold - but they might also not. After all, the Spanish influenza infected thousands before it finally gained its infamy as a world pandemic. Just because it seems to be, except in the case of Mexico, so far have been a mild and fairly harmless strain of a disease we all live with on an annual basis that doesn't mean it won't get mean - fast.
Here's three things you should know about the flu and the threat it poses:
1. It's an animal to human disease that has successfully made the jump to intraspecies transmission between humans. This in itself is worrying. Avian flu never made this jump and all the people who were exposed seem to have been exposed directly to birds carrying the disease, with a few possible exceptions. By contrast, the majority of swine flu patients have been infected by other humans. This shows the disease is versatile.
2. Data is still low. We don't know why no one but Mexicans seems to be dying (the 1 case in the US was a Mexican toddler infected in Mexico). It certainly has nothing to do with the "Mexican race" or any such thing as there is no such thing. Instead, there's some hidden factor at work. Some believe that the deaths in Mexico are caused by something else. I've personally considered the possibility that, if a cytokine storm is at work (which it sounds like it might not) that it's because Mexican immune systems are more robust due to America's ultra-hygenic culture and widespread germaphobia. But the point is that we don't know. The less we know the more danger there is.
3. Some of the deaths in Mexico have been young, healthy adults. In fact, most of them have been. This is deeply worrying - and no, not just because I'm one such specimen. It shows that the disease is unusually versatile - like the Spanish influenza. Unless, of course, the deaths were not caused by the flu. Again, we don't know as much as we'd like to.
So, yes, the flu is worth being cautious about. It's worth closing schools where infection has been confirmed. However, in spite of these three facts the flu might not turn out the way of the Spanish influenza. First of all, for some odd reason, the disease seems to have been mild in the United States and dangerous in Mexico. No one is quite sure why but reevaluation of the Mexican cases has begun. Perhaps we overreacted and leapt to the worst conclusion. As it turns out, of the hundred plus dead reported, only a handful have actually been confirmed to be as a result of the swine flu.
This means that we might be making a fuss about nothing. Or, alternatively, it might mean that the strain in the United States is slightly different and slightly weaker than that in Mexico. I can't say for sure. I'd be lying if I said I was an expert on this. Far from. I've pulled up most of this stuff from local newspapers and Wikipedia so feel free to take my commentary with a grain of salt. But I have done my research and for what it's worth I'm beginning to think this might turn out to be far less dangerous than we expect.
After all, the Spanish influenza, if it occured today, would likely be far less devastating. And not just because we have better medicine in general. Rather, it seems that the main two factors that made the Spanish influenza so bad were artificial ones. First, of course, was the fact that the disease tarted during the final months of World War One. As a result, tired, unhygenic, and stressed soldiers were shuffling the disease through Europe like plague rats. This made the disease spread more quickly as well as giving it a chance to mutate amongst dense clumps of young adults.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, in a complete reversal of our current attack on the flu the governments of the world more or less ignored the Spanish influenza until it already killed tens of thousands of people. It was a time of war - a long war - and naturally they wanted to keep morale up. Telling people that there was a disease more terrible than the very war that was being waged and that, indeed, it was being spread by that war would hardly have made people confident in their nation's future. So, naturally, the government hushed it up. Newspapers from the time hardly talked about the disease. So that's one big difference.
However, it's better, in the case of disease, to generally be safe rather than sorry. So here's some simple precautions to consider.
1. Sleep. This is an issue I myself have. I am a terrible sleeper. But it's also important. Keeping yourself healthy, contrary to what you might hear, will not make you more vulnerable. It might not protect you as much as in the case of other strains, but it will help.
2. Stay hydrated. If you do get infected this will be of even more importance since you'll be running a fever. But even before hand it helps keep your body clean and awash with fluid. After all, your blood and lymphatic fluid is both made up primarily of water. Keep the plumbing going.
3. Wash your hands frequently. Not in an obsessive manner, of course, but whenever you go out in public and return to your home, interact with strangers, or even just go from work to home or vice versa, wash your hands. This will protect you of course, but it will also protect others if you are infected. The fewer people infected the better because there'll be a lower chance of mutation.
