Official Flu Pandemic Prevention in SA thread (merged threads) (Schertz: movies, safer)

[LilZ_098]

Originally Posted by Paka

A girl that I work with at WHMC states that she has been told that a guy that lives at the end of her cul-de-sac over near Randolph has tested positive.

She does not socialize with them, just knows who they are (down the street a bit), but vocalized concern because evidently they use the same buses to take her kids to their school. Kiddos out of school this week of course.

Just an FYI that the first 2 high school students confirmed to have it were diagnosed at Randolph and were military families: Screening program prompts fast swine flu identification. As for her concern with the buses, aren't they cleaning those down just as much as the schools? I would hope so!

[mojokitty]

I'm just wondering, why is everyone getting so hyped about the swine flu right now? I'm not being funny, I'm serious. I'm not concerned at all and just wondering if it is because of huge media hype? Am I missing something? Anyone? To me, all it's doing is causing a huge panic, and even my 4 year old is looking at me with big, scared eyes and saying "mama, what's slime flu?". At some point, this needs to stop.

[Bowie]

Originally Posted by mojokitty

I'm just wondering, why is everyone getting so hyped about the swine flu right now? I'm not being funny, I'm serious. I'm not concerned at all and just wondering if it is because of huge media hype? Am I missing something? Anyone? To me, all it's doing is causing a huge panic, and even my 4 year old is looking at me with big, scared eyes and saying "mama, what's slime flu?". At some point, this needs to stop.

Without the filter of any media whatsoever: the US government says it's a public health emergency; the international World Health Organization raised it's influenza alert level to the level just below full-scale pandemic; thousands of school children in this state are out of school and stopped from participating in interscholastic activities to prevent the spread of the flu.

I don't need much more convincing to pay attention. It's not cause to hide under the bed, but it is important to know what to do and what to avoid.

[djw]

Originally Posted by mojokitty

I'm just wondering, why is everyone getting so hyped about the swine flu right now? I'm not being funny, I'm serious. I'm not concerned at all and just wondering if it is because of huge media hype? Am I missing something? Anyone? To me, all it's doing is causing a huge panic, and even my 4 year old is looking at me with big, scared eyes and saying "mama, what's slime flu?". At some point, this needs to stop.

Thank you! I totally get that there are sick people getting sick and folks that have died (in Mexico) but I truly do not understand why this strain is causing such a panic. Is it that it is so far-reaching (world wide) and the 'usual' flu isn't? Is it that the vaccine for the 'usual' flu doesn't do any good? Or is it just something a little out of the ordinary that the media can pick up on? Closing the schools and churches tends to add to the hype, imo!

[ChrisMP]

Remember, there is not cure for a flu. Just drugs that help. From what I am hearing from so of my friends who work in D.C is that there is a huge scare out there that this thing will go from 2 to 8 to 100 to 10000 and so on and so on.
It has me thinking about flying to Boston in a couple of weeks to catch a Red Sox game.

[mojokitty]

Originally Posted by Bowie

Without the filter of any media whatsoever: the US government says it's a public health emergency; the international World Health Organization raised it's influenza alert level to the level just below full-scale pandemic; thousands of school children in this state are out of school and stopped from participating in interscholastic activities to prevent the spread of the flu.

I don't need much more convincing to pay attention. It's not cause to hide under the bed, but it is important to know what to do and what to avoid.

I understand that, I watch the news and all of the information that you provided has been more than shoved at us. I'm wondering why they are so worried? Is there a definite explanation for that? I guess I just don't get it and it's just scaring my little one, causing everyone to "think" they have symptoms of it, people freaking out rushing to the ER, kids hearing them say "death toll" on TV, people stockpiling, etc. If more people would worry this much about the regular flu, maybe they wouldn't have had so many deaths from THAT flu last year. I'm just trying see if someone knows of a more serious reason that media and gov't is causing so much chaos with this particular one. Anyone?

[Bowie]

Originally Posted by mojokitty

I'm wondering why they are so worried? Is there a definite explanation for that?

<snip>

I'm just trying see if someone knows of a more serious reason that media and gov't is causing so much chaos with this particular one. Anyone?

Hard to answer that without either medical training or information filtered by the media. I don't want to push the thread in the direction of discussing the flu in general, but I will share this from a post by a C-D member:

As an infectious diseases physician, I can recommend looking at the CDC website and the site of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, where they have good, factual information: Information on Swine Influenza

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by mojokitty

I understand that, I watch the news and all of the information that you provided has been more than shoved at us. I'm wondering why they are so worried? Is there a definite explanation for that? I guess I just don't get it and it's just scaring my little one, causing everyone to "think" they have symptoms of it, people freaking out rushing to the ER, kids hearing them say "death toll" on TV, people stockpiling, etc. If more people would worry this much about the regular flu, maybe they wouldn't have had so many deaths from THAT flu last year. I'm just trying see if someone knows of a more serious reason that media and gov't is causing so much chaos with this particular one. Anyone?

There are many flu strains and most are isolated to specific hosts: human strains infect human hosts, swine strains infect pigs, bird strains infect birds. Occasionally one of those strains infects a host that's not it's normal host (which has happened with H5N1 - avian flu). However that virus i s not passed person to person, so humans are a "dead end" host.

Generally, we know how they act in those hosts and most of the time can have a reasonable expectation of the severity of a flu season if it follows a typical strain.

This strain of swine flu has recombined to not only infect humans, but to be transmitted between humans. It's not just another flu virus like we see each year, it has different genes which we have not seen infecting humans before. We have less understanding of how it acts in a human host and are therefore less able to predict how it will act as it spreads through a population. That is being evaluated at the moment.

The aim of WHO is to prevent another pandemic, so by instituting certain measures in advance of a pandemic, we may be able to prevent it from happening. This situation fits the definition of Level 5, which is a preparedness level - it triggers certain actions for prevention. Thus far, the virus has not shown the lethality of any of the 3 pandemics which occurred in the 20th century, but we are in very early stages. Will it? hard to say. The goal is to prevent it from ever getting there.

By definition a pandemic is an epidemic which is world-wide (HIV is a pandemic). An epidemic is any disease which is in a population more than "normal" (normal being endemic). For flu, the definition also includes an increase in severity over the norm. We have the first part, not the second part at this time.

I won't argue on whether or not the response is overkill, I'll leave that up to you experts to debate

[rd2007]

Breaking news! They found the actual source of this round of pig flu




I know that's OT, but it's so cute.

[majormadmax]

This would not be the first time the media has overblown a situation; but given the information that the CDC and WHO posted I agree that there is a need for concern but not alarm. There are several measures you can take to reduce your chances of getting swine flu, and as long as you are cautious the odds are you will not be infected.

Personally, I will stick to sources of information that I trust (such as local and nation government, or health agencies) and stay away from the media. The odd thing is, since the swine flu outbreak there has been little coverage of the Taliban operations moving towards Islamabad, something that should be of more concern to this nation as the Pakistani government does possess nuclear weapons...

Cheers! M2