ZOMG Swine Flu

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

<p>Freak out about pandemic/buy N95 respirators/prepare for civilization to be brought to its knees,</p>

<p>or no?</p>

<p>-Human-to-human transmission (!)
-1300 cases in Mexico</p>

<h2>etc.</h2>

<p>-Many false alarms</p>

<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090424/ap_on_he_me/med_swine_flu%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090424/ap_on_he_me/med_swine_flu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p><em>rolls eyes</em></p>

<p>… over dramatization. Nothing will come of it. At least I hope not…</p>

3

<p>Remember avian flu a few years ago and how everyone freaked out?</p>

<p>…yeah.</p>

4

<p>… is bird flu over?</p>

5

<p>But it’s not the end of the world.</p>

<p>Thousands of people died in Asia, where medicine was very uncommon and people live near each other.</p>

6

<p>This makes me REALLY excited to go to work in 15 minutes, where I’m in close proximity to people for 7 hours…</p>

7

<p>Whenever I see swine, I think Pearls Before Swine.</p>

8

<p>[Swine</a> Flu Symptoms - Associated Content](<a href=“http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1681622/swine_flu_symptoms.html?cat=5]Swine”>http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1681622/swine_flu_symptoms.html?cat=5)</p>

<p>I think you’ll be alright :P</p>

9

<p>swine flu certainly sounds better than pig flu</p>

10

<p>

</p>

<p>Remember how avian flu couldn’t be passed from human to human, but swine flu can so everyone is freaking out?</p>

<p>…yeah.</p>

11

<p>time to start wearing a mask…</p>

12

<p>Four kids at a private school near here got it on a class trip to Mexico.</p>

13

<p>what’s really scary is that I live within 10 miles of the border, and A LOT of my classmates regularly visit Mexico (like once a week). Some students at my school LIVE in Mexico…Seriously my town will be the first to be infected.</p>

<p>and it’s this never known before combination of swine, bird, and human flu</p>

<p>It was nice knowing you all.</p>

14

<p>my high school is the infected school… a few of my friends have it =/</p>

15

<p>Sigh… you guys want to hear about a really scary pandemic? This disease affects:</p>

<p>1 in 4 or 22.79% or 62 million people in USA per year, estimated total of 1 billion cases in the USA annually.</p>

<p>It’s the common cold…</p>

16

<p>“1 in 4 or 22.79%”</p>

<p>ORLY?</p>

17

<p>People are only freaking out about this swine flu because 1. its a really new virus, and 2. there no known cure atm. </p>

<p>Its another round, there was SARS a few years ago in Asia and the ebola virus and probably many others.</p>

18

<p>Everyone at work today was talking about it like its an STD. They were like “omg stay away from her because she has it and she got it from him because of his ex girlfriend so stay away from them…”</p>

<p>…this will amount to nothing. It’s just new so they’re being extra careful. And there is a cure. Tamiflu.</p>

19

<p>Guys, you may well be right that this particular strain of swine influenza will amount to nothing, but don’t fool yourselves into thinking that there will never be another flu pandemic or that Tamiflu and Relenza will save the day. Here’s an excerpt from a description of the 1918 influenza pandemic: </p>

<p>"This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.[4] Indeed, symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, “One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred.”[15] The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.[14]</p>

<p>The unusually severe disease killed between 2 and 20% of those infected, as opposed to the more usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%.[14][15] Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old.[23] This is unusual since influenza is normally most deadly to the very young (under age 2) and the very old (over age 70), and may have been due to partial protection caused by exposure to a previous Russian flu pandemic of 1889.[24]"</p>

20

<p>Swine flu’s not new, either. There was also a 1970’s “pandemic”.</p>