4. When you have to cough or sneeze, do it in a tissue. And through that tissue away or, at the very least, keep it in your pocket and wash your hands afterwards. That doesn't mean you're infected, of course, after all, some people get their allergies this time of year. But don't risk infecting others if you can avoid it.
5. Likewise, if you see someone coughing or sneezing - try not to get too close to them.
6. Stay away from large crowds. I don't mean to insinuate that large crowds will automatically be large hives of infection or that you can even necessarily avoid infection by meeting people one by one. I'm just saying that closed spaces make infection easier. So, if you're among a group of people, see if you can avoid body contact. If not, maybe consider finding another way. This is primarily optional, but it is a simple precaution that may do som real help.
And lastly, before I finish, consider this. Although it might seem like everything is very, very scary right now, things are never quite as bleak as they appear to be (really, it's true). It's easy to focus on the negative. Don't forget, after all, that regular seasonal flu kills thousands. Don't forget that so far there have been roughly 900 infections among 6.7 billion people and that there have been 250 infections within the U.S., a nation of 300 million. Don't forget that of those, only 23 deaths have been confirmed.
Don't forget that, even in the worst case scenario, where this ends up like the Spanish influenza, only a fifth of the world population or so was infected and of those only two to five percent died. So, even if things get to this worst of worse scenarios, there's a literal 99% chance that you'll survive the flu. Anything higher, after all, would have been devastating to the human race - which Spanish influenza was not.
Keep that in mind. But don't let it stop you from taking basic precautions.
Nivenus out.
First off, to reiterate the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... don't panic.
Panicking will help you very little and will do plently of harm. Consider this if schools close unnecessarily and people don't go to work in order to avoid infection, services will lose efficiency, curriculums will have to be shelved, our already precarious economy will lose further steam, and all the while you won't be able to prevent the possibility of infection by friends, neighbors, or family unless you lock yourself in a closet until it all blows over. I repeat: panicking will do very little to help while causing plenty of harm. Don't panic.
Not that I'm accusing any of you doing so. But once could hardly blame any of us for falling into such a state of hysteria. After all, the swine flu (or the Mexican flu or the North American flue or H1N1 or whatever you want to call it) seems to be all that anybody can talk about. The economy? Old news. The war in Iraq? Who cares? This is meaty, this is juicy, this is new.
It's also genuinely a threat. Don't be fooled by the fact that the infection rate so far has been low and fatalities have been even lower. These numbers may hold - but they might also not. After all, the Spanish influenza infected thousands before it finally gained its infamy as a world pandemic. Just because it seems to be, except in the case of Mexico, so far have been a mild and fairly harmless strain of a disease we all live with on an annual basis that doesn't mean it won't get mean - fast.
Here's three things you should know about the flu and the threat it poses:
1. It's an animal to human disease that has successfully made the jump to intraspecies transmission between humans. This in itself is worrying. Avian flu never made this jump and all the people who were exposed seem to have been exposed directly to birds carrying the disease, with a few possible exceptions. By contrast, the majority of swine flu patients have been infected by other humans. This shows the disease is versatile.
2. Data is still low. We don't know why no one but Mexicans seems to be dying (the 1 case in the US was a Mexican toddler infected in Mexico). It certainly has nothing to do with the "Mexican race" or any such thing as there is no such thing. Instead, there's some hidden factor at work. Some believe that the deaths in Mexico are caused by something else. I've personally considered the possibility that, if a cytokine storm is at work (which it sounds like it might not) that it's because Mexican immune systems are more robust due to America's ultra-hygenic culture and widespread germaphobia. But the point is that we don't know. The less we know the more danger there is.
3. Some of the deaths in Mexico have been young, healthy adults. In fact, most of them have been. This is deeply worrying - and no, not just because I'm one such specimen. It shows that the disease is unusually versatile - like the Spanish influenza. Unless, of course, the deaths were not caused by the flu. Again, we don't know as much as we'd like to.
