Posted on 08/24/2009 11:41:07 AM PDT by Brugmansian
This flu is not just another flu. It has the potential to cause a pandemic. This happens every 20-30 years.
If it picks up a few avian flu genes in the process it could kill a lot of people. This happens about every 100 years.
The concern is appropriate but should not the fodder of the 24 hour news cycle.
We also know that almost all of the US Swine Flu deaths have been with the morbidly obese.
“Concern” is the key word here. Keeping a wary eye on a possible threat is wise.
But I’m seeing too many people down-right scared silly about this. Concern is healthy. Panic is not.
Well, as you’ve already discovered, posting a thread here which attempts to take a rational look at swine flu immediately sets you up as a target for a host of uninformed, misinformed, and at types just plain dumb comments.
There are people here who will almost literally crucify you just for trying to rationally and reasonably analyze and report on the situation. If there’s any real threat, they simply don’t want to know about it and will crucify you for trying to inform them.
It’s kind of depressing, really.
Already we’ve had our share of lulu comments on this thread.
1) “Sounds like the normal flu to me.”
Right after you’ve pointed out that the death rate appears to be roughly 10 times as bad as the normal flu.
Some people can’t be bothered to even read what was posted before asserting the exact opposite, based on... no evidence or source of information whatsoever. Just their personal opinion, which is of course authoritative.
2) “My daughter calls it the Hiney Swiney.”
So what? It doesn’t matter WHAT idiotic label your daughter gives it. It’s killing people.
If your daughter calls Ahmadinhejad “Barney the purple dinosaur” it doesn’t mean he won’t kill her with a nuke if he gets the chance.
3) “What a freaking joke.”
Tell that to the families of the 500+ Americans that have so far been killed by H1N1, and the 200,000 or so whose lives have been disrupted by it to this point, when it hasn’t even been flu season yet.
4) “The deathrate is rising with the use of the vaccine. This was a complete sham from the getgo.”
The vaccine hasn’t even been used yet!!
Again, any relevant facts don’t matter, as the poster’s uninformed personal opinion is authoritative.
5) “Do you know of anyone who has died of this? Do you even know anyone who’s gotten this flu?”
This is an understandable comment, and it represents an understandable, reasonable but completely inaccurate misunderstanding of the situation.
It’s akin to looking at a train rolling down the tracks towards us, and saying, “Do you know anyone who’s been struck by the train? No? Then there’s no danger.”
Or, another analogy: It’s like saying “Do you personally know anyone who has been killed by a terrorist? No? Then we shouldn’t do anything about terrorism, because we’re in no danger from it.”
(Incidentally, I do personally know someone who’s gotten this flu, and was laid up for quite some time. Again, this happened at a time far OUTSIDE OF the normal flu season.)
We haven’t had the this-is-all-a-total-fake-manufactured-NON-crisis conspiracy theory nuts weigh in yet, but I’m sure they’ll be here any moment.
Fortunately, we do have a few intelligent and informed comments:
1) “The reality is that we don’t know how many people have actually been sick from this flu. From what I understand, most people just stay home for a week or two and never go to the doctor for a difinitive diagnosis. The actually mortality could easily be half that reported. None of the people who’ve died in the US were pictures of health to begin with. Sorry, I just can’t get freaked out about this bug. I’m honestly a little more concerned about the vaccine.
But note: Even with a mortality rate half that reported, that would still imply a bug 5 times worse than the seasonal flu.”
And yes, there are valid reasons to be concerned about the vaccine. You just have to weigh the potential dangers of the flu against the potential dangers of the vaccine.
2) “Is it likely that the number of confirmed cases will not grow because testing has been suspended, but after a death there might be a test made, which would skew the percentage higher, by an unknown amount?”
This is an intelligent question.
3) “I see the exact opposite. HHS and Obama are downplaying the stats. Why isn’t the death rate approaching 1% headline news?”
4) “The median age of death in Australia for normal seasonal flu is 83. For this flu it is 56.”
5) “Two items that differ between H1N1 and the usual seasonal flu - the mortality rate is higher, and H1N1 is killing healthy young adults, not only the very young, very old, and those with other serious health problems. That’s why medical organizations such as WHO and the CDC are so concerned.”
I will add one more:
This flu is killing people in the prime of life.
We have no “herd immunity” to this virus, and without a vaccine we could reasonably expect approximately 1/3 of the country to come down with it over the next two years. That would be 100 million people.
If we should have a true CFR of 1%, that would be 1 million Americans dead.
Now I’m not expecting such a scenario to actually happen, because fortunately we have people actually doing something about the threat.
But the threat is real, and is well worth keeping an eye on - even with a vaccine.
Anyone who tries to claim otherwise just doesn’t understand what they’re talking about.
The WHO figure of nearly 1% is accurate for what it reports but biased to the high side when extrapolated to the general population. No secret about that. I've been seeing 0.5% used. From Asahi/IHT:
A team of researchers in the Netherlands estimates that the fatality rate of new swine influenza is about 0.5 percent, compared with 0.1 percent or lower for seasonal flu, based on data in the United States and Canada. Hiroshi Nishiura, a researcher of theoretical epidemiology at Utrecht University, and others will report their findings to U.S. science magazine PLoS ONE.
