echoed from elsewhere

[acroyear]

I'm (almost, but not really) sorry that we in the west have gotten so used to good health and easily controlled diseases that we've forgotten what it was like to live where you could go from no symptoms to downright dead in a matter of hours, with nobody able to tell you how you caught it. But that threat remains as it always has and I admire the CDC's vigilance on this, as well as their learning from mistakes make when this last showed up in 1976.

If it doesn't explode into millions of deaths, call it a victory, whether by nature or by our attempts to contain it.

If we don't try to contain it, we only have ourselves to blame for what destruction it may eventually cause.

Please please PLEASE read about the outbreak of 1918: try to imagine a disease that killed more people in a matter of weeks than the entire 4 years of the horrid war that preceded it.  We don't know if this can turn into that, but better to act like it can AND WILL than to do nothing in response to the "hype" and watch it spread and mutate...

Comments

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

Comparing the currently flu to the 1918 pandemic is comparing apples to oranges. The outbreak of 1918 had many factors that contributed to the rapid spread and highly mortality rate that don't exist in the US today. First off, we don't have millions of veterans recently returned from the war with compromised immune and respiratory systems. We have better medicines to control the symptoms and duration as well as better medicines to deal with complications like pneumonia or ear infections. Lastly, we have much more advanced ways of tracking the disease and quickly containing it.

I'm not saying that H1N1 couldn't be a pandemic, but it's still a flu, not ebola. So far, I've seen nothing about this flu that is anything radically different from the regular flu strains that go around every year except that this flu seems to spread faster. Yes we should take extra precautions but no one is going to go from fine to dead unless there are extreme extenuating circumstances like age or compromised immune systems.

Personally, I'm hoping that the scare makes people realize how important it is to stay home and get some rest when you are sick and that employers will also wake up to this reality as well. My mother, a retired nurse, had the most ridiculous sick leave policy imaginable. She couldn't use sick leave until she had used something like 3 days of vacation. WTF?!?! She's a hospital nurse for goodness sake. You WANT them to take off when they are sick. Instead, people were running out of vacation time, couldn't tap their sick leave and had to come in or work without pay. F'in ridiculous!! If major hospitals can't even use a reasonable sick leave plan, it's no wonder a lot of businesses don't have one either.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

You do realize you're contradicting yourself. on the one hand, you seem to think that this is "business as usual" (so far as diseases go) and on the other, you then are complaining about how people are treating sicknesses as "business as usual".

It doesn't really work that way: we're not going to get employers to make their sick-leave (and work-at-home) policies more reasonable (and less punishing to employees who've done nothing wrong but wish to actually have a vacation) unless we make it clear that while we haven't so far had a devastating attack of the flu, any new strain could turn into that with just the right dormant period.

1918 also had a lite phase of few deaths followed by nothing before it reappeared to ravage the continent, and not everybody was a veteran. they might have had trench-weakened immune systems, but countries untouched by the fighting didn't. what makes these things different is BECAUSE they can and do kill average-aged adults rather than specifically the young and the old. now this hasn't done it in America because of our good history (and fortune) with anti-virals and people *knowing* they should see a doc if things don't get better.

but if it hits enough places that don't have those advantages, it will kill again, and as always, the more it infects, the more chances for mutation into something that even if it still doesn't kill, can still ravage the population much as the flu of winter 1986 did (I personally missed school for 2 whole weeks over that one).

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

"Business as usual" for cold and flu season. Quarantine where it needs to be but don't start canceling events or avoiding going outside of your house because somewhere in a 100 mile radius there is a suspected, but not confirmed, case of the flu.

The ONLY US death is from a 23 month-old, well within the pattern of flu deaths. There are what, less than 200 confirmed cases in the US as well. I have read nothing that indicates that this flu bears any resemblance to the 1918 flu other than it's a similar strain, which again, doesn't mean that much. The 1918 flu was atypical in that it tended NOT to kill children and the elderly but hit otherwise healthy adults the worst. This flu is so far, following the symptoms of a regular flu-season flu. You'll be miserable and hating life for a week or two but otherwise will recover.

Wash your hands. Get plenty of rest. Eat healthy and stay home if you're sick.

[dawntreader]

i also don't understand why this strain is so much "worse" than regular flu, when regular flu kills on average, 36,000 people per year.

no one closes schools or quarantines offices for that. they tell you suck it up and use your vacation time. if people learn from this, that'd be great. but they won't, and come flu season, won't be concerned about any other strain than OMG PIG FLU!!!111 regular flu will be like "eh. it's just flu," and people will go around spreading germs like normal, even though *that* kills more people. the media won't even report it because it's normal. it's totally ridiculous.

the only difference i can see is we don't have anyone who has been vaccinated for this particular strain because we don't have a vaccine. still, it's flu. treat it like regular flu and do all those things you're supposed to do for regular flu, and you'll be just fine.

if it was a mutated human to human Avian flu strain, then we'd probably have to be a little worried. *g*

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

SO FAR it is not showing any signs that it is worse, other than the deaths in Mexico where health standards are well known to be far worse than ours.

