Originally posted by: WildHorse
No.
I don't accept the media messages intended to stampede the masses, and my older uncle told me about a history of same with some flu serum during past-time presidency, maybe Ford or Carter I don't remember. Basically, the actual biological disease is vastly less than hype boosted to mania by media.
Tick - born disease (Lyme & others) emanating (this is a non-controversial fact, demonstrable by plotting georaphical coverage vs. t) from USA east coast (probably from Plum Island?) is a greater threat to the wide citizenry at large.
We never had stuff like that here till just lately (west Nile, ebola, Lyme, etc.). It only appeared here in last 2-3 years, Now how do you "conspiracy theory" kneejerk reactionaries explain that? Please do cogently explain it.
P.S. the Plum Island thing is non-controversial, and a demonstrable fact you can see yourself bny plotting geographic coverage vs. t) so mods & lifers here please do try, to your best maturity level, to withhold your typical barrage of mindless "conspiracy theory witch hunt" garbage posts hell-bent on suppressing posts about controversial subjects. Your "get your mind right!" way is NOT the majority-way.
Simple objective fact.
As for flu, I usually ahave always been able to quickly cure myself simply by fasting for a few (3-5) days. And wash hands at every chance.
Well, I'm going to skip all the Lyme disease stuff, because I have no idea how we even arrived at that point.
Skipping to the end of your post - if you think fasting helped get over influenza in 3-5 days, you are wrong. And also, most likely did not have influenza. Quite a few general viruses can cause flu-like symptoms. Flu-like symptoms aren't specific to influenza, rather they are the hallmark immune system response to many respiratory infections, influenza being the most well known, documented, and dangerous (to at risk groups). However, a countless number of non-respiratory infections also cause flu-like symptoms. Just how our body does things. Sucks for us to experience, but the body attacks things in a pretty systematic way. Short point, fasting will make illness worse, so a combination of fasting and getting over something in 3-5 days is pretty indicative of an infection that was not influenza. Just saying...
Moving on...
everyone wants to cry about media creative massive paranoia/hype over new viruses. Granted, this is an acceptable gripe because they do go overboard. However, it's really out of the general best interest for civilization - when everyone starts getting fearful of a new bug, it helps slow or prevent a wildfire spread by making those paranoid individuals seek out ways to avoid getting sick. Less potential hosts, more difficult for a virus to spread.
Who knows if any of that media coverage helped prevent the spread of Avian Flu, or SARS, or if that was the natural progress of the bug. Most bugs, if it takes awhile to spread to a great number of hosts, will mutate into less dangerous forms. I think an excellent crackdown on SARS may have helped, it may have mutated to a less virulent form. It also might not had ideal conditions to spread, or had too many factors that made it difficult to spread by it's design, thus with the addition of preventative measures it was brought under control.
Avian Flu most likely never mutated for human-to-human spread. Without that key step, it was destined to never cause a pandemic.
The 2009 A(H1N1) strain has received a serious amount of attention and fearmongering. First from the media over the strain itself, then from people about vaccines. And misinterpretation of clinical findings with vaccines, as always, leads to fearmongering of epic proportions. No vaccine is 100% free of potential side effects. And anything related to influenza has the capacity to lead to GBS, albeit at extreme odds and potentially to only a very small risk group at that.
There is quite a lot about the immune system we don't know. We see its effects, and what happens when it doesn't work the way it is supposed to, but we are no where near understanding what makes it dysfunction, such as autoimmune disorders which feature overactive immune responses that attack the body. Won't go into more detail because it's not pertinent to this thread.
The main point I have, is that in a few years we may find that the media was responsible for reckless hype, or we may find it didn't do enough, didn't get enough facts out in time.
They are just now starting to release information that I have been proclaiming as a possibility since the spring. I ultimately hope I am dead wrong (well, hopefully not dead, I am in the risk group ) and that this isn't nearly as bad as it could be.
But, the facts do not lie. Whether or not this spreads like wildfire, and exactly how virulent it is, remains to be seen. In some instances it has demonstrated more than enough to warrant the media's coverage.
