Swine flu - CALM DOWN!

Sigh. The media and conspiracy theorists and nutcase losers are all going at it hammer and tongs. A Republican congresswoman from the US has archly observed that the last time there was an outbreak of swine flu in America another Democrat, ie Jimmy Carter, was the president and with the heavy insinuation that this couldn't just be a coincidence! Too bad the president at the time was actually the Republican Gerald Ford. And YES!, there is nothing new about an outbreak of swine flu people. To put this into some context, the number of confirmed cases (as at the time Sandy from Junkfood Science wrote this article) was 117. The number of news stories about swine flu? 117,607. Though the situation is not helped when the director general of the World Health Organisation, Dr Margaret Chan, stupidly says “It is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.” Okay, in one sense that is correct. A pandemic is by definition a worldwide event and there is some level of threat. But we still do not know what level of threat precisely and, to be honest, you'd have to say the initial indications are that this isn't going to be any more severe than most epidemics of flu. One statistic that also helps put the current situation into its proper context is this - every year in the United States between 30,000 and 50,000 people die from influenza. In just one week recently - 12-18 April - there were 25,925 recorded cases of influenza in the States, with 55 children dying of the disease. The current death toll in the US from swine flu is one. A two year old Mexican child with underlying health problems, who had been airlifted in a serious condition to a hospital in Texas. There's more at the Junkfood Science link above. Do yourself a favour and read what Sandy has to say and, for Christ's sake, calm down. The other thing that worries me in situations like this is the tendency for governments to feel they have to be seen to DO SOMETHING. Anything, as long as they appear to be in control of things. Oh dear. We all know how that so often ends up, don't we Andrew Bolt surveys a history of hysterical headlines: “We could have a billion people dying worldwide” - the great bird flu scare of 2005 that killed 257 “Apocalypse bug!” and “Killer virus” (CNN and Newsweek respectively) - the great Ebola scare of 1995 that killed 800 people in Africa “The projections are that the virus will kill one million Americans.” (US Health, Education and Welfare Department) - the great swine flu scare of 1976, during which just one American died from the virus, but another 33 from the vaccinations the US Government ordered in its Do Something panic “Race to prevent world epidemic” - the great bird flu scare of 1997 that killed six people “Could have a similar impact to the 1918 flu epidemic that killed 50 million” (BBC) - the great SARS scare of 2003, which killed around 1,000 He ends with the very sensible question "We know life is too short to forever fear a wild new way of dying. Um, don’t we?" (Okay, had to pull this from the comments left for his post. Somebody said that with the current state of the federal budget, we should be afraid of Swan Flu instead. To which somebody else replied "Just the thought of getting the Swan Flu gives me a Ruddache." Well, I thought it was funny.) Finally - http://doihavepigflu.com/ “No man, nor any body of men, is good enough, or wise enough, to dispense with the tonic of criticism” – T H Huxley

Posted via email from Garth's posterous