Pig Plague Panic!

[dr_nebula]

The Sky is Falling, the swine is coming!!!!

As the Swine Flu hysteria or PIG PLAGUE PANIC (P3) sweeps the nation and the world via media hype, the doctor says - I've heard this *same* line of crap all before!That's right friends, this is NOTHING new. Back in 1976, a similar wave of P3 was sweeping the nation, and drastic steps in immunization

Comments

[rhaycen]

It's all a load of nonsense, every year world wide ... thousands of people die from the normal flu virus. This swine-flu, or Mexican-flu as some people call it is all a giant media hype.

In some countries pigs are being slaughtered in huge numbers for protection. While this is now a human-to-human flu, so the pigs are harmless.

I hate our 24h news media, it is all so hyped.

[dr_nebula]

Yeah, it is a total hype job. Now the WHO is doing its 'thing' - likely in hopes of getting better funding and staffing.

[fortunavirilis]

I already have food/water/other rations at home because we're about to enter in to hurricane season and I live in South Florida- so there isn't much else I WOULD do besides making sure I have all my medications filled if someone in the area contracted the virus and they closed any major public services/locked down movement (I'd rather not go to a pharmacy if there are people with H1N1 also there since my asthma places me at higher risk for severe flu to begin with).

I can see where this is serious because there isn't a vaccine, but rushing a vaccine is a bigger risk if it isn't properly tested (for reasons you touch on in your post). They don't even know the tertiary transmission rates yet, so there isn't a need to panic at this point.

Edited to add: I avoid going to that pharmacy except drive-through pick up during normal flu season since I don't get flu shots every year. I don't believe they help prevent getting the flu- only the 'likely' flu of the season and are often wrong. And I've gotten sick from flu shots before.

[tinhuviel]

Just another sociological experiment and a prep for the elite to put us in camps. Just my opinion. Things have to get a lot worse before the coming Alpaca Lips.

[a_kosmos]

I'm not a big freak-out-over-possible-impending-doom kind of person. I tend to see a lot of this stuff as being kind of random. I totally agree with whoever said that 24 hour news is BAD for the soul. Too much information, too often, given by a bunch of freaked out talking heads will make anyone put on the tin foil hat.

I'm also not a big flu worrier in general. I have gotten one flu shot in my life, and I think I've had actual flu once (and I was a kid recovering from chicken pox).

[crwilley]

Right now, unless you live in Mexico City, the appropriate response seems to be "Watch." Right now, I am not in danger. I may be in danger in the future, and they're concerned about a second wave this fall a la 1918, but who can predict what a virus will do that far in advance? I suppose I'm washing my hands more often, but I'm annoyed that a whole school district near me has shut down for the rest of the week because a student who went to Mexico a couple weeks ago has flulikes. (The incubation period on this one seems to be short - 1 or 2 days.)

The thing is, we're missing one critical piece of information: how many people in Mexico are actually sick? We know how many have shown up at the hospital, we know how many are dead, but there's a WHO employee in Mexico who's been posting on Ravelry when she can, and she gives the impression that those numbers represent the tip of the iceberg - that most people who've gotten sick have self-medicated rather than going to the hospital, and so we just don't know how many there are.

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