Swine flu has 'pandemic potential'

[philbar71]

Rant about stupid people:

this is all my biology teacher talked about today too so i had to bear a whole 2 hours on her getting all up in arms over this stupid thing that aint even killed lots of people. and the whole class was starting to panick. it was just annoying.

i hate it when people over react to stupid little things and they get all stressed out about the things that they cant even control

ha, the rant thing is pretty cool

 

[Luke]

^the point is phil and oreo is that this virus has the potential to do this, it may not do it, but it has the potential.

 

[ricanflow]

It's not even that contagous. I mean, i read how "10 people were in contact with somebody that had contract swine flu" but none of them caught it.

It seems rare that even if ur in a room with someone that has swine flu, that you're likely to get it. So the chances of tens of thousands of people catching it and hundreds dieing seems tiny.

Unless it mutates into something else....resident evil ftw.

 

[Harper]

I think raising it to level 5 was dramatic.

Only two people died and the kid in texas was a very young child. Give a healthy 15 to 20 year old the virus and i guarantee they won't even need to go into hospital.

Two people have died, yet they're claiming we're approaching a pandemic Two people probably die from sneezing each day..

Very true. I really don't like how they are in pushing up the threat level. The problem is that the Threat Level are based on some broad definitions. The second WHO see an isolated insodent in another country, they need to just because the virus and jumped the border. There is nothing in consideration on how easily can the virus spread.

And the newpapers find out about this, and then they over react causing the rest of the public to over react too. Like I remember the SARS outbreak few years back. The newspaper catches a few chinese people getting off an airplane wearing viral mask, the newspaper is making is sound like plague has hit the town.

C'mon, it not like we are talking about the T-Virus (Resident Evil) or Rage (28 Days/Weeks Later) where is one infected person in a crowd and every one around them might as well be dead.

However at least on the goodside, it might mean that Gas Masks and Resperators might because this season's new fashion trend.

 

[tastegw]

i think the media sometimes doesnt even know what they are telling us.

yesterday, i heard a report on my local AM station,....it went like this....


they were saying so far "X" ppl have died in the USA from this flu (X being in single digits)
then they said that the normal flu kills 35,000 people a year, then they went on to say how dangerous this new flu was and how it could much much worse.

7 compaired to 35k, and they didnt even pick up on what they said.
thus far, you have a better chance of getting hit by a train.

 

[Luke]

^the entire world has not been exposed to this though.

 

[SparkMonkeyHellion]

CDC - Influenza (Flu) | Swine Influenza (Flu)

At the moment 91 cases in the US, 1 fatality.

Of course the media is hyping it up - but we shan't forget the Spanish Flu - granted that was before modern medicine but you have realize that it's just a different strain of the same disease. The fact that there has been a flu pandemic in the past is reason to be cautious.

I think that the impact has already been greatly mitigated by the efforts of the CDC and WHO.

 

[Monkey]

i think the media sometimes doesnt even know what they are telling us.

yesterday, i heard a report on my local AM station,....it went like this....


they were saying so far "X" ppl have died in the USA from this flu (X being in single digits)
then they said that the normal flu kills 35,000 people a year, then they went on to say how dangerous this new flu was and how it could much much worse.

7 compaired to 35k, and they didnt even pick up on what they said.
thus far, you have a better chance of getting hit by a train.

I'm not trying to hate, but i don't think it is fair to look at death toll numbers as much as the %.
The CDC reports that 5-20% of the U.S contracts the flu each year. Averaging those percentages we get 12.5% (5+20/2) times the U.S population of 300 million and we get 37,500,000(300,000,000) people a year with the flu in th U.S. Now take that 36,000 number everyone keeps throwing around and divide it by the contracted flu victims and we get .00096% fatality rate. Now contrast that with the Swine flu. Mexico has 2,000 estimated swine flu cases with 150 fatalities, so far. Now take that 150 divided by the estimated 2000 and we get a fatality rate of 13.33%. Which is considerably higher and the reason for the scare. so, maybe I am a pandemic paranoid. Who knows I probably did some wrong numbers in there, to which I am sure someone will point out. So until then I will remain concerned for the coming weeks.

 

[Oreo]

I'm not trying to hate, but i don't think it is fair to look at death toll numbers as much as the %.
The CDC reports that 5-20% of the U.S contracts the flu each year. Averaging those percentages we get 12.5% (5+20/2) times the U.S population of 300 million and we get 37,500,000(300,000,000) people a year with the flu in th U.S. Now take that 36,000 number everyone keeps throwing around and divide it by the contracted flu victims and we get .00096% fatality rate. Now contrast that with the Swine flu. Mexico has 2,000 estimated swine flu cases with 150 fatalities, so far. Now take that 150 divided by the estimated 2000 and we get a fatality rate of 13.33%. Which is considerably higher and the reason for the scare. so, maybe I am a pandemic paranoid. Who knows I probably did some wrong numbers in there, to which I am sure someone will point out. So until then I will remain concerned for the coming weeks.

You're comparing mexico to USA.

The US has around 100recorded cases and 1 death.
It has a %1 fatality rate in the US - that's low.

And in the UK, 8 have contracted it and 5 of them are able to stay at home ! that's how weak this virus is. You may aswell have a common cold.

 

[SparkMonkeyHellion]

I think they are so worried just because it's a new strain - a new vector which we don't know anything about yet.

I did do some research and it seems that the morbidity rate is equal to or less than regular seasonal flu.

Anyways, better to take something seriously and have it be a bug in the rug rather than not take it seriously and hope that it's not the monster in the closet.