Swine Flu: Fear vs. Knowledge

[Are_grits_groceries]

http://www.neatorama.com/page/2/

Pretty accurate....

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

1. Funny how the same graph is appropriate for Fear of Swine Flu Vaccine.

Actually John Stewarts was better.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. If the swine flu is no big deal

then there is no point in getting the vaccine.

And some of us here remember the swine flu hoopla of the Ford era.

Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

14. How old are you?

[Art_from_Ark]

15. I am old enough to remember the Hong Kong flu epidemic of '68-'69

Vietnam protests, the Beatles cartoon show, both Kennedy assassinations.

How old are you?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

16. If you were alive from 47 to 57 then you probably already have some immunity.

[Art_from_Ark]

17. I wasn't quite on board when the Asian flu was making its rounds

I may-- or may not-- have had the Hong Kong flu in the winter of '68. I think I may have had just a bad cold, but my mom didn't want to take any chances so she rushed me to the local clinic and they gave me some penicillin after taking my temperature and going through the "stick out your tongue and say 'Ahhh'" routine. I don't think they made a real diagnosis. At any rate, I survived that ordeal, and haven't had the flu since. I also survived the swine flu hoopla of 8 years later and occasionally listen to cassette tapes of news stories I made from that era. The similarities between then and now are one reason why I remain skeptical about today's swine flu hoopla.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

18. The swine flu scare in 1976 wasn't a pandemic because it largely just affected children.

[Art_from_Ark]

19. I'm not so sure about that

They were really pushing swine flu shots for adults for a while, until the program was halted in September 1976 or therabouts.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

20. It wasn't classified a pandemic because it largely only affected children.

[BunkerHill24]

2. LOL....But I gotta ask if there is any report about a cat diagnosed with Swine Flu

if she's out off danger yet? BTW, no punt intended about the pretty cat you have there!

[Electric Monk]

3. NYT & Time both say yes

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/the-cat-who-got-swine-flu/

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1934826,00.html?iid=tsmodule

[BunkerHill24]

6. Thanks...that's relieve. n/t

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. I'm not sure how the cat is.

[Electric Monk]

5. If similar to most human cases, 3-4 days and back to normal

[kestrel91316]

8. The cat is fine.

[kestrel91316]

7. The cat with swine flu was never IN danger. I got some additional details

on the case from our local public health vet - the cat presented with lethargy and hiding as the ONLY symptom. Chest radiographs revealed some sort of changes which now have left my mind, lol. The vet hospital did bronchoalveolar lavage and tested the sample obtained for H1N1 and there it was.

I think the cat went to ISU's vet teaching hospital to begin with, which is probably why such extensive testing was done on a cat with lethargy as its only presenting complaint. The cat had NO UPPER RESPIRATORY SYMPTOMS and NO FEVER. Treatment consisted of supportive care, and the cat is fine, it was never in bad shape.

I reported a suspected case over the weekend, cat with fever and severe nasal congestion without sneezing, health department declined to test the sample I collected (nasal and pharyngeal swabs) because so much time had elapsed since onset of illness (2 weeks), they figured the virus wouldn't be present.

[happy2bhere]

9. Is it normal for an illness to spread to cats and dogs?

Someone had reported their dog seemed to get it and died as a result.

[kestrel91316]

11. We don't know what is "normal" for this virus. It is a newly evolved disease.

We need LOTS AND LOTS OF STATISTICAL DATA to understand what is normal for it. A single case in a cat gives us very little information, though preliminarily the fact that the cat was never in great danger and recovered quickly is encouraging.

There are no officially reported cases in dogs. An anecdotal case simply doesn't count. Veterinarians and vet teaching hospitals at universities are on the lookout for suspect cases in ALL species. Everybody wants to get famous by being the one to report "the first case of disease X in species Y", so a new deadly disease in any domestic animal isn't going to slip by unnoticed. Especially in a dog. Cats are much more easily overlooked.

[stray cat]

10. Everyone is going to die anyway so why try to change it with medical care or disease avoidance

:sarcasm:

[rd_kent]

13. Its all part of god's plan, so it is blasphemy to try and change it by getting a vaccine....