In which I make light of the latest ‘flu ‘pandemic’
27 April 2009
It’s been a long time (six years!) since the last deadly virus outbreak* (H5N1 was serious but nowhere as scary as SARS).
You could read the Herald (or the Daily Mail) and decide that WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE LIKE THE PIGS WE ARE OMG OMG OMG OMG** (!!!!!!!) or you could read the WHO advisories and realise that while we should be concerned at this new strain of swine influenza, there’s no need to panic just yet, because we simply don’t know enough right now*** (‘All 20 cases have had mild Influenza-Like Illness with only one requiring brief hospitalization. No deaths have been reported.’).
As always, wash your hands thoroughly and frequently and cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze. And use a tissue, for Gawd’s sake.
* Long-time readers will remember when, at the height of the SARS outbreak, I suffered anaphylactic shock and staggered breathless into the emergency room and they tried to get me to fill out a form as my airway closed. And then I had to get a shot in my arse. And then I slept for two days because my body was so wiped out from the reaction. That was fun! Let’s do that again.
** The One True God™’s punishment for not turning away from the infidel’s false religion?
*** Apparently this virus can spread with human-to-human contact. But the mortality rate doesn’t seem quite as serious as SARS.
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The health officials here are in the process of verifying which cases of the flu are the same strain in Mexico. So far it seems like the vast majority are Catholic school children (age 9 to 17) that have caught it while on Spring Break. My take is that this strain is very tame. It could be that 100,000 have had it but never took note, and officials only noticed after the bodies started piling up with all the same COD (hey, there are a couple of bodies over there that did not die in drug shootouts).
Oh, I remember something about you going to hospital but forgot the reason or how bad it was. Darn, Archive.org did not save your site from that time.
Comment by Terry — 27 April 2009 @ 5:30 pm
Panic!
Comment by Mr mist — 27 April 2009 @ 8:25 pm
From what I’ve read, it’s those who left it till they were very ill who died.
Mr Mist, are you running around like a headless chook? Heehee!
Comment by Andrea — 28 April 2009 @ 11:18 am
That’s right! There’s nothing we can do now other than run around with our hands in the air shouting “arrggh!”. All the best papers say we’re all doomed.
Comment by Mr mist — 28 April 2009 @ 8:59 pm
I’ll pass on to the local Chinese here in sunny Xiamen, your advice about covering the mouth and using tissues, but as you surely know:
- They only cover their mouth when using a toothpick
- Tissues are only used for wiping the fingers after eating and/or digital nasal passage re-configurations.
- If your ill why waste a day off at home when you can spread the cheer to all your workmates!
Plus there’s the spitting…
Comment by Tutu — 29 April 2009 @ 8:16 am
Mr Mist, exactly!
Tutu, there's plenty of spitting up here in Scotland, too – we're definitely doomed. And Terry sent me a link to a Google Map tracking all the cases – so the panic has a focus. Haha.
Comment by Andrea — 29 April 2009 @ 10:28 am
Ha! that google map is crazy!
Comment by Mr mist — 29 April 2009 @ 7:15 pm
"The likeliest reason is that A(H1N1) is indeed a mild virus, killing a very low proportion of those it infects, but that hundreds of thousands have caught it in Mexico compared with only 650 elsewhere."
Ball… what ball? Oh, the one I dropped three weeks ago? I guess the flub in Mexico is slightly better ethically than how China behaved during SARS but the result is not that different.
Pretty much like I guessed on the 27th. The first official report was on the 6th and the percentage of deaths seem to be low compared to expected yearly flu outbreaks.
I am disappointed with the Google map. They dropped updates and moved it to another site that does not seem to be as understandable.
Comment by Terry — 3 May 2009 @ 5:21 pm