Swine flu?

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Please let this sore throat be just a sore throat...

[Betty]

They found "patient zero"... a little boy who lives next to a pig farm in Mexico. They said that tested the pig farm and came back negative. (hmmm -does that mean that they tested every pig there? hmmmm)

[Chernabog]

The best quote ever to come out of this fake epidemic is this, from an AP news article entitled "What's in a name? US considering calls to rename 'swine flu' for fear it's misleading":

Then came name complaints from abroad. Israeli officials on Monday suggested renaming it Mexican flu, saying the reference to pigs is offensive to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork. While the biggest outbreak and most serious illness so far is in Mexico, scientists don't yet have proof that's where the new virus originated.

OK.... first of all... WTF. Having the word "swine" in a VIRUS name is "offensive"?

And second, like renaming it the Mexican Flu (by their silly logic) wouldn't be offensive to... oh, I don't know, MEXICANS? I guess since lots of people (this country included) don't consider Mexicans "real" people anyway, that's ok.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Betty

Yeah - but is it really swine, bird and human based? I haven't heard that one before and if it were true, it would seem like a huge news story.

It is true, but it's not a huge news story as that kind of mutation happens all the time with flu viruses.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

While HSI may be "quack" in whomever's opinion, a great many things in it made a lot of sense. The safety testing (or lack thereof) for vaccines is atrocious.

Oh, they're particularly insane quacks on the issue of vaccines.

[tracilicious]

I know nothing about the organization. I'm completely unfamiliar. But I am appalled at the lack of safety testing in the vaccine industry. It, like our atrocious infant mortality rates, makes me question our first world status.

[cirquelover]

Originally Posted by Betty

Yeah - but is it really swine, bird and human based? I haven't heard that one before and if it were true, it would seem like a huge news story.

I have seen and heard that many places, including this one: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30471035

Where it says" Still, the CDC calls the new strain a combination of pig, bird and human viruses for which people may have limited natural immunity."

In the early days I even saw cries of " Maybe it was engineered by terrorists", which I was hoping is a bunch of hooey. So far it seems to say this can happen naturally, just not very often.

[RStar]

The WHO has raised the alert to 5.

6 is a full pandemic.

I wonder if Disneyland will still be open when I go on the 8th?

[cirquelover]

I just saw that on MSN too! Does anyone know how many times the threat level has been raised to 5?

[BarTopDancer]

From the CDC website...

Phase 5: Larger cluster(s) but human-to-human spread still localized, suggesting that the virus is becoming increasingly better adapted to humans but may not yet be fully transmissible (substantial pandemic risk).

The distinction among phases 3, 4, and 5 is based on an assessment of the risk of a pandemic. Various factors and their relative importance according to current scientific knowledge may be considered. Factors may include rate of transmission, geographical location and spread, severity of illness, presence of genes from human strains (if derived from an animal strain), and other scientific parameters.

According to this link, it was at phase 3 for 2 years and was raised two days ago to phase 4.

I think panicking is over-rated. Maybe I'm just not "in panic mode" because I don't watch the news, let alone 24 hour news stations with nothing better to do then panic people.