Swine Flu Outbreak At PAX 374
Posted
by
timothy
from the crowd-I-walked-through-too dept.
from the crowd-I-walked-through-too dept.
whisper_jeff writes "There's been a confirmed outbreak of Swine Flu at PAX. Those who attended and are feeling under-the-weather after the con should not write it off as a typical convention cold and go see a doctor to make sure, just in case." The linked post also lists the airplane flights of the cases known so far, so if you flew from Seattle on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday for any reason, you might want to compare your itinerary.
Spread the FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't it just influenza?
Why would you go to doctor? (Score:5, Insightful)
If your temperature is within reason, and you don't have other symptoms or are at high risk, why would we want to inundate our medical system with a bunch of people who 'just want to make sure'?
I'm surprised one of the tagging words isn't 'ooohscaryscary'.
Screw swine flu. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people care extra-special about swine flu? It's already everywhere. It also doesn't have a mortality rate much higher than the average flu. And with prompt medical attention should respiratory symptoms develop, there's a minimal risk of mortality. I'd be more worried about that guy weaving in the SUV next to you with a greasy burger in one hand and a cell phone covered in ketchup in the other. A lot more.
Re:Why would you go to doctor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why would you go to doctor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not for your own benefit, but for others who may have been exposed and are more susceptible. The guys at Penny Arcade are making a list of flights which had passengers confirmed by testing to be contagious with swine flu. Having this information available could help others.
Note: The list has grown substantially over the past few days as people get tested.
Re:Public Health (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean public health as in "Don't go visit other people (such as doctors) who can't do anything for you and might catch it from you?"
If you have the swine flu, there's nothing your doctor can do for you; you need to rest, drink fluids and keep yourself from making other people sick, and call your local non-emergency police number to report the case. Going to a doctor won't do anything for you, and it will actively endanger the health of other people.
I work in a subset of the public health field, and we're really fucking annoyed when we hear a bunch of well-meaning idiots telling people to go to their doctor for something that a doctor cannot possibly do anything about.
Don't waste resources pointlessly - it essentially denies treatment to people who actually do need it and can benefit from it.
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the swine flu, just like the normal flu, is a threat to sick kids with poor health care, and the elderly. Normal, healthy adults will feel like crap, and get over it just like a normal flu.
The media loves to blow these things up. SARS was going to kill us all. The avian flu was going to kill us all. Killer bees were going to kill us all.
Sadly, I work for a newspaper that ran a headline that Nebraska had its first swine flu death. What it hid much later in the story was that the case was a Mexican child who was already near death was transported to a Nebraska hospital, and then he died within a day of arriving. Most "American" swine flu deaths are stories like these.
It's the FLU! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you do test positive for swine flu then proper public health measures can be taken.
It's the fucking flu! Have you never had the flu before?
WTF do you think "proper public health measures" are for a highly infectious, incurable disease that in normal situations runs its course in under a week? CLUE: It does NOT involve going into a hospital where you can infect other especially vulnerable people only to have a doctor tell you what you SHOULD already know, which is that he can't do anything for you!
I really don't get this disconnect people are having. It's called "swine flu" just to distinguish it from every other strain of flu that hits every year, but it is still essentially the same bug.
It's like the news reports I see on CNN where the info bar at the bottom will have "Symptoms of Swine Flu", and then lists the symptoms of THE FLU. In fact, maybe if instead of actually listing the symptoms, it just said "Symptoms of Swine Flu: Same as Every Other Flu" people would be less freaked out and slightly less ignorant about what Swine Flu really is -- THE FLU.
Seriously, FFS, if you think you have Swine Flu, pretend you have the "normal" flu (which you do) and act accordingly by staying home and not bothering your doctor. :P
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
IIRC H1N1 has about twice the kill rate as conventional flu.
Had. That was back when they only tested those with severe symptoms. Naturally, they also had a higher mortality rate.
Re:Screw swine flu. (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my biggest peeves about the media FUD around swine flu - It has a LOWER mortality rate than your typical annual flu. Lower. Less than.
As in, if you had to pick between a random flu-season strain or swine flu, you'd want to get swine flu!
Now, some fearmong^H^H^Hexperts claim that it "could" mutate into a more lethal strain - Which if we seriously believe that, everyone should do their damnedest to catch it ASAP, thereby exposing their immune systems to a similar virus and reducing the symptoms from that hypothetical killer version.
Nah... Let's just panic about it. Perhaps enough midly sick people driving like maniacs to their local hospital can raise the mortality rate to compete with a typical flu, via car accidents.
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
Citation needed.
CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox news are not valid reference sources.
Its mortality rate is lower than the standard seasonal flu. (Standard rate: %0.12, Swine Flu: %0.05)
The CDC believes ever case of 'the flu' this summer has been of the swine flu strain.
Your body becomes resistant after a single infection.
Some people are resistant to it after having dealt with infections from other flu strains, which is why it doesn't appear to affect anyone born before 1957.
Citation: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/ [cdc.gov]
getthefacts.slashdot.org kthx
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
You are being controlled through fear.
It's not a matter of some conspiracy. Fear sells. It's legal to "stretch the truth," or as I like to say, lie about things in order to get your numbers higher for the nightly news or the homepage impressions.
When you listen to what scientists are saying, it's the fact that it's a new strain that is the dangerous part. It's already shown resistance to typical treatment, so if it becomes particularly nasty through mutation this winter (exactly as the Spanish flu did, by the way) then it will be a problem.
