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Swine Flu

How Worried Are You About Swine Flu?

  • Very Worried (taking precautions)

    Votes: 5 10.4%
  • Slightly Concerned

    Votes: 21 43.8%
  • In The Middle (neutral/unsure)

    Votes: 10 20.8%
  • I Don't Care (no interest/no action)

    Votes: 12 25.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    48

Cilogy

Pathetic Douchebag
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Location
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What do you feel? Honestly.
 
Very Worried (taking precautions)

Although it's never possible to predict influenza pandemics, this seems like as good a candidate as any to become a major catastrophe. If it becomes a pandemic, it could absolutely devastate the world, killing more people than the Black Death or HIV. It's not really a question of IF something like this could happen, but when.

It doesn't help matters that there are people in my office who travel back and forth to Mexico City and San Luis Potosi all the time, or that people from those cities are constantly visiting my office. I'm buying a surgical mask tomorrow. If this flu fizzles out, I'll keep it around. At some point in my lifetime, a pandemic flu is a virtual certainty.
 
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slightly worried. I live in a rural area and am currently taking no precautions. The minute it shows up anywhere near my area I would pull the kids from school and bunker down for a bit.
 
I live in Texas, F my life. :(

Right now I'm just gonna wash my hands more and try to keep everything relatively clean, 'cause as college kid my room is pretty messy. I would say I'm slightly concerned, although I am still taking SOME precautions.
 
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I am hoping this wakes people up from their "omg taxes, boo" Zombie-mode.
Taxes are the least of our worries, as it should be.
 
I am hoping this wakes people up from their "omg taxes, boo" Zombie-mode.
Taxes are the least of our worries, as it should be.

government failing to prevent or handle more problems isn't going to make me stop complaining about paying high taxes. About 1/3 of my productivity currently takes the form fo taxes BTW.

I think you have it wrong on who is walking around in zombie mode. :2wave:
 
I intend to wash or rinse the tops of beer cans before drinking from them.
 
I am slightly concerned, as I believe New Zealand has a very good defence system in place, even though 10 people in New Zealand are suspected of having swine flu, but we'll have to wait and see for the test results to be confirmed by the WHO.

Being 2000 KMs from the nearest landmass is our first, and foremost defence, and New Zealand traditionally has a very, very strick quarantine in back-up, in case anything happens, the back-up plan has been practiced regularly, I would think, so I'm pretty happy with the system
 
Very worried.

Taking precautions, i live in a highly populated city so if it spreads here, we're all going to die; those in the city anyway. It's time like this i wish i was living in the country.
But thankfully - Labour has enough of the anti biotics for just over half the UK Population and is prepared for such an event.
 
I'm in the middle, I'm more curious than concerned.

Curious that a flu virus is active during warmer months, curious that the worst results are in Mexico only, curious that a number of deaths are in the young to middle age group as opposed to the aged / infirm / very young.

For the time being, the anti-virus treatments available work (tamiflu etc) and the virus is apparently in regression. When I watched the BBC reports last night I was suddenly in mind of that brilliant virus movie from the 70's - "the Andromeda strain" where a killer virus suddenly becomes dormant.

This thing could currently go either way - like most other viruses or evolve into something far more deadly.
 
Not really worried. I think this is just one more story that the media is blowing wayyyyyy out of proportion. It's nowhere close to a pandemic and I saw news headlines already portraying it as such.
 
The only reason I'm concerned is because there have been 6 incidents in Texas alone and most of them have been within 50 miles of where I live.

Maybe its been affecting southern states more, I don't know.

Oh by the way guess who asked for federal aid for protection against this flu? Rick Perry, governor of Secess- I mean Texas. :roll:


Not really worried. I think this is just one more story that the media is blowing wayyyyyy out of proportion. It's nowhere close to a pandemic and I saw news headlines already portraying it as such.

I agree, every news channel is crying "pandemic, pandemic." I'm just looking at confirmed reports and focusing on those.
 
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Very worried.

Taking precautions, i live in a highly populated city so if it spreads here, we're all going to die; those in the city anyway. It's time like this i wish i was living in the country.
But thankfully - Labour has enough of the anti biotics for just over half the UK Population and is prepared for such an event.
If your going to take Precautions, you should research a little bit, This Flu virus does not kill, some people die from other causes, IE Pneumonia,
And ¨Labour¨ having Anti Biotics doesn't make sense, Flu is a virus
 
I don't believe that this disease has true epidemic potential, much less pandemic. Though I think we pick on the media far too much, I'm going to do it anyway: I think that it's the next big thing for the media, and they're choosing to report this one up. For example, a CNN headline I came across while writing this, "Pandemic: What would happen next?". A little silly. Anyway, I recognize that there is a certain risk of deaths across the globe, but I'm not shaking in my boots on this one.

Edit: I just ran across this article on Salon. Enjoy.

The last great swine flu epidemic | Salon


Duke, Media Abuser
 
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Very worried.

Taking precautions, i live in a highly populated city so if it spreads here, we're all going to die; those in the city anyway. It's time like this i wish i was living in the country.
But thankfully - Labour has enough of the anti biotics for just over half the UK Population and is prepared for such an event.

What's the mortality rate of the Swine flu? If it's 100%, then yes, you're all going to die.

