Curly's World

Simply wanted to hear if this has affected your area. They are talking about a worldwide epidemic for some time now, and it seems that Norway and the States were hit somewhat bad. Norway is hit the hardest if you count percentage of people infected. In Norway right now 1/7 has been diagnosed with Influenza A.
At my workplace we are divided into 4 houses, with around 75 kids in each. My house has been hit the hardest. We have only 2/3 of the kids present the rest is down with the flu, and we had a class where they started out 8 today, and before lunch we had called home two of them, and for the rest of the day our couches was occupied by kids with starting headaches and rising fever. We can pretty much tell the syptoms now better than the doctors. We are pretty lucky that noone in the staff got it this far.

AFAIK I already had it. I always get any flu a week or two before most everybody else, which at least means that I'm less of a burden on my workplace, since I'm immune when everybody else goes down.

We have two deaths already, but our government doesnt want to buy vaccine since it believes the panic was created by media and pharmaceutical industry.

Anyway, my gf's flatmate just returned from Italy -which has high flu rate atm - totally stuffed-up and coughing, with angina diagnosed and she got one week free from work. She left to her parents today and just in case weve been ventilating the flat the whole evening.

Good idea. TAnja had it some weeks ago too, so she is good. Anna might be having it right now, we dont know, as the doctors dont want people to come to them and get diagnosed, since the only thing that will help is make sure that the people in the waiting room gets it too. And the advice would propbaly be the same wether you have the H1N1 flu or just a regular one - go back to bed and rest, and drink lots of fluids... I am pretty much just waiting my turn, unless the soar throat and general discomfort that had me down for a week 2 weeks ago was actually a mild flu... But that would be weird because when I get the flu I am always on the verge of death, while other diseases dont really get to me. Knock on wood.

eMTe wrote:We have two deaths already, but our government doesnt want to buy vaccine since it believes the panic was created by media and pharmaceutical industry.

And I believe that as well. H1N1 influenza is a license to make money for the pharmaceutical industry. Our gouvernment paid millions for vaccine that isn't really tested (and now children and pregnant woman should use it) and now that the flu is here there isn't even enough vaccine for the few people that want to use it.

Ok, after my oppinion here are some facts for Germany: Right now there are about 40 000 official cases of H1N1, but there are supposed many, many more, because in most cases people with influenza symptoms weren't tested by their doctors. There are about 10 deaths (which isn't much if you know that tzhere are about 12 000 deaths of the regular influenza each year) and all of them suffered from other serious illnesses before as well.
At my workplace there are four children that are official down with the swine flu, but several more that aren't there because of influenza symptoms.

A(H1N1)v is a bitch. I might have had it for the past week or so. They were all out of "Had swine flu and all I got was this t-shirt"-shirts at hospital so I didn't want to bother them, just drank a lot of fluids and slept. And watched South Park.

I'm really saddened by all the crappy news stories that really f*** up people's already bad risk management skills. Evolution gave as a nice fight-or-flight -decision engine, but the one given by our huge grey mass is still a bit buggy and fails spectacularly with low-odds/high-impact events we have no previous experience about.

I'm still, eagerly, waiting for the headlines "28 year-old survived the flu". 600mg ibuprofen for teh win.

There's so much misinformation and fears and while some might accuse drug companies of profiting, in my opinion it's the news organizations that are being unethical here.

Yeah, seasonal flu kills a lot of people, but most of them tend to be old folk. Swine flu, for reason's unknown, tends to kill young people and fat ones. And because at least the medical orgs do have some decency, we don't know if any of the deaths were to perfectly healthy. I'm really appalled at the headlines telling us about the victims' backgrounds - just so the readers can sigh a relief of not sharing similar background or getting anxious because they do have similar background.

The more I learn about human decision-making, the more I admire people with expertise. Which is why it saddens me so much that we have all this great science and yet people decide to believe in things instead. You know, people ask me if I "believe" in climate change, for example. I don't believe in it, there's pretty hefty evidence right there, but to understand all that you need a f*** PhD in climate thingies. But, that's just our crappy decision-making abilities at work, when things get too complex, we wing it - and it tends to work pretty ok, most of the time.

So, yeah, your government paid a shitload of money to get an unfinished drug. It's sunk cost, and the only downside is that it might be ineffective. But hey, it might work - and, hey, free drugs. The only rational action is to take the shot.

