pork flu is perfect...
overinflated hype over nothing flu.
continue with the propaganda government/media.
]]>@hi: ugg sorry, I misread the above post... I thought he said that many people got the swine flu.. not the shot. :) sorry!
]]>Best comment of the day! FTW
]]>Well I guess you could make the argument that the deaths of the Americans are more relevant to American newspaper readers than deaths of people from other countries.
I'm sure Bosnians would care less about the three dying Americans than the 8 dead Bosnians (assuming that the other dead were in fact Bosnians).
]]>@pecan 3.14159265: 33
]]>@pecan 3.14159265: the boy that died was from one of the whealthiest families in Mexico. His family owns one of the biggest private hospital "chains" here.
]]>300+ MILLION people in the USA alone. And ONE person dies from it.
Stop the fear mongering.
]]>@hwyengr: Uh no they didn't. Show your source. One person died from the actual swine flu who was in the army and got the flu at an army base, the other 25 died from the vaccination.
On February 5, 1976, in the United States an army recruit at Fort Dix said he felt tired and weak. He died the next day and four of his fellow soldiers were later hospitalized. Two weeks after his death, health officials announced that the cause of death was a new strain of swine flu. The strain, a variant of H1N1, is known as A/New Jersey/1976 (H1N1). It was detected only from January 19 to February 9 and did not spread beyond Fort Dix.[26]
There were reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralyzing neuromuscular disorder, affecting some people who had received swine flu immunizations. This syndrome is a rare side-effect of modern influenza vaccines, with an incidence of about one case per million vaccinations.
Overall, about 500 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), resulting in death from severe pulmonary complications for 25 people, which, according to Dr. P. Haber, were probably caused by an immunopathological reaction to the 1976 vaccine.
]]>You're fired.
]]>@Mike_Hawk: you have the fence built yet? I do, still working on the towers though.
Teaching the kids about head shots was great too!!
Then people wonder why things like MRSA exist. :-p
]]>I'm afraid that even though we're in North Texas, this will be the final straw.
Thanks for the five less days to study, paranoid administrators!
]]>Stay safe everyone.
]]>Out of curiosity - if she's using Flovent, do most foods have a coppery/metalic taste to her?
]]>That was AWESOME!!!
]]>No, no no. Viruses don't respond to antibiotics. Overuse of antibiotics to ineffectively treat viral infections such as the flu is why we have antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains!
Superbugs. Are. Not. Nice.
]]>Oh yeah. That's why they recommend flu shots for elderly, youngsters and immune-compromised patients. The flu can really rack you out if you're already sick.
I hope your daughter is feeling better soon.
]]>I'm beginning to think it might not be such a bad thing to get it now, which would probably give you some immunity if it comes back as a worse version in the winter.
]]>What does this have to do with consumerists? Is www.consumeristhealth.com coming soon????
]]>@kylere: 25% of the population of the United States, 54,508,750 people, got the swine flu shot in 1976. 0.0009% of them became ill, and 0.000045% died. I still think this is worse.
]]>None of these kids is (probably) going to die. But because this is a NEW strain of flu, none of these kids has any immunity to it. None of them have had a "cousin" strain. It's not that it'll kill them or even do much besides make them miserable for a week or so ... it's that because there's no immunity or prior exposure in the population, it can spread with astonishing rapidity and sicken large groups at once. 100 kids home is getting close to the threshhold where they close the school ANYWAY. In a normal flu season, that simply doesn't happen. 100 kids may get the flu over the course of the season, but not all at once, and many people will have immunity.
So even leaving aside potential mutations and other scientific scariness, there's the plain old problem that a NEW strain, even if mild, can propagate through the population very quickly and hit large groups all at once ... which means a lot of these kids' parents can't go to work. They'll miss between 5 and 10 days of school (and they already missed 3 for snow and 2 for flooding, so they'll run out of emergency makeup days). If it were to race through, say, the NYSE trading floor, or a hospital, or a police station, that would be a serious disruption of normal life. Not dire by any means, but definitely expensive and definitely inconvenient.
]]>I was cleaning out the fireplace last night and inhaled a lot of dust. Coughed all the way to the doctor and found out it was just chimney flue.
]]>Reminds me of my newspaper days in the early 90s -- we had a headline about a helicopter crash in Bosnia that blared "Three Americans Die in Helicopter Crash." Problem was, there were 11 people on that downed copter, and they all died. I remember bitching at the editorial meeting that it was disrespectful to act as though the lives of the Americans were more important than the others who died.
]]>@Marco Deppe:
The baby died in the US but was not a US citizen. He was visiting from Mexico.
You can't fight the flu with antibiotics. It's a virus.
]]>@pecan 3.14159265: This. And I have many friends from Mexico, or their parents are from Mexico -- they are much less likely to go to the doctor when they are sick (due to both inadequate access to health care, and the way their culture looks at being sick). Here in America, we're much more likely to go "FLU!" and run to the doc, but there, they aren't.
]]>@Erin Cummins: YAY facebook commenters.
]]>Texas health officials have confirmed the first death of a United States resident with swine flu...
Last week, a boy from Mexico City died at a Houston hospital, marking the first swine flu death in the United States.]]>
I seem to recall that a few years back they did just that; talking about the normal flu as if it were some great epidemic come to kill us all even though it was no big deal again a season later.
]]>The media really needs to just cool it with the Swine flu panic reports. Emergency rooms and walk-in clinics across the country are getting unnecessarily strained by all this hype and it's hurting their ability to treat people who truly need help.
2005 Avian Flu: 257 deaths to date worldwide
Sars 2002-03 : 774 deaths
Average garden variety flu- 30,000 American citizens with 5% of the population per year.
Brett Stephens in todays WSJ-
In other words, despite all the processes of globalization that are said to be leading us toward nature's great comeuppance, trend lines indicate we are better equipped than ever to minimize the effects of a pandemic.
Why? Because wealthier people tend to be healthier people, and because wealthier societies have more to invest in medicine and research, and because a higher standard of living tends to correlate with more personal space. Also, because globalization means information sharing across boundaries, and rapid adoption of best practices, and greater transparency.
@Erin Cummins: First US victim. The baby was not a US citizen.
]]>Here's the article in abridged form:
"Texas health officials have confirmed the first death of a United States resident with swine flu.
...the flu victim was a woman who lived in Cameron County...
...she died earlier this week.
Last week, a boy from Mexico City died at a Houston hospital, marking the first swine flu death in the United States."
I'm so confused.
]]>I had the same thought, NICE!
]]>@kylere: Don't forget the additional casualties when the reanimated corpses of the swine flu victims ravaged a local mall.
]]>@pecan 3.14159265: haha. ;) i was fooooled.
]]>This just in: dying woman dies. Media foaming at mouth.
]]>@pecan 3.14159265: Nope. She likely would've died from the regular flu, too, if she was already in very poor health.
]]>So when are we going to start reporting all "regular" flu deaths?
]]>There's nothing to panic about at this point. It said she had other chronic health problems, so the flu (any flu) could have been really serious for her.
]]>