How many people die annually from the flu? I took a quick look online and it looks like a range of 20,000 to 60,000+ from flu and other complications. Here's one link I found.

Link

Deaths information for Flu: An estimated 100,000 hospitalizations and about 20,000 deaths occur each year from the flu or its complications. (Source: excerpt from Focus On The Flu: NIAID) ... average of 20,000 to 40,000 deaths per year. (Source: excerpt from Microbes in Sickness and in Health - Publications, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: NIAID) ... in the United States more than 100,000 people are hospitalized and more than 20,000 people die from the flu and its complications every year. (Source: excerpt from The Flu, NIAID Fact Sheet: NIAID) ... In an average year, flu leads to about 20,000 deaths nationwide and many more hospitalizations. (Source: excerpt from What to Do About the Flu - Age Page - Health Information: NIA)

I don't vouch for it's accuracy, but there were others out there.

I'm taking a wait and see approach to the Swine flu issue.
 
I am hoping this wakes people up from their "omg taxes, boo" Zombie-mode.
Taxes are the least of our worries, as it should be.

Never mind that if we weren't sending money to Washington to fund Dear Leader's subservience to Goldman Sachs, AIG, JPMorgan, and other Wall Street gamblers cum bankers, we'd have more money for the necessaries of contending with a flu outbreak.:roll:
 
I'm slightly concerned, but not overly so. 50 cases in the US, several in Texas, in the space of literally a few days is nothing to sneeze at. At a minimum, this bug is very contagious.

I'm also slightly perplexed by the apparent greater severity of the influenza in Mexico than in the US. Snide snickers about third world healthcare aside, Mexican nationals are not appreciably less healthy than Americans, the population subset having the greatest mortality in Mexico seems to be that 25-40 age range that should have the strongest immune system response and greatest capacity to contend with respiratory illness. Is the virulence of the outbreak in Mexico unique to Mexico or is it the shape of things to come elsewhere?
 
I don't believe that this disease has true epidemic potential, much less pandemic. Though I think we pick on the media far too much, I'm going to do it anyway: I think that it's the next big thing for the media, and they're choosing to report this one up. For example, a CNN headline I came across while writing this, "Pandemic: What would happen next?". A little silly. Anyway, I recognize that there is a certain risk of deaths across the globe, but I'm not shaking in my boots on this one.

Edit: I just ran across this article on Salon. Enjoy.

The last great swine flu epidemic | Salon


Duke, Media Abuser

This virus definitely has pandemic potential. That much is demonstrated by the worldwide count of confirmed cases, and the short timeframe in which those cases erupted.

What we have not seen yet is mortality to swine flu outside of Mexico. That's the potential development that gives me pause. With the established dispersion of the disease, if the non-Mexican cases start turning lethal, this will be a pandemic.

The key word, of course, is if
 
Not very worried. More worried about the adverse effects that are generated by hyped up media and a scared public. But as they say it goes with pandemics, if you say anything before it explodes, you're an alarmist, after it explodes, you didn't do nearly enough. So better to be safe than sorry. It is also a good chance, albeit an unfortunate one of course, to test our response protocol in the event something very serious hits.

Personally, I live in California and was following this relatively close for about a week before it broke mainstream. I became very sick Friday night and by the time I left the movie 'State of Play' (which isn't too bad) I was debating going to the hospital. I had every symptom. But having some knowledge of previous outbreaks, the last place I would want to be right now is in a hospital, and I'll be damned if I ever take Tamiflu. Instead, I went to a 24 hour CVS got 3 gallons of water, Advil, cough medicine, airborne, hand sanitizer and vitamin c pills. Whatever I had broke within 36 hours for the most part. I still have a sore throat but I think I beat it for the most part. I just have to be careful with my weakened immune system to not catch the
H1N1 if I didn't have it

I was about to pose the question of whether or not the 'Bird Flu' or H1N1 could be eradicated in the same manner smallpox was. Well I researched it my own and found an interesting article

Can "Bird Flu" Be Eradicated Forever? | TopNews US Edition

Recently, scientists at the University of California, San Diego with the help of the resources at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), claimed to have isolated more than two dozen novel compounds which may prove promising in developing new “designer drugs” to cure Avian Flu. The compounds isolated seemed to be equal or stronger inhibitors than currently available anti-flu remedies in certain cases.
 
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I'm not very worried.

I can't figure out how to use the duct tape and plastic sheeting, so it's a good thing.

Who took the pandemic funding out of the stimulus package?
 
Not worried at all, we dont have porks/swine here in Kuwait :cool:
 
If a flu could possibly kill a lot of people, why on earth would they name it something so degrading? I'm serious. "Grandpa the war hero died of the swine flu."

It's ludicrous.
 
Never mind that if we weren't sending money to Washington to fund Dear Leader's subservience to Goldman Sachs, AIG, JPMorgan, and other Wall Street gamblers cum bankers, we'd have more money for the necessaries of contending with a flu outbreak.:roll:

The economic stimulus set aside like 70 million (or something like that) dollars for potential outbreaks/ pandemics.

Guess who tried to shoot that down? :) Republicans.
 
Not really all that worried. Think its vastly overblown. Which means I'm sure I'll die from it...

Just like I died from Bird Flu....

And from SARS...

and on and on.
 
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