Seriously, if your state decided to invest in vaccines, do get the shots - both for seasonal and swine flu (it's important to get both, otherwise there's not much point). Because this f***'s going to be around longer than the headlines about it.

Also, just because of statistics, you'd know that Norway and USA were affected. The former has one of the best health care systems in the world and the latter has buttload of people and lots of news tubes. You'd want to be more worried of places with buttload of people, non-existent healthcare and small internet tubes to the world... like Mexico. (Yeah, I've got a degree in economics and statistics so I tend to be unpopular at parties.... dismal science and all that.)

All right... maybe I should just go back to bed and not write posts while under influence of painkillers.

edit: 600th post! yea!

Well, I don't care about the vaccine being ineffective and I don't even believe that it will be. But I don't care that they give away a drug that's not even been tested and might have side effects that might be more dangerous than the flu itself.

You said it yourself: Normal flu kills thousands of people most of them being old and suffering from other illnesses as well. Swine flu is more dangerous for young people, but so far is pretty harmless as long as you don't suffer from other serious illnesses or diseases as well. So why is there this huge mass hysteria? Just one answer for me: Mass media and pharmaceutical industry created it, because both of them make a bunch of money out of it...

Pater Alf wrote:Well, I don't care about the vaccine being ineffective and I don't even believe that it will be. But I don't care that they give away a drug that's not even been tested and might have side effects that might be more dangerous than the flu itself.

Sorry, this is totally false. The vaccine is safe. The swine flu has unfortunately given a new platform to the anti-vaccination nutjobs, whose fearmongering is the most despicable of the whole lot.

You said it yourself: Normal flu kills thousands of people most of them being old and suffering from other illnesses as well. Swine flu is more dangerous for young people, but so far is pretty harmless as long as you don't suffer from other serious illnesses or diseases as well. So why is there this huge mass hysteria?

Well, from a society's point of view, the strain on health care and economy the damage could be pretty serious. But, no-one knows these things for sure, so it might be worth to prepare for the worst.

Also, people are stupid.

Just one answer for me: Mass media and pharmaceutical industry created it, because both of them make a bunch of money out of it...

This is pretty cynical. What should the pharmaceutical industry done, instead?

As far as I know the reason older people do not get it is taht there was a similar outbreak some 40 years ago which means that people that are old enough to have seen that has grown antibodies to that specific string of flu, which is so similar to this one that it works fine.

We have not gotten a lot of background on the people who died here, so we have nothing to compare ourselves to.

I do not consider the flu more dangerous than a regular flu, but it seems to be a hell of a lot more contagious, which means the danger lies in putting the entire society at its feet, when noone suddenly shows up for work monday...
I started thinking today that "yeah we are happy at my workplace that almost none of the kids are there - so we have less to do, and can dig deeper into caring and being close to the ones that are." (I am not happy that the kids are sick). But it dawned on me that most likely when all the kids return, all the adults will begin to go home sick, becasue it got to be our turn.

And feel better Zyx.

Zyx wrote:

Pater Alf wrote:Well, I don't care about the vaccine being ineffective and I don't even believe that it will be. But I don't care that they give away a drug that's not even been tested and might have side effects that might be more dangerous than the flu itself.

Sorry, this is totally false. The vaccine is safe. The swine flu has unfortunately given a new platform to the anti-vaccination nutjobs, whose fearmongering is the most despicable of the whole lot.

Well, you are wrong if you think that I belong to that group. I'm absolutely for vacination if there are serious illnesses and diseases and if there is a safe vaccine.
But it is a fact that the group that the new vaccine had been tested on wasn't as big as they should have been according to german laws for pharmaceutical products (it was allowed anyway, because of the danger of a pandmia) and that it wasn't tested for children and pregnant woman at all. So how can you be sure that it's safe?

Pater Alf wrote:Well, you are wrong if you think that I belong to that group. I'm absolutely for vacination if there are serious illnesses and diseases and if there is a safe vaccine.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that at all. It's just that those people really make me angry, because they endanger children to dangerous diseases that are so easily preventable.

But it is a fact that the group that the new vaccine had been tested on wasn't as big as they should have been according to german laws for pharmaceutical products (it was allowed anyway, because of the danger of a pandmia) and that it wasn't tested for children and pregnant woman at all. So how can you be sure that it's safe?

