Anyone Worried About H1N1/Swine Flue?

3 local schools closed here.

 

My girlfriend teaches High School in another city. Her school is closed for a week starting today.

 

Guess it's good that I retired. They are now talking about canceling sporting events for the High Schools in our County. I just can't watch the news any more today!

 

Unless there is something they aren't telling us, I really don't understand all of this. I am posting the report from the CDC for the 2007-2008 flu season - it stretched from Sept. 30, 2007, to May 17, 2008 (yes, by that measure, we are still in flu season).
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5725a5.htm

I'll summarize - for that year, they positively identified about 40,000 cases of flu from about 225,000 potential cases - 40,000. Of that, 71% was type A (the same as swine flu). They further subtyped 29% of the type A, and found that 26% of that sampling was H1N1 - the dreaded swine flu! So I pulled out my calculator, and did some extrapolation. 71% was type A, and 26% of that was H1N1, giving us an effective percentage of ~18% H1N1 prevalence. Apply that to the total number of confirmed cases, and that gives us an estimate of just under 7200 cases of H1N1 in the U.S. alone.

Fast forward to today. Anybody know what the tally is at for H1N1? According to the CDC website, as of today, May 1, we are at . . . you might want to sit down here, or possibly go buy a special designer flu-proof face mask that has been marked up by several thousand percent - 141 cases! Run for the hills! The end of days is upon us! And 1 fatality! We now know the sheer terror that people lived with under the Black Plague! Or the fear that native Americans certainly felt as smallpox ravaged their people! The great flu pandemic of '09! We'll be telling our grandchildren about this one.

But wait! It gets worse! How could it possibly get worse, you ask????? Let's look worldwide, with the help of the WHO! Here is a link to their most up to date information:
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_05_01a/en/index.html
The virus is in 13 countries, for a grand total of . . . 367 reported cases! Oh, the humanity! Subtract out our 141 cases, and that means 226 cases spread around the globe - no, wait, not spread around the globe. 156 of those are in Mexico. So, 141 cases in the U.S., 156 in Mexico, and 70 for the rest of the planet - it's like you can't cross a single international border without this thing following you!!!!! It's EVERYWHERE!!!!!!! What is even more dire is the fact that the number of deaths from flu outside the U.S. jumps up by 900%!!!!! That is right! One death in the U.S., 9 in Mexico, no other reported deaths anywhere else. That is an astronomical fatality rate of 2.7%!!!!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, surely the handwriting on the wall cannot be any clearer! We need to immediately close EVERYTHING! Pull your kids out of schools, stop going to church, avoid the grocery store! This is a global catastrophe at least as monumental as the great cold outbreak of '83, or the Jock Itch pandemic of '69, or even the Ringworm plague of '74! It's time to get into survival mode!

 

Dr. Mike, you're my new hero. :happy102

 

I aim to please!

While I am not unaware of the fact that any and all attention and scare factors from infectious disease scares is beneficial to my future funding prospects, I don't like how sometimes people like to feed off of the fear of the general public for things of this nature.

 

People will come up with enough health woes of their own to keep you in business for the rest of your natural life.
The fear mongering that goes on in the media is just plain annoying and hardly limited to just infectious diseases.

 

I love to read this guys post... Great information as usual Dr. Mike.

 

One thing I left out - it is a little difficult to directly compare mortality rates (death), as the previous data combines all pneumonia and influenza-related deaths. However, the 2008 flue season had a peak pneumonia & influenza (P&I) mortality rate of 9.1%. Back in the winter of 2003, it peaked over 10%. I think we are going to need a lot more pneumonia-related deaths to get the combined rate up from my calculated ~2% for flu alone. The flu kills people every year.

 

BE can you please fix the spelling on the title of this thread?????

 

as always Mike, you're able to vocalize/verbalize the thoughts of my head into a rational way even I can understand
thanks

I aim too, please.

 

LOL! I just noticed that.

 

There has been a run on surgical-type face masks here in Brisbane. And last night the news suggested people go out and stockpile canned food...??

I'll take my chances with cigarettes and lung cancer/heart disease/ <insert nasty cause of death here>.

James.

 

My local stores are out of surgical masks and alcohol based sanitizer. They are also out of the sanitizing wipes. I have all the ingredients here at home to make my own sanitizer.

 

So do I.
Oddly enough, they resemble the ingredients of an extra spicy bloody mary.

 

I also am a basic soap and water guy, but you are right, that hand sanitizer stuff comes in really handy, especially the small bottles, for when you are out and about, and need something on the spot to sanitize - like just after your kid has come out of one of those mall playgrounds! Then it is nice to give their little hands a squirt of the stuff!

It is also nice when your child comes down with pink eye, and anytime you interact with them, or something they have touched, you can use the hand sanitizer quickly, instead of running to a sink all the time.

I think the media is a huge factor in this scare, but so are the people in charge who are throwing around phrases like "level 6 pandemic" and saying, "I wouldn't go flying in a plane or riding in a subway right now." Honestly, 141 cases in the U.S. - did you know there are twice as many elephants in the United States as there are reported cases of H1N1 flu? Statistically, you are twice as likely to run into an elephant in the U.S. than a person with H1N1 flu. How many of you have run into elephants lately?

 

No, I am not worried about swine flu. I think like others, that it is being over blown by the media seeking to fill airtime on their 24 hour "news" programs.

 

Amended, I believe.

 

I just saw a pink elephant! OMG! :happy093