Study below uses about 0.5% as a basis too. It predicts 46 million infections and 200,000 deaths (authors state these figures are very tentative, they are only trying to give some guidance to hospitals as to what they might expect):
Swine origin influenza A (H1N1) virus and ICU capacity in the US
But I’m seeing too many people down-right scared silly about this. Concern is healthy. Panic is not.
I'm of the keep-an-eye-on-this camp. But here at FR, I don't see ANYONE "panicking" about this flu.
I do see far too much of the opposite error: "Har har har!", "There's no way I'll ever take a vaccine" and "This has been a total sham from the very beginning."
Government orders forced vaccinations and then declares victory for government controlled health-care. Not hard to contemplate.
I won’t be taking the vaccine. PERIOD.
o.o.o I know this one! It isn’t in any US paid for media...
Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America
I won’t be taking the vaccine. PERIOD.
__________________________________
Rightfully so!!! The link I posted to the UK Daily Mail has statistics from the 1976 flu vaccine debacle..
“It refers to the use of a similar swine flu vaccine in the United States in 1976 when:
* More people died from the vaccination than from swine flu.
* 500 cases of GBS* were detected.
* The vaccine may have increased the risk of contracting GBS by eight times.
* The vaccine was withdrawn after just ten weeks when the link with GBS became clear.
* The US Government was forced to pay out millions of dollars to those affected.
*Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS)
Assuming that the numbers are right (a BIG Assumption to be sure) ... Typical mortality rate from the flu is on the order of .05%. A little math shows that a 1% mortality rate is 20 times worse than the regular flu.
Somewhere between 20 and 50 thousand people die of the "regular" flu in America each year. Twenty times that number is something I'd not like to think about.
I don't think that it will be that bad. I also think that there will be a lot of people fanning the flames to suit their various political agendas.
But, I'm still keeping a close eye on this one. I don't believe in getting flu shots, but I'm thinking about getting one this year.
bttt
You have to weigh the risks each way, and make your own decision. I personally haven't made my mind up yet.
* More people died from the vaccination than from swine flu.
* 500 cases of GBS* were detected.
Different year, very different situation.
In 1976, there was only ONE death from swine flu, and 25 deaths from the vaccine. 18% of the population were vaccinated.
That means if 2/3rd of the population had been vaccinated, we might've expected 90 deaths, and 1800 resulting cases of GBS detected.
Adjusted for today's population, that would be around 125 deaths and 2500 cases of GBS detected.
So far, this influenza has infected a very small percentage of our population but has killed more than 500 Americans, making it HUGELY more deadly than the 1976 bug.
I would estimate around 100,000 infections so far in the USA, and that around 1/3 of the population would be affected without a vaccine.
So we can draw up two potential scenarios:
1) Two thirds of the country gets vaccinated, epidemic is stopped:
Result: 125 people die of the vaccine, and 2500 get GBS.
2) Nobody gets vaccinated. 500,000 men, women and children die of influenza.
Hmm. So far, actually, the odds appear to me to be HEAVILY skewed in favor of it being a smart idea to take the vaccine.
Like I say, I haven't totally made my own decision yet (I do appreciate risks of vaccines). And a fear of the vaccine is not entirely unreasonable. CFR on this bug is around 0.5% and we do, after all, have to take the word of the "authorities" that it's been adequately tested and is not going to harm us.
But I suspect that in the end it's going to be pretty hard for me to ignore the basic math.
You left out a point, which is that seasonal flu generally kills elderly folks who are soon to die anyway. This flu kills people in their prime.
I also keep coming up with figures between 200,000 and 500,000 in a no-vaccine scenario (see post 54). I don't think that will happen, simply because whatever some on this board may do, 100 million people or more in this country are going to get the vaccine.
That would way under-report cases, while not affecting the number of deaths, especially since I remember reading some while back that US doctors were told to stop routinely sending samples for confirmation; yet the number deaths would still be caught by autopsy.
So, the real question is, how much of this is an agenda driven hyping?
Lab confirmed. Click into the links in the OP
That would way under-report cases
Yes it would. It does with any disease. But what isn't confirmed, can't be reported can it?
So, the real question is, how much of this is an agenda driven hyping?
Zero. Zilch. Nada.
In the OP, Barbara J. Martin MD took the lab-confirmed stats from WHO and charted them on a graph. There is no agenda driven hyping by her or in the data released by WHO.
Think about it. What is the alternative? Don't give physicians and others a heads up to what lab-confirmed cases are showing because only a fraction of cases can be confirmed? Don't bother testing at all?
OTOH, though 'not reported', individual cases are regularly being treated on a 'presumed' basis; and if any of those die, they ARE tested AND reported.
Therefore, deaths continue to be confirmed, presumed cases don't; that skews the mortality rate, in that 'confirmed cases' barely increase, while the number of 'confirmed deaths' continues to climb disproportionately.
From what I was reading about it a while ago, the mechanism is that it causes the immune system to over-react to the infection. So people with healthy, vigorous immune systems are vulnerable.
All they do is look at last year and going back ten years. Same methodology. Same bias. Is this year the same as those? No. Its worse.
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