Swine Flu - Got the sniffles?

No, it's not, your immune system has no built up immunity to this virus. To the normal human flu, even though it does mutate enough to not allow you to become immune, you are more resistant to it. To your body this is a completely new virus.

You should also not treat the flu like it's just a bad cold, the flu is quite a serious disease. I knew someone who was a very healthy young bloke, very fit and active, he got the flu, instead of resting, he went to watch a rugby match. The next day he was dead.

 

Hate to bring a serious topic down but I got this in my work inbox and felt it would bring some light to the subject

 

My understanding of this swine flu was it was H1N1 which is broadly speaking influenza A which has been around for more than a few years now....

 

I've been to many places in Scotland

Glasgow's fun!

 

Something that i think is called education and university makes me live in Glasgow. YAY.

Chris

 

Yes, it's Influenza A, but animal strains of it are very distinct from the human strains. This is one of the main reasons why the WHO and CDC keep close tabs on the spread of epidemics in animals.

 

The flu was first described by Hippocrates, 2,400 years ago. That didn't make the 1918 outbreak (also an H1N1 strain) any less severe, either.

The real problem is that "H1N1" is about as specific a term as "PC". If the seasonal flu that always seems to go around is an old Dell Pentium 3 box, strains like the 1918 flu, the 1977 Russan flu, and this latest one are dual quad-core Xeon boxes with SLI and 12 gigabytes of ram. Sure, they're all "PC"s, but that doesn't make the powerful ones any less powerful. (And just for a baseline, this year's pentium 3 "seasonal flu" killed more than a hundred thousand people.) All that H1N1 really describes is a couple proteins on the flu virus's surface.

My analysis: This is probably going to be a very similar outbreak to the "Bird Flu" scare a couple of years back. It'll move around the world rather quickly, some people will die, and that will be it. Is the world coming to an end? Most likely not. Should you ignore the problem? Definitely not. Do reasonable things to protect yourself, and don't worry about it.

(Handwashing is good for a lot more than just protecting yourself from the flu - Hepatitis B kills three-quarters of a million people a year.)

 

Even more reason why I'm a Mac.

 

Pandemic or not, it's a licence to print money.
Where I work we supply a lot of the local hospitals, the Health protection Agency and several Medical/Janitorial suppliers. This week we have been completely cleaned out of ffp3 face masks (recommended by the HPA and probably about as much use as a chocolate teapot), bactericidal soaps and gels (it's a virus, these will not touch it, alcohol based products might) and would you believe body fluid spill kits (people are afraid of vomit), we're selling the damn stuff faster than the manufacturers can supply/produce it.


ergo swine flu will revitalise the economy , either that or the gov't should have given all that money they gave to the banks to women who we all know can spend like there's no tomorrow, especially if its not their money. I'm now hiding in a dark place before I get hunted down and murdered by some irate housewife

 

It's already worse than the Bird Flu, and that Bird Flu virus is still a risk, however very few human to human transmissions were reported and it's being kept under as much control as possible by killing any infected stock.

But yeah, there's no reason to go around panicking like it's the end of the world and we're all going to die, but at the same time I think the attitude some people have that it's all media hyperbole is just as bad.

 

How can you expect people to believe the media anymore if they have been caught bending the truth so often?

 

Mac is like H1N5 - not only is it a fairly powerful box, nobody's immune system has a clue how to use the OS.

 

So's Gartnavel, Large Nex.

One of my favorite musician friends is a guitarist with a studio in Glasgow. I found the place an oasis of baby-faced beauties with florid black hair. (Besides which, isn't Ampoule Records from there? Their mainstay, Pub, certainly is. Have a look at the vid on their site and see if you don't feel calmer.)

New York City, by contrast, is a traffic island packed with hypochondriacs. Everyone's terrified when someone sneezes, yet this has been the worst allergy season in five years. Riding home, I was tempted to induce volleys just to clear my part of the train.

 

BLASPHEMY!!!!!

 

Bored on your way to or from work? Well, try this:

Pick up your phone, pretend to talk to someone about your 4 week tour of Mexico. Hang up. Sneeze.

 

Oh god.

I am so doing that tomorrow!

Edit: Oh, and: http://doihaveswineflu.org/

Edit 2:

I kinda did, actually. I might have to invest in an album when I get a chance.

 

Lol, that links been posted 3 times (at least) in this thread..lol, sent so many people that as well!

 

Ahh, that's what I get for not reading a thread entirely

 

Lol, I posted it earlier, when I looked back through, I saw the same link....curses....

LOL

 

** Piglet sneezes.
Pooh : Oh bother!
** Pooh stuffs Piglet into a honey jar and tosses him off a cliff
Piglet : Ooooh de de de de de de de dddeeeaaarr!!