- It has so far infected more teenagers, young adults, and middle-aged adults, than the seasonal flu.
- Infections have been more serious in young adults and middle-aged adults.
- Mortality peaks in the middle-aged adult category.
It is unknown whether underlying conditions are necessary for infection to be lethal, though quite a few of the middle-aged adults who have succumbed to the virus have had underlying conditions - ranging from heart conditions, asthma, and diabetes.
It has been theorized (may have been demonstrated in a case, don't have the details from the CDC or WHO, just the basic information) that cytokine storms may be the result of an infection in an otherwise healthy young or middle-aged adult.
Cytokine storms are theorized to be the hallmark of the 1918 A(H1N1) strain.
Cytokine storms are essentially the result of an otherwise very active immune system targeting anything and everything in the respiratory system. Why or how the immune system is driven to this end result is unknown, and since there is no way to accurately test the immune response of the 1918 strain, it cannot be 100% proven it was the chief killer, but it is thoroughly believed to be the most likely explanation based on today's knowledge.
But regardless, cytokine storms most often result in viral pneumonia (I believe, though these two things may be unrelated if I've read into something wrong). The CDC and WHO are both citing viral pneumonia as being a chief concern with H1N1 as it rears its ugly head in greater numbers.
The problem with all of that - viral pneumonia is a bitch to treat. With the lungs receiving a lot of damage, and the lungs getting flooded (cellular tissue also gets destroyed in a cytokine storm). Viral pneumonia caused by a very virulent influenza strain is hell, for both the patients and the doctors.
Now imagine, and this is where the same fears of 1918 still hold true today, hospitals being overran with individuals of the same symptoms. Now, make those same symptoms a cytokine storm in the lungs, and/or viral pneumonia from influenza, and this tasks the hospital with finding mechanical respirators for those who have progressed too far.
Cytokine storms hit hard and fast, often in the first week of infection, and iirc, even the first 3-4 days following initial symptoms. So many patients with these medical issues aren't going to receive treatment at an early enough time.
And mechanical ventilators are not in large numbers at every hospital. In fact, the entire country has a low number of them. If many regions get hit and hospitals have their resources stretched thin in regards to treatment of these specific patients, it could get ugly.
Of course, none of this could end up being the common case, and many will get better.
It's estimated that even the 1918 strain 'only' had, at best, somewhere between a 5-10% mortality rate. But when comparing it to other influenza strains, that's an outright brutal bug. And when it hits a population that has zero immunity to that specific strain, everyone is susceptible. Take it to the potentially most at-risk groups, who in this day and age are often in close proximity to many others of their same age group (young adults and middle-aged adults at the workplace and schools), and you can see where the concern is. Even with a "low" percentage like that, even with a 1-2% mortality rate, take the number of cases to the hundreds of millions, if not more, that the world will most likely see, and the death toll skyrockets.
We have no idea what will ultimately happen. So far it has truly followed the exact same pattern and geographic spread of the 1918 pandemic.
Not trying to sensationalize or hype this bug at all, just clearing up a lot of misconceptions.
The medical community has changed their wording quite often too as they have come to find some of this out. I had told my mom these very same points, and was shrugged off and basically told that I was very wrong. Now she has forgotten the things I have said and is now repeating many of the same points as they have been briefed in the hospitals. (though some are still missing, since a lot of the points are grounded in theories of the past, and untested hypothesis regarding the current bug - specifically since we cannot predict immune response)
Even if you completely disagree with the above statements, and hell, take them and call them utter bullshit if you want, the point is to show just WHY the media and medical communities are creating a good deal of panic. And sadly, that panic, coupled with what was ultimately deemed unnecessary panic from earlier pandemic threats, and many look to the government and media as cooking up a bunch of worthless hype. Crying wolf, essentially. So now, the third time in a decade the media has created the same level of hype, people are ignoring it.
That's not going to help things.
phew, my fingers are tired.