So, yes, the flu is worth being cautious about. It's worth closing schools where infection has been confirmed. However, in spite of these three facts the flu might not turn out the way of the Spanish influenza. First of all, for some odd reason, the disease seems to have been mild in the United States and dangerous in Mexico. No one is quite sure why but reevaluation of the Mexican cases has begun. Perhaps we overreacted and leapt to the worst conclusion. As it turns out, of the hundred plus dead reported, only a handful have actually been confirmed to be as a result of the swine flu.
This means that we might be making a fuss about nothing. Or, alternatively, it might mean that the strain in the United States is slightly different and slightly weaker than that in Mexico. I can't say for sure. I'd be lying if I said I was an expert on this. Far from. I've pulled up most of this stuff from local newspapers and Wikipedia so feel free to take my commentary with a grain of salt. But I have done my research and for what it's worth I'm beginning to think this might turn out to be far less dangerous than we expect.
After all, the Spanish influenza, if it occured today, would likely be far less devastating. And not just because we have better medicine in general. Rather, it seems that the main two factors that made the Spanish influenza so bad were artificial ones. First, of course, was the fact that the disease tarted during the final months of World War One. As a result, tired, unhygenic, and stressed soldiers were shuffling the disease through Europe like plague rats. This made the disease spread more quickly as well as giving it a chance to mutate amongst dense clumps of young adults.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, in a complete reversal of our current attack on the flu the governments of the world more or less ignored the Spanish influenza until it already killed tens of thousands of people. It was a time of war - a long war - and naturally they wanted to keep morale up. Telling people that there was a disease more terrible than the very war that was being waged and that, indeed, it was being spread by that war would hardly have made people confident in their nation's future. So, naturally, the government hushed it up. Newspapers from the time hardly talked about the disease. So that's one big difference.
However, it's better, in the case of disease, to generally be safe rather than sorry. So here's some simple precautions to consider.
1. Sleep. This is an issue I myself have. I am a terrible sleeper. But it's also important. Keeping yourself healthy, contrary to what you might hear, will not make you more vulnerable. It might not protect you as much as in the case of other strains, but it will help.
2. Stay hydrated. If you do get infected this will be of even more importance since you'll be running a fever. But even before hand it helps keep your body clean and awash with fluid. After all, your blood and lymphatic fluid is both made up primarily of water. Keep the plumbing going.
3. Wash your hands frequently. Not in an obsessive manner, of course, but whenever you go out in public and return to your home, interact with strangers, or even just go from work to home or vice versa, wash your hands. This will protect you of course, but it will also protect others if you are infected. The fewer people infected the better because there'll be a lower chance of mutation.
4. When you have to cough or sneeze, do it in a tissue. And through that tissue away or, at the very least, keep it in your pocket and wash your hands afterwards. That doesn't mean you're infected, of course, after all, some people get their allergies this time of year. But don't risk infecting others if you can avoid it.
5. Likewise, if you see someone coughing or sneezing - try not to get too close to them.
6. Stay away from large crowds. I don't mean to insinuate that large crowds will automatically be large hives of infection or that you can even necessarily avoid infection by meeting people one by one. I'm just saying that closed spaces make infection easier. So, if you're among a group of people, see if you can avoid body contact. If not, maybe consider finding another way. This is primarily optional, but it is a simple precaution that may do som real help.
And lastly, before I finish, consider this. Although it might seem like everything is very, very scary right now, things are never quite as bleak as they appear to be (really, it's true). It's easy to focus on the negative. Don't forget, after all, that regular seasonal flu kills thousands. Don't forget that so far there have been roughly 900 infections among 6.7 billion people and that there have been 250 infections within the U.S., a nation of 300 million. Don't forget that of those, only 23 deaths have been confirmed.
Don't forget that, even in the worst case scenario, where this ends up like the Spanish influenza, only a fifth of the world population or so was infected and of those only two to five percent died. So, even if things get to this worst of worse scenarios, there's a literal 99% chance that you'll survive the flu. Anything higher, after all, would have been devastating to the human race - which Spanish influenza was not.
Keep that in mind. But don't let it stop you from taking basic precautions.
Nivenus out.