I like my Meerschwein in a cage, personally
with regards to the vaccine - please be aware that this has been fast-tracked and not many people have had it to date.
Damn the English language and all its complexities...
If you get the vaccine, and you still die (or are left with disabilities), then it's "bad luck". If you do die and something could have been done to prevent it (You didn't get the vaccine because you listened to conspiracy theories etc or you couldn't access it), then it's a tragedy for your family that will leave them altered and sad for the remaining years of their lives.
I've read many discussions on this topic. Why is it that many people post and infer that if someone "would have died anyways" if they caught the regular flu because they had an underlying condition that it's insignificant that they died of A/H1N1? Have we really written off all the weakest in our society (the babies, pregnant, elderly, people with chronic health conditions)? Somehow their "death" doesn't quite "count" as much as a death of someone with no prior health conditions? Thus, let's not be alarmed? (Remember, one day YOU will be one of those people with "prior health-conditions"! We all will be, if we reach old age!)
Not quite so. Do pregnant women have some serious life threating flu related situation with normal flu? Not necessarrily.
How about the age group of people with swine flu serious aftermath? It is usually the elderly in seasonal flu, not the 25-35 young, previously healthy folks.
Typically people who have lung, heart and chronic diseases are most susceptible - anything that makes you a little weaker and makes you more susceptible to pneumonia, for example.
I'm just getting over it, having caught it, I think, from my nephew in the US (I was there for the last couple of weeks). He had fever and a nasty cough for several weeks, was in and out of school. Of course I was a sucker for an infection because I had a lovely case of bronchitis at the beginning of October. Or maybe that was the start of it, it got better and then got worse. It's interesting, watching an infection move throughout your respiratory system. Time for it to leave, though. I've had walking pneumonia (mycoplasma) a couple of times, and wanted to die. Or kill others. This seems to last as long, but nowhere as severe.
It's just tiring, and it does take a long time to get over. Lots of annoying coughing, tiredness, headache. I never felt really bad, and I had fever just for a couple of days, just recently and nothing over 38 degrees (pretty low grade). But coughing.... ugh. It's a freakin' tenacious bug though.
Older people may have some immunity built in from a similar illness that was widespread in the early 1960s, I believe, so it's milder in them.
Swine flu is no big deal, unless it hits you hard and gives you pneumonia, or creates systemic failures. If you don't catch it in the first 24-48 hours to take an anti-viral all you can do is treat symptoms such as headache, cough, fever. It lingers a long time. It is incredibly widespread in the US, definitley more widespread than expected.
So wash your hands, cough into your elbow and stay home if you feel like crap. No one wants or needs your germs.
I think it is meant with the slightly less sensationalistic sentiment that people with underlying conditions are more at risk because the flu virus exacerbates it and shouldn't be confused with the "running about hands in the air" that swine flu will kill everyone.
Yes, that is true. My partner had this.....in the middle of summer, a person who rarely gets ill and leads a very healthy lifestyle; and I tell you that even he was struglling with a very very bad sore throat and it took ages to recover so I would say it varies from person to person how you cope with it....
The big problem with this flu that no-one on this thread has picked up on is that without any containment, it will spread - in an exponential fashion.
The more cases that there are, the more chances there are that it will mutate into something much, much more serious which could wipe out millions.
Spanish flu did just this in 1918.
This is what scientists are concerned about.
But there wasn't a vaccine in 1918. I'm not saying that everyone can be vaccinated but with more hygiene control and vaccinations these days such a devastating event could be avoided or at least contained, couldn't it?
There's a vaccine for the current strain of the virus but it may take some time to get a vaccine for a mutant strain.
And then there's the delay in mass-producing the new vaccine and distributing it.
It seems most people will not get vaccinated. Even the most hygenic measures are sometimes too little against somebody sneezing in your face on a tram not covering his mouth, coworker who comes to work sick and whatever kids bring home from school. There is a big chance of catching something so virulent no matter how often you sanitize your hands.
Only if you can get enough people to take the vaccine... otherwise you might as well not have one.
I say that, but I haven't had it and am not currently planning to. I'm pretty healthy (childhood asthma but seem to have outgrown that), not pregnant, and the last three times I had a regular flu shot I was ill for a week afterward - so on balance I think I prefer to take my chances.
(Good thing everyone's not like me, eh? )
1/2 a million people die each year around the world from Flu, and about a billion get infected each year.
WHO reported as of 30th October that 440,000 people had been infected with Swine Flu and 5,000 have died so far. (they say the figures may be slightly higher as countries stop reporting cases)
Those figures aren't enough to cause all the, hands in the air panic that is being spread around.
Yes it could mutate into the Black Death, yes a meteor could smash into my house tomorrow but I will refuse to panic until there is a good reason for me to do so.
"underlying conditions" make it dangerous....
WHAT are the underlying conditions? is it asthma? Is it pneumonia? Is it the fact you went to Migros last Thursday? Is it the fact you ate a twix bar last month.......
Its the underlying conditions that worry me more than the flu!
socialism is a form a fascism (government and big corporations working together)
the big companies eliminate competition by making it too difficult to compete, and they make all the money off of the government programs. Take LASIK for example. Totally private. Quality goes up and prices come down. Lots of innovation.
Er, yes. Down with the socialist swine flu!
(or should that be "Down with the socialist flu shots!"? Your posts are so oblique I'm never quite sure.)
As edot pointed out in an earlier post, it is usually existing respiratory conditions which can be exacerbated by a flu virus, not a trip to Migros or a Twix bar.
There were quite a few fatalities of healthy folks (young or kids) who basically got killed by the reaction of their healthy immune system going into overdrive. That is something nobody can predict and I think that is something that makes the healthy people worried.
As per my doctor,
Swine flu is not that dangerous.
If you are a normal healthy person and get a swine flu, don't worry. You will be healthy in a few days. Also, when the next swine flu season is near, your immune system will be adapted to deal with it.
Swine flu becomes dangerous when the patient is pregnant or have serious health issues like HIV
So, don't be paranoid and pay a huge sum to see you got the bug
I just read a report from Argentina for instance that said that there had been 200 deaths due to the swine flu but the nirmal flu had killed 500...We do not know how manypeople got earch disease so can not really draw conclusions but it seems that the at risk group for swine flu is a quite well defined.
I would get the vaccine because I am in the high risk group I have to say though that vaccination is not mandatory BUT voluntary !