I know using "science" to head problems like this one off at the pass is a terribly unpopular idea in America, but one that I support anyway. It's better to be safe than sorry, as the saying goes. Wash your hands. Don't go to work if you're sick. And if you feel ill, go to the doctor. Good advice in general, but not only are you protecting yourself, but also reducing the chance that we turn this winter into a perfect storm for H1N1.
Re:Colloidal Silver (Score:5, Insightful)
Ssssh! You're going to spoil it! Just imagine a world where the intersection of the gullible and slashdot readers is easily identifiable by their blue color! That would be too cool! :)
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
Controlled through fear? If I may ask, what are we being controlled to do? Watch more TV news, mostly, as far as I can tell.
Which is a problem in itself. TV news isn't actually informative to a large extent. From the weeks of TV news coverage given to swine flu, the actual relevant information could easily be condensed down to half a dozen bullet points (I'll append them to the end of this post). No, in the case of the flu the motives may be benign, so it's not "controlled" in the puppet sense, but the hysteria over swine flu clogs emergency rooms (costing money, time and just for good measure, increasing the spread as the few people with swine flu give it to the hypochondriacs and patients with other ailments), causes people to horde Tamiflu (creating shortages and/or inflating the price) and leads to innumerable overreactions by public and private entities due to the hysteria of a few (e.g. closing schools for weeks).
Beyond the direct results of this sort of hysteria, there are indirect costs, namely a failure to properly evaluate risk. The money and time spent worrying about swine flu is vastly disproportionate to its danger. Inflate your tires, gets your brakes checked and don't drive drunk. You'll reduce your risk of death substantially more than wearing a face mask and stockpiling Tamiflu.
If something like SARS or influenza really did mutate and kill millions, it would not be a surprise, historically speaking, or biologically speaking. Seems to be worth letting people know about.
Well you're aware of it, right? I find it hard to believe that anyone (or at least, non-hermits in the U.S.) is *not* aware of the return of the swine flu. Until it actually does show signs of increasing mortality, why bother announcing it? Do we make a special announcement every time someone at a convention comes down with the seasonal flu? Again, disproportionate weight is being assigned to a negligible risk.
Swine flu bullet points:
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
It is, so it is not (currently) all that fatal (although - in 1918 [wikipedia.org], the mortality rate was estimated to be between 10 and 20 percent. Of course, we've got better drugs these days).
However, since most seasonal influenza is of the H3 family instead of the H1 family, our regular immunities won't protect us very well. This makes H1N1 likely to be very widespread - lots of people who typically don't get sick will get sick. It's not like we're all going to start living The Stand or anything, but it is a pretty significant event. We have a major flu pandemic only a few times a century.
My friends just attended the PAX in seattle... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
one of the doctors at my surgery prescribed tamiflu and to be quite frank it made me feel worse than the damned flu did!
upon return to the srgery for a folloow on check up it was one of the other doctors that saw me and his opinion on tamiflu was different to the one who presceribed it.
this doctor said that tamiflu neither prevents nor cures any flu, never mind swine flu and if anything made matters worse.
i can say nothing but agree with the guy. the stuff is nasty and i reckon just riding it out would have been the better option. i am however in of the "high risk" groups having been getting radiotherapy at the time(just finished the course)
in future i'll not be bothering with tamiflu, i'll just be massively upping my vitamin C intake.
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
How does 2009 H1N1 flu compare to seasonal flu in terms of its severity and infection rates?
With seasonal flu, we know that seasons vary in terms of timing, duration and severity. Seasonal influenza can cause mild to severe illness, and at times can lead to death. Each year, in the United States, on average 36,000 people die from flu-related complications and more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related causes. Of those hospitalized, 20,000 are children younger than 5 years old. Over 90% of deaths and about 60 percent of hospitalization occur in people older than 65.
When the 2009 H1N1 outbreak was first detected in mid-April 2009, CDC began working with states to collect, compile and analyze information regarding the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak, including the numbers of confirmed and probable cases and the ages of these people. The information analyzed by CDC supports the conclusion that 2009 H1N1 flu has caused greater disease burden in people younger than 25 years of age than older people. At this time, there are few cases and few deaths reported in people older than 64 years old, which is unusual when compared with seasonal flu. However, pregnancy and other previously recognized high risk medical conditions from seasonal influenza appear to be associated with increased risk of complications from this 2009 H1N1. These underlying conditions include asthma, diabetes, suppressed immune systems, heart disease, kidney disease, neurocognitive and neuromuscular disorders and pregnancy.
Notice that "over 90%" of "normal" flu deaths are in the over 64 age group, but for swine flu according to the CDC there are "few cases and few deaths" in people over 64 and "greater disease burden" in under 25 year olds than older people.
The H1N1 2009 flu is far from normal. The mass media may be spreading FUD, but that doesn't give you free reign to spread misinformation to discredit the FUD. Two wrongs don't make a right. Please post your sources (and don't post links to the LA Times from April 2009... that information is no longer relevant since its from early in the outbreak.)
Re:Spread the FUD (Score:1, Insightful)
In case you hadn't noticed half of the world just went through winter, there was no "perfect storm".
Oh and it's not 1918 anymore medical science and society in general is a little more advanced, hygenic and healthy than it was nearly a hundred years ago.
Next we'll be hearing about the dangers of catching tuberculosis because of breathing the "Miasma".