Israel talks of banning the term 'swine flu', while the Church of England apparently has no comment on the impending apocalypse. But then, we're deny-y people here in foggy England.

(Above link courtesy of one of my favourite sites, Ship of Fools. Which currently cites 'chance of rapture' at 72%, up to 2% this week because of the increased possibility of plagues. Heh.)

My first attempt at this post got eaten because of bad code. Trying again.

But the 1918 epidemic started out mild and mutated into something deadly. Somewhere between 20 and 40 million people died in it.

That was close to a century ago. The standards of living and medical care, throughout the entire developed world, were vastly different than they are now. In 1918, the US -- and the rest of the world -- was recovering from World War I, with widespread poverty, hunger, and unsanitary living conditions, coupled with no available antibiotics (a very large amount of flu deaths are from secondary bacterial infections that set in after the initial flu infection) or flu medications or modern medical care.

So pretty much I'd say that if the CDC says we need to do it. We need to do it.

I think it's a big mistake to assume that the CDC is infallible. They also estimated that avian flu could kill 60 million people worldwide. That was back in 2006.

I'm not saying the CDC is ignorant, or totally mistaken. But I think there's an enormous amount of overreaction going on with the swine flu right now, and even the CDC isn't exempt from that.

I is a certified emergency call taker! My now ex-coach brought cupcakes :) *bounce*

heh, and we have new sticky notes on the medicaly triage guides to help us screen for particularly virulent flu patients. Good times!

Congrats, erin!

In 1918, the US -- and the rest of the world -- was recovering from World War I, with widespread poverty, hunger, and unsanitary living conditions, coupled with no available antibiotics (a very large amount of flu deaths are from secondary bacterial infections that set in after the initial flu infection) or flu medications or modern medical care.

Aside from the WWI part, this describes a large part of the world today. The top three killers of children in developing countries are respiratory infections, diarrhea diseases, and malaria, and almost all of these deaths could be prevented with improved sanitation and access to modern medical care (and bed nets). (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs272/en/). The conditions in the US and other developed countries might not be optimal hosts to a new superflu. But if the flu mutates in Mexico (or Indonesia or Benin) and becomes something more severe than the current strain, it could get bad. 'Cause viruses don't care about borders.

Of course, we also have the example of the last swine flu scare where Congress bowed to pressure from the drug companies to absolve them of liability so they could develope a vaccine faster and then... a bunch of people died from the vaccine and none (besides the initially identified case) from the flu. Oops.

Of course, this flu has already spread further than that one -- its just a good cautionary tale on "don't go nuts." Excessive school closures early on seem like a preferable overreaction. Its possible that isolating the population at Fort Dix is what kept it from spreading in '76.

Someone needs to take Wikipedia off-line for a few hours, I have shit to do.

But did you know there was a Swine Flu outbreak in the US in 1988? I have zero recollection of this. [link]

In 1918, the US -- and the rest of the world -- was recovering from World War I, with widespread poverty, hunger, and unsanitary living conditions, coupled with no available antibiotics (a very large amount of flu deaths are from secondary bacterial infections that set in after the initial flu infection) or flu medications or modern medical care.

Aside from the WWI part, this describes a large part of the world today.

I know. That's why I said, in the sentence before what you quoted, that the *developed* world today has vastly different conditions than in 1918. Not the whole world; certainly not developing countries.

But if the flu mutates in Mexico (or Indonesia or Benin) and becomes something more severe than the current strain, it could get bad. 'Cause viruses don't care about borders.

All flu strains mutate. That's what they do.

I'm not saying that the swine (or any) flu is nothing to worry about, that we should all go about blithely licking doorknobs and asking people to cough on us. But there's a lot of overreaction going on already, and it does no one any good.

That's why I said, in the sentence before what you quoted, that the *developed* world today has vastly different conditions than in 1918. Not the whole world; certainly not developing countries.

Yes, I know. And my point is that it doesn't really matter what the conditions are in the developed world, because diseases that we can handle here (like the current form of swine flu) can grow like wildfire elsewhere, change, and then come back here to hit us.

I'm sniffley today, but I know I don't have swine flu. Almost no one, relative to the world's population, has swine flu. And my eyes pretty much rolled out of my head today when a friend in Raleigh posted that her baby (currently teething and sniffley as often as not) was sniffley and feverish, and did we think he had swine flu? (Almost certainly not.)

But if there are cases confirmed in a school or a workplace or the like, I don't think closing the institution down until the risk of contagion has passed is an over reaction.