ChildWild: Swine Flu: coming soon to a kid near you?
Sandro
· 7 months ago
I guess I'm Mr. Kill-Us-All.
It seems now like some of the early data was wrong, and this strain doesn't kill nearly as many of the folks it infects as it first appeared. If it did, then its spread would be really, really bad.
Sierra
· 7 months ago
right. A hyper-deadly flu spreading like wildfire would be very, very bad. Apocalyptic, even. I was just sayin' I think the apocalypse has been averted again. And I might stock up on bottled water anyway.
Don
· 7 months ago
My understanding (from listening to some of the mid-day NPR programs) is that the reason they're worried is that this particular virus is pretty radically different, genetically, from other strains. Usually influenza viruses (virii?) change a little bit every year, and our bodies have some immunity because we've dealt with viruses sort of like them before. When there's a more radical change, we don't get that immunity -- and we don't know what to expect from a virus which has changed that much, thus all the doomsaying. So its mostly a case of this particular strain of H1N1 being something of an unknown quality. Perhaps a better way to say it is "more unknown than the people who study these things expected".
Cos
· 7 months ago
On a public policy level, there's reason for concern and action any time a brand new infectious disease appears, because if left to its own, it could spread very quickly. Preventing that requires taking steps in the early stages, when not many people are infected, and when we don't know a lot about the disease yet. It needs to be tracked, and places where several cases appear need to quickly takes steps to slow its spread (closing schools is one of the main steps, because getting lots of children together is one of the most effective ways of spreading an infection).
On a personal level, there's no reason to worry at all. We already know this particular flu is no more serious, so far, then typical seasonal flu. Whatever level of concern you have about the flu at other times is the appropriate level to have now. If you or your kids get it, it'd be about the same as a flu they might've gotten last year.
If the government does its job properly, it may never spread to much larger numbers of people, and will eventually get lost in the noise of other flus. Their job is to act early to slow infection rates and try to make it stay that way. And if it turns out that it was never super-infectious to begin with and we could've gotten away without taking special steps, oh well. We can't gamble on that when a new virus appears.
Newsworthy things, that merit public debate, are issues such as how prepared the CDC is, how effective our national system of developing and stockpiling vaccines are, whether we've funded hospitals adequately to do well under increased load if there's a larger than usual flu season, etc.
Things not worth worrying extra about (beyond any other year) are whether you're personally in danger. As far as that goes, it's just the flu.
Rowan
· 7 months ago
tens of thousands of Americans die of the plain old flu every year
With all due respect, that comparison is a bit simplistic. A more accurate statement might be "tens of thousands of Americans, mostly very old, very young, or otherwise immunologically compromised, die every year from several strains of the flu that most of the population has a decent immunity to from previous exposure to something similar." This flu was a) primarily affecting healthy adults, b) something new that no one has immunity to, c) spreading very fast, and d) potentially deadly.
While I agree that there has been widespread and unneeded panic (Egypt killed all the pigs inside its borders!), I believe the WHO did the appropriate things based on the information they got from Mexico early on. It may have turned out to be a false alarm this time, but they couldn't have known that in advance, and I'd rather the fire alarm go off occasionally when I burn my toast than have my house burn down.
And no, it wouldn't have killed us all. Even the "Spanish" flu only killed 1% of the world's population (same type of strain as this one, by the way). But it did make over half of the world ill, and that can be devastating enough for the economy -- imagine have half the world out sick for a few weeks, and the other half mostly busy caring for them. That was where some of the institutional and governmental fear was coming from in this case.
Sierra
· 7 months ago
totally. this was actually my point: that the WHO's response, and the other governmental and media responses, suggest something very different is going on with this flu than with the flu that goes around every year, that infects and kills many people.
While I agree about setting off the fire alarms, I think it's important to remember that's what it is. When the alarm goes off, we don't know if it's burnt toast or a house fire. Usually, it's the former. When the alarm goes off, it's time for an orderly exit from the building, not time to panic. There's no reason to expect or assume that the building will burn down with all of us in it just because the alarms have gone off.
I've been seeing a lot of *fear* about this illness in the media, and especially in parenting blogs. It's the fear I think we could do without, not the alarm system.
All Comments
It seems now like some of the early data was wrong, and this strain doesn't kill nearly as many of the folks it infects as it first appeared. If it did, then its spread would be really, really bad.
On a personal level, there's no reason to worry at all. We already know this particular flu is no more serious, so far, then typical seasonal flu. Whatever level of concern you have about the flu at other times is the appropriate level to have now. If you or your kids get it, it'd be about the same as a flu they might've gotten last year.
If the government does its job properly, it may never spread to much larger numbers of people, and will eventually get lost in the noise of other flus. Their job is to act early to slow infection rates and try to make it stay that way. And if it turns out that it was never super-infectious to begin with and we could've gotten away without taking special steps, oh well. We can't gamble on that when a new virus appears.
Newsworthy things, that merit public debate, are issues such as how prepared the CDC is, how effective our national system of developing and stockpiling vaccines are, whether we've funded hospitals adequately to do well under increased load if there's a larger than usual flu season, etc.
Things not worth worrying extra about (beyond any other year) are whether you're personally in danger. As far as that goes, it's just the flu.
With all due respect, that comparison is a bit simplistic. A more accurate statement might be "tens of thousands of Americans, mostly very old, very young, or otherwise immunologically compromised, die every year from several strains of the flu that most of the population has a decent immunity to from previous exposure to something similar." This flu was a) primarily affecting healthy adults, b) something new that no one has immunity to, c) spreading very fast, and d) potentially deadly.
While I agree that there has been widespread and unneeded panic (Egypt killed all the pigs inside its borders!), I believe the WHO did the appropriate things based on the information they got from Mexico early on. It may have turned out to be a false alarm this time, but they couldn't have known that in advance, and I'd rather the fire alarm go off occasionally when I burn my toast than have my house burn down.
And no, it wouldn't have killed us all. Even the "Spanish" flu only killed 1% of the world's population (same type of strain as this one, by the way). But it did make over half of the world ill, and that can be devastating enough for the economy -- imagine have half the world out sick for a few weeks, and the other half mostly busy caring for them. That was where some of the institutional and governmental fear was coming from in this case.
While I agree about setting off the fire alarms, I think it's important to remember that's what it is. When the alarm goes off, we don't know if it's burnt toast or a house fire. Usually, it's the former. When the alarm goes off, it's time for an orderly exit from the building, not time to panic. There's no reason to expect or assume that the building will burn down with all of us in it just because the alarms have gone off.
I've been seeing a lot of *fear* about this illness in the media, and especially in parenting blogs. It's the fear I think we could do without, not the alarm system.