Ok, a couple of years back, I started the SARS freak out thread. So, to keep with tradition, I am starting this one.
This shit is getting scary. I guess being a parent makes it freak me out alot more.
Anyway, someone tell me something to make me feel better. :roll:
As far as I know, the likelihood that a child (older than an infant) will contract it is close to infinitessimal.
We all die someday.
[quote=“Guido_Jones”]
We all die someday.[/quote]
But you before most of us. Next Tuesday at 3:14 in the afternoon, in fact. Rhinoceros.
Thank god.
Where are you getting this from? All I’m hearing is “Plague! Millions will die!” from the CDC and associated health agencies. And I don’t think the people catching bird flu in the east are children. Last year, the victims were mostly people who worked with chickens.
Where are you getting this from? All I’m hearing is “Plague! Millions will die!” from the CDC and associated health agencies. And I don’t think the people catching bird flu in the east are children. Last year, the victims were mostly people who worked with chickens.
Hmm. I thought that Avian Flu was primarily seen in the immunocompromised, but after a bit of checking I think I was totally wrong.
I haven’t seen anything on the health of the afflicted poultry workers’ immune systems, but one can assume they were more or less normal. However, panic at this point is unwarranted, seeing as how no confirmed human-to-human communicability has been reported.
This is someone’s cue to say, “But it’s only a matter of time!”
It truly is only a matter of time. CDC is preparing for pandemic as early as next flu season. They think this sucker could possibly jump the species gap that quickly.
Not that I don’t believe that will happen one day, but they say something like that every damn year.
I’m reading Jared Diamond’s Germs, Guns and Steel. According to him, it’s either suffer various diseases that jump the species gap(imagine a bad ass Evil Knevil germ in leathers on a bike) or soldier on as hunter gathers for the rest of eternity. I’ll risk the flu.
When the avian flu does make the jump to human-to-human communicability, I hope someone somewhere demonstrates it by using an animated Evel Knievel virus jumping a microscopic motorcycle from one stuffed up nose to another over a flaming chicken corpse.
I’m currently reading The Great Influenza, about the huge flu pandemic in 1918 that killed millions. Some estimates range up to 100 million, which is even scarier considering that global population was a lot smaller back then.
Anyway, the first chapters on the flu itself are a pretty scary education to the flu virus in general. All you need is a pig infected with both the bird flu and the human flu virii and you have the potential for it to mutate and leap to humans.
It’s really terrifying to read how quickly the 1918 flu killed people. And it’s even more disturbing that, unlike with most other flus that kill the really young and the really old (those with weakened immune systems), the 1918 virus went after 20 and 30-something year olds with a vengenace. Those are the folks who have the strongest immune systems. However, it appears that the 1918 virus was able to mutate so it could infect deep into the lungs, which causes the immune system to go all out in an effort to destroy it. The resulting “battle” between virus and immune system clog up the lungs with cellular debris to the point where oxygen can no longer transfer to the bloodstream.
The time between the first flu symptoms occurring and death was often measured in hours, not days.
I haven’t been sick from a virus since I had the chicken pox 20 years ago. Either I’m totally golden or I’ll be one of the first ones to go. :)
I got the flu last week for the first time ever, Influenza strain A. It knocked me flat on my ass for 3 days, and left me in a daze for another 2. It messed with my concentration, my balance, and my energy level. I didn’t even feel like logging into WoW to put a few blocks of coarse stone up in the AH.
[size=6]Everybody now!
[/size]
[i]It was the Flupandemic
And it swept the whole world wide
It caught soldiers and civilians
And they died, died, died!
Whether they’re lying in the trenches
Or lying in their beds
Twenty million of them got it
And they’re dead, dead, dead!
There was a soldier on the battleground in 1917
He turned there to his buddy with his face a ghastly green
He said “We made it both through Paeschendale, the Somme, and Flanders too
But now my number’s up my lad for I’ve gone and caught the flu”
chorus
Well a nurse was in the hospital when Tommy was brought in
When he sneezed she caught a face full that was flying in the wind
She wrote a letter home to England to tell them of her plight
But the letter never got there 'cause the postman too had died
chorus
From the meadowlands of Somerset and o’er the bounding main
To the shores of old Americay they sung the same refrain
Mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts as well as the odd nephew
Brothers and sisters and bosses and lovers were all got by the flu
chorus
Well a farmer out in China watched his family dropping down
And a businessman in Cairo hit the street without a sound
And an eager little Bolshevik in old Sevastapol couldn’t keep up his grinnin’ at Lenin as Comrade Virus took its toll[/i]
I’ve got a cassette version of this, but the original is a nice jaunty jig done by the Flying Fish Sailors.
You have a greater chance of dying from stress than bird flu.
You couldn’t find a more recent thread than this?