But many those deaths were of otherwise healthy adults, not the normal flu deaths of the very young and the very old (though again, the only death in the u.s., was 1) very young and 2) from mexico not here).

But I chalk that up to the combination of luck (so far) and American medicine. NOBODY has been vaccinated for this strain, which means in the right environment it will thrive.

Now PLEASE REMEMBER THIS:
Where a virus thrives, it mutates. Every single interaction with the human cell can give it that one more gene it needs to "look" more like something of us rather than something invasive. These gene signatures FOOL the immune system into thinking whatever it is ain't so bad. THIS is how something goes from hitting .5% of a population to hitting 25% of a population in a matter of years. And Swine flu is, in the lab and in reality, notorious for evolving and adapting these kinds of genes very rapidly.

1918 wasn't just "instantaneous". It built up that by small pockets of infections here and there until one chance infection stole one small set of genes from a human, and WHAM: instant superbug.

That's how it happens. Let it breed a little, let it fester, and that's how we let ourselves be wiped out by an otherwise common cold.

Swine is deadly. That this current strain is more benign than first suspected is not cause to decrease vigilance.

I'm so damn sorry that I and science seem utterly unable to convince people that SWINE FLU IS DIFFERENT from "normal" flu. BUT IT IS.

[dawntreader]

dood. i didn't say the CDC and WHO shouldn't watch it or track it and i'm not debunking the science of it all. but the media hysteria and people freaking out over something that may never happen is like freaking out that an asteroid COULD hit the planet at any given second. yes, it could happen. but everyone being paranoid about it at every second of the day that they can't function normally isn't going to help matters.

as for Swine flu--or H1N1 as it is politically correctly known, i looked all over the CDC website about it. i haven't seen any statements that it's been so much more dangerous except the fact they don't have a vaccine. so they are watching it. juuuust watching and being alert for where it crops up. they aren't mass hysteria, panic, paranoia, or end of the world WTFBBQ about it.

that more people seem to care about 26 deaths (and one coming from INSIDE the staaaaate) than 36,000 "oh well they're just normal" deaths is what continues to WTFBBQ my mind.

from what i read on the CDC, avian flu should it become transmittable human to human, seems far more dangerous than swine flu. swine flu just doesn't seem that dangerous. yes, it could mutate. so could "normal" flu. and so could any virus of any kind at any given moment. humans are proof of that.

[dawntreader]

so i went looking for sources besides wikipedia for information.

i found LiveScience.com which had a ton of articles about H1N1, mutation, 1918, and the like.

i especially liked this video which talked specifically about pandemics, epidemics, the differences between, and also the history of media and government (and population) response.

http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=LS_090428_pandemic

i found it in the the article page: Is Swine Flu Pandemic? which was also interesting.

it illustrated a lot of the points you made and a lot of the points i made.

i'm not saying you're wrong to be concerned. i just feel there is a difference between concern and paranoia. it's okay that you feel that strongly. i don't. i honestly feel that with the current communication and medicines, a 1918 scenario is not close to likely, especially not here, and not with this particular bug. *if* it mutated, that's a different story. but that's sheer speculation.

however one thing i did learn from this article, is that most scientists (even though some question the usefulness of "preventing" a flu strain by getting the flu shot--which i assumed was the whole point of it), agree that it doesn't spawn the mutation of viruses the same way overuse of antibiotics spawns mutation of super-strong bacteria. they also agree that over time, you probably build up immunities to the various strains of all flu you've been vaccinated against, and that it's probably cumulutave over a lifetime of vaccinations.

so THAT i didn't know! interesting. it doesn't make me want to run out and get my flu shot, but it was something i didn't know before, prompted by your post, that made me seek out more information. i thought that would make you happy at least. :)

science. does a body good.

[ladylyonesse.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU for posting this. Hype is hype is hype, but there is underlying truth to the action being taken by the government that is merited and important. Don't freak out, but don't write this off, either.

My employer just released their "pandemic flu policy", which basically reads that if you or a family member falls ill, you are expected to use all your available leave; when that is exhausted, they'll deign to give you leave without pay. (how big of them) And the kicker? If the government shuts down offices in D.C., "essential" personnel will paid "or given compensatory time", but everybody else will be charged leave or otherwise leave without pay.

So I hope folks are thinking about this in a way that also covers their livlihoods/savings.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

your employer's policy sucks. "a family member gets sick? no vacation: just get more and more stressed out and eventually you'll just have to quit because you will never get a real vacation break ever again."

THAT is something that the government will have to eventually step into and stop. that is one of the more depressing side effects of the loss of the power of unions.