Quote:
Originally Posted by Eagle eye
Health officials have announced that three of a college party that arrived back from their field trip to Mexico have tested positive for swine flu. more.
I had convinced that this would all blow over and it would be found that the students would have only common flu. The hype here is similar to the bird-flu outbreak several years ago which many people took precautions for, though it never made it to New Zealand.
There are still 56 suspected cases in NZ and up to 70 in Australia. 40 confirmed in the US. Is it not that big a deal in the states? I'm surprised that this hasn't been brought up already.. anyone taking extra precaution? |
It's a big deal in the States mate. The media's been talking it up for the past week. We've had a couple of confirmed cases here in MA as well.
Thing about this is that things are changing so rapidly that people don't fully understand the scope yet. There's been one fatality, a 2yo kid in Texas. According to unconfirmed reports from Mexico there have apparently been 150+ deaths, but only 7 confirmed due to swine flu. Probably because the remaining 143 haven't been tested/autopsied yet.
The media has been beating it up, but on the other hand flu is highly contagious and can be transmitted aerially, and this is a new strain that people's immune systems haven't seen yet. The risk is minimal, but it is there. But will it wipe the world out the way the Black Death did? Don't think so. Unless it starts moving to poorly developed countries in Africa where sanitation is poor and barrier nursing is not well practiced, and antiviral drugs are unavailable, then you're going to see a lot more fatalities (which is the case with influenza and other pathogens like malaria, typhoid etc anyway). In rich, well developed countries like the US, Western Europe, Australia and Middle-Earth, you probably won't see a lot.
From a personal point of view I'm not taking any additional precautions at this stage though. If a few more cases are found close to home/work I might!