Yeah, it's a fact that it wasn't thoroughly tested, but what are the implications of that? That it can be more dangerous than the flu itself, as you said earlier? I don't think it would be allowed to be used at all unless it was safe. In the end, it was the states who made the decision and I do trust that there are some smart people in the national health decision making process. So, yes, I can't be sure myself that it is safe. We would need longitudinal studies to do that, they do take an awful long time to do and in the meantime, we might just prevent some unnecessary deaths. There is no reason to assume that just because we can't prove it's safe that it has to be more dangerous than the disease.

As far as I know, the only problem is that the vaccine might hurt a bit more or cause a rash more often than a normal vaccine, but this is just because it's missing apparently some stuff that's in normal vaccines that make them hurt less.

Vaccines are, generally speaking, not really safe. It's just that they are statistically safer than the alternative. There will always be those that get a bad reaction to the vaccine (some even fatal). Would they have gotten an even worse reaction to the disease? Well, we can't know that. I don't take vaccinations, because a flu is not going to kiill me at this point in my life.

I see no reason for generally healthy people to accept a vaccine for swine flu, under any circumstances, less than thoroughly tested certainly not helping. Well yes, I do see one reason: Fear. Which indeed does motivate us to do some pretty silly things. If I didn't get the flu every year, regular like clockwork, maybe I'd be afraid of it too. But you aren't really afraid of old friends, even if they mess you up now and then.

Scythe wrote:I don't take vaccinations, because a flu is not going to kiill me at this point in my life.

The point of the vaccine is not really about whether it would kill you or not, but about trying to stop the spreading of the disease.

But you aren't really afraid of old friends, even if they mess you up now and then.

Yeah, that's true and the problem here is that this is a rather new friend, that'll be around for some time.

I need to say here that there are a few kids at my workplace and my very own nephew, whom you might remember has an immune defficiency, who has gotten the flu vaccine becasue of their immune defenses being low, or because they have heavy astmatic problems. I am all for them getting the vaccine as I know that the disease could be fatal to them, and they are in a risk environment, with lots of kids around. I am also all for giving them the next vaccine for the next flu that is going to be around, but no doubt that this one has been made to look like somewhat of a boogeyman. There is no higher fatality than normal flu, but the pure contagiousness of it makes it dangerous to us. And people are not afraid of their workplace going down for a while - they are afraid of dying - so in that sense it is illogical to be more afraid of this than the normal flu. And this way the media has caused some hysteria, but lets not ignore that it is a disease that kills some people and agree that to each his own way of reacting to it. Much like some people are afraid of heights. Heights wont kill you - lowths will. Very few people are afraid of getting too close to the ground.

I am sure taht as long as the vaccines can not keep up - not even close - with the spreading of the disease then the current point of the vaccine is not dying from the disease. The true reason should be that the disease should be contained.

Zyx wrote:The point of the vaccine is not really about whether it would kill you or not, but about trying to stop the spreading of the disease.

Ah, quarantine works for me. While some inoculations might be better than none, until the entire populace is given one, I don't believe it will contain the spread. Well, we can see that they don't.

Yeah, that's true and the problem here is that this is a rather new friend, that'll be around for some time.

Most flus are new strains, I don't see how this one is any different.

The major problem with recent panic is that this new flu is not more dangerous or more deadly than other flus. It's just another mutation, but, basically, it's just a simple flu. Normal, relatively healthy human organism can fight it successfully. So, if someone ever had flu and his immune system managed to beat the virus he'll beat this one as well. The panic has been created, because majority of people watching and reading daily news think that we have to do with completely different disease and they should vaccinate, otherwise they may die. It's the same group of people which probably never vaccinated against common flu, probably never had one and never will have. Now governments spend millions of dollars for vaccines that will save millions of lives living in irrational fear.

Do you have anymore of those Painkillers Zyx???

There was an article in Danish newspaper few days ago (Ive read translation only, so cant locate it) about WHO experts being sponsored by pharmaceutical industry to announce pandemia, create worldwide panic and increase vaccine sells. Many of WHO experts are also experts for GlaxoSmithKline and other big fish, so they probably do what they're paid for not only in this case.

I've managed to avoid it but if you want to fight a flu or an influenza, you should/must stay at home and eat a lot of chicken congee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congee drink a lot of lemon tea with honey, rest and do a lot of ?aerosols. Not sure what is the name, but webought one machine that does that for my stepfather when he had to recover from an heart surgery and has helped to avoid/fight a lot of flus and respiratory infections since then.

Hope this helps, if you need the recipe forthe soup I'll translate it.