Swine flu annoys me. They closed a bunch of schools around here. And because of that, cancelled field trips too. So our student matinees were sold pretty good, are now playing to 1/4 houses or less. And some schools are not paying/wanting refunds despite our cancellation policy. Not helping our battered bottom line.

The swine flu has infected something like 0.0002% of the worlds population. And of those infections, only some are fatal. Not a high percentage. The total infected is about as many people as was in my high school. In grand scheme of things. Minor.

What that says to me is that the CDC overreacted.

I don't know if that's fair. For that kind of tactic to work, you pretty much have to start before it's obvious that it's necessary. When it turned out clearly not be necessary, they revised. It's erring on the side of caution, but it's not telling everyone to stay home and duct tape plastic around their windows.

Feels good to be coming around to the fact that by jove, I ARE SMRTE PNTS!!

I know the feeling - at 30, having gone back to studying, I'm getting my first A's since I was 16. Delightful, isn't it? :) Congrats!

Swine flu annoys me.

The panic is awfully silly. There's been something like 16 cases over here (a rather tiny percentage) - and from what I hear, it isn't doing much damage. It's just flu, people. Unless you have a weak immune system, it really, literally won't kill you.

It's just flu, people.

Flu is a dangerous disease. It kills an average of 36,000 people a year in the U.S. and up to a half million a year worldwide, including young healthy adults. It mutates quickly and picks up other DNA promiscuously. One day it's going to pick up enough DNA from another species to get around current human immunities and then it's Katie, bar the door. The CDC guidelines were reasonable in the first stages of a newly discovered disease and were modified as a soon as enough cases were found to change the initial mortality stats.

That helped, but it's still more than my copay would be with a prescription. When Prilosec went OTC, Kaiser stopped prescribing any of the related drugs. I swear it would be half the cost if they eliminated the wasteful and difficult packaging.

You can still get generic prilosec by perscription. I do.

Feels good to be coming around to the fact that by jove, I ARE SMRTE PNTS!!

I'M IN UR HAUS OF LURNING
PASSING UR EXAMS

Feels good to be coming around to the fact that by jove, I ARE SMRTE PNTS!!

I'M IN UR HAUS OF LURNING
PASSING UR EXAMS

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I'M IN UR HAUS OF LURNING ACEING UR EXAMS

That's not actually true, since the swine flu was never as virulent as all the panicked reactions suggested. They were following the recommended precautions, but those precautions were not actually sensible.

Umm no. If the SF had been as virulent as the information the CDC had suggested it would have been the right recommendation to make. Part of risk evaluation is making decision on the information you have including cost/risk ratio of waiting for more information before making a decision. It is like evacuating building in response to a bomb threat. The lost work is expensive, the evacuation is annoying and the odds are that the threat is a prank. But the risk benefit is still in favor of evacuation. It does not retrospectively become panic when (as was probably always the case) it turns out to be prank.

What that says to me is that the CDC overreacted. I expect the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to not overreact.

See, I don't think they did. The way to shut down an epidemic is to close it off into pockets and then let those pockets burn themselves out. To do this when the pockets are small enough to be contained you often have to make a call before all the information is in.

Also, this country has a history of ignoring the fuck out of the CDC. Just look at AIDS to see that. The CDC had recommendations about shutting down bathhouses in San Francisco and trying to get the outbreak under control. If those had been heeded early on, far before more information was in, before they even found the virus that causes AIDS, then it could have had a serious impact on the overall scope of the AIDS pandemic. Yes, I am still seething with rage over the fact that communities did now follow the recommendations of the CDC when it comes to that.