Swine Flu

You can't really tell if you have normal Influenza or Swine Flu. I was sick a few weeks ago after I had been out clubbing, so there was probably good chance I got something from someone :S Probably SWINE FLU
 
Honestly, if you did get H1N1 flu (I refuse to call it swine flu), you're better off -- it'll give you a level of protection if/when it comes back around in the much more virulent form. (Don't bother getting tested, though.)

How is it Down Under right now (given that it's your winter and your flu season)? Are a lot of people getting sick? Are they getting really sick or just mildly sick?
 
AJChenMPH said:
Honestly, if you did get H1N1 flu (I refuse to call it swine flu), you're better off -- it'll give you a level of protection if/when it comes back around in the much more virulent form. (Don't bother getting tested, though.)

How is it Down Under right now (given that it's your winter and your flu season)? Are a lot of people getting sick? Are they getting really sick or just mildly sick?
Click to expand...

As far as I know, four people have died sadly from H1N1 flu in Australia. A a lot of people have been getting sick, but it's hard to know what is the regular flu and what is H1N1 flu without getting tested. I myself got pretty sick, sicker than I usually get when I get a flu.
 
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently reporting 127 deaths in this country from H1N1 flu (as of 6/25/09), and that's the number I'm looking at vs. the number of confirmed cases. Just about everyone who's winding up in a hospital's intensive care unit with flu-like symptoms is getting tested, so they have a good handle on who's dying from H1N1 -- but the estimate of people who simply have H1N1 is so high that they can't test everyone who they think might have it.

Don't get me wrong -- 127 deaths is a lot of people, particularly if one of those people was your loved one. But it still pales in comparison to the 36,000 or so people who die every year in the US from regular flu. If the number of confirmed H1N1 flu-related deaths exceeds 10,000 in the US, that's when I'm going to start worrying.
 
Swine flu was man-made created and spread because they want to chip the entire population. Bye bye humanity.

From what I read, WHO will probably announce mandatory vaccinations today (Reuters).

It's all well planned. 2 years ago, a friend of mine asked me how they would be able to chip everyone without noticing. I told him: "One of the ways would be to spread a deadly virus and force everyone to get a shot." It's unfolding right in front of our eyes.

Please folks, I'm not gaining anything by posting this, but I like my fellow human being: Don't take the shot!

I bought myself a couple of these:
http://www.mouthmask.com/

And if it gets really nasty, I'll lock myself up for a year if I have to. I'm prepared.
 
The mouth mask isn't going to do a thing except protect others if you have it.
It wasn't man made. There are variations of flu everywhere.
And if they wanted to weaponize this sort of stuff, they have a lot of things to choose from and a lot are far more deadlier than this swine flu.
 
A GP and a child have just died of this in the UK. This latest death brings the total number of swine flu-related deaths in the UK to 17. A patient in Essex who passed away earlier this month was the first person in the UK without underlying health problems to die of swine flu, but it is not yet clear whether these two latest cases suffered from any other type of health problem.

I'm not sure how common it is for otherwise healthy people to die of Flu of this intensity.
 
Looks like everyone in UK will get innoculated, starting in September. Not sure if this is much good if it changes though!
 
The South Korean press have been saying that this H1N1 is more lethal than your run of the mill flu virus.
I'm skeptical about this claim.
Is there some sort of new information that we should know about or are they just trying to get ratings again?
 
I don't think more "lethal" is the correct term, but more "virulent".

This article reviews a study that showed the virus tends to really affect the lungs more so than regular flu, which potentially could lead to higher deaths.

At the same time, this article looks at a study where they found that the virus isn't as easily transmitted from person-to-person as the regular flu.

And finally, this article looks at a study that suggests that it's not as deadly as the initial reports from Mexico seemed to indicate.

Putting this all together: it's a more virulent virus than regular flu, if you do catch it. But it's (currently) not as bad as people are worried about. Then again, these are individual studies -- it's simply too early to have solid, absolutely conclusive data at this point.

So again: take all the precautions that I mentioned earlier to help protect yourself. It's not a 100% guarantee you won't get it, but it will greatly reduce your chances of coming down with it.

And two more things:

1. Anti-bacterial soaps aren't really going to help you here. They're anti-bacterial, not anti-viral. Again, the more important thing is to make sure you scrub your hands long enough for the physical/mechanical action of washing your hands to scrape the virus off your hands.

2. The alcohol-based gels that claim to be "99.9% efficient at killing the flu virus on contact" -- that may be in a controlled laboratory environment, but take it with a grain of salt when it comes to using them in the real world. They're better than nothing, but they're not 100% effective, either.
 
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At the same time, this article looks at a study where they found that the virus isn't as easily transmitted from person-to-person as the regular flu.
Click to expand...

Perhaps the flu doesn't know this, as the rate of increase has been substantial during the last few weeks in the UK, and it has been hot lately.

_46070023_swine_flu_rates_16.07.09.gif


Twenty-nine people have now died in the UK after contracting swine flu, up from 17 on Monday, the government has said.

It comes as the number of new cases hit 55,000 last week and the NHS has seen a surge in calls and consultations.

Ministers in England have responded by promising the National Flu Service will go live at the end of next week to relieve pressure on hospitals and GPs.
The government has also warned that deaths from swine flu this winter could be between 19,000 and 65,000 in the UK.

Experts said it was impossible to predict exactly, but with a third of the population perhaps becoming infected in the coming months the death toll could rise to such numbers.

The World Health Organisation has also described the pandemic as the fastest-moving one ever, adding it was now pointless to count every case.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8154419.stm
 
If I read the morning paper right, the US will start vaccinating school kids this fall, but they might not have enough to do adults, so people over 50 are next after the kids.
 
Australian update:

31 deaths due to "swine flu" (in some cases the deceased already had other medical issues).

180 hospitalised for H1N1, many in intensive care.

another few thousand with the virus but not hospitalised.

Most Australians don't seem to be worried, although in some suburbs in some states, there is a panic and they have closed schools.
 
Someone in Camp Heumansoord in Nijmegen (5k soldiers) had it and I got a cold short after... I wonder if it's the Flu ^^.
But it's getting better already...
:-?
 
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