

2,000 students at Washington State University report flu symptoms - andrewbadera
http://www.physorg.com/news171462716.html

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iamelgringo
H1N1 is going to be a really, really big deal this fall and winter. It's time
to set up your H1N1 website, and start selling "I survived the swine"
t-shirts.

I work as an ER nurse, and hospitals all over are expecting a huge influx of
patients. It's going to be a miserable winter for me. :( The CDC is expecting
50% of the population to come down with it, close to a million
hospitalizations and 90,000 deaths in the US alone. This out break already
meets the WHO definition of pandemic flu.

Most people that come down with it have a bad case of the sniffles, a cough
and feel miserable for a while. But the problem with this virus is that it
randomly hits younger people (age 25-50) really hard and sends them to the
ICU. We've had 10-12 young people in our ICU this summer on ventilators with
H1N1. Two of those people were pregnant mothers.

<PSA> So, get your flu and swine flu shots this year. Wash your hands. Sneeze
or cough into your elbow instead of your hands. If you're sick, for the love
of health, please stay home and isolate yourself instead of sharing your germs
with your coworkers. And, if you're having a hard time breathing, come to the
ER sooner rather than later. </PSA>

~~~
axod
They said this at the start of the summer in the UK. There was talk of keeping
kids from starting school in september because that's when everything would be
at its worst. They setup round the clock manned telephone hotlines for advice.
Those operators are now sleeping, playing cards, waiting for the phones to
ring.

Seems like most people in the UK have had a mild case of swine flu now, and it
was pretty boring (I believe myself and my family had mild case of swine flu a
month or so ago - we stayed at home, felt a bit rubbish for a few days, then
got better).

Is it really worth getting jabs for this? (Unless you're pregnant or have
other medical issues). Is it really worth trying to isolate it?

On the grand scale of things, the number of people likely to die from it seems
miniscule compared to other threats.

PS (When I started to type "myself" above, my fingers actually typed "mysql"!
Hate it when that happens :/ )

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jimmybot
"In the grand scale of things, the number of people likely to die from it
seems miniscule compared to other threats."

What are other threats are you thinking of?

What other diseases are estimated to cause half the US population to be
infected, one million hospitalizations, and 90,000 deaths? Even if most people
who get it are fine after a few days, it's a pretty big deal if half the
population is going to come down with it; H1N1 sure is going to get a lot of
chances to kill even if it's not so deadly for any one individual.

~~~
axod
Your standard seasonal flu kills thousands every year :/

~~~
onreact-com
Exactly, 30k dead in the US annually due to seasonal flu. I doubt the swine
flue will kill 90k. They want to scare people to sell Tamiflu and the vaccine.
It's a billions of dollars business.

The same people who own the pharma companies were involved in the propaganda
of WMDs in Iraq, most notably Donald Rumsfeld who is the owner of the Tamiflu
selling company.

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TomOfTTB
I have to say I don't entirely see why this is news. Swine Flu is no more
dangerous than any other Influenza A infection (Influenza A accounts for about
70% of flu cases in any given year). It's distinguishing trait is it spreads
faster than other flu viruses. But as the article itself says...

"The overwhelming majority of our patients have had mild symptoms and are
usually better in three to five days," the university said. None of the WSU
cases have been fatal.

I think a lot of people are confusing Swine Flu with Bird Flu in their mind
and freaking out. Swine Flu may lead to more cases of the flu this season but
it's still just the Flu. Assuming you don't have another underlying condition
you should be fine with rest and chicken soup.

~~~
arghnoname
The problem with H1N1 is that the general population has little immunity to
it, so containing and controlling it is difficult. Had it been more virulent,
this would be very serious.

Why this thing is tracked and scientists take it very seriously is that
influenza can rapidly mutate and H1N1 _could_ become much more virulent than
it is today. The extremely deadly 1918 flu had a first wave that behaves like
most flu outbreaks before coming back and killing tens of millions of people.

That doesn't mean that will happen this time or that people should get
panicky. Catching H1N1 in its current state is probably beneficial because it
would confer stronger immunity to what might be a family of influenza that
could be around for a while, but its spread is newsworthy. If the news leads
to more people staying home when they are sick, even if the symptoms are more
minor for them, and we get more herd immunity through increased vaccinations,
that's a good thing.

EDIT: I just wanted to emphasis that vaccination is definitely preferable to
catching the actual disease, even if the latter would give strong immunity to
future, similar strains.

~~~
xiaoma
The 1918 flu pandemic _was_ H1N1.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic>

~~~
arghnoname
I know, but that doesn't mean that they are equivalent. It just means some of
their markers are equivalent.

~~~
Herring
So roughly how do people manage to classify them? I was under the impression
they all mutated 100x an hour.

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byrneseyeview
Drop the "Swine" and the headline is as scary as it ought to be.

~~~
timr
In this case, they've actually serotyped a bunch of cases, and they're H1N1.
They're not merely speculating that this is swine flu.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Right, but "Swine Flu" is just "Flu we're scared of."

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meterplech
there has definitely been backlash against the unnecessarilly scare-mongering
of the earlier swine flu coverage- but, it is worth taking notice because of
how easily transmittable it is. a slight mutation and this could in fact be a
seriously dangerous pandemic

~~~
pmorici
"a slight mutation and this could in fact be a seriously dangerous pandemic"

You could say that about almost anything including the common cold, could you
not?

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quantumhobbit
It's all over colleges. I went to my school's clinic last Friday, Georgia
Tech, and everyone who came in with any flu symptoms had to wear a mask. They
had setup a makeshift, H1N1 triage center, separated from the rest of the
clinic.

Turns out I had bronchitis(hooray for antibiotics), but it was fairly scary
how quickly H1N1 is spreading. It's not too deadly, but seems to be very
infectious.

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bowman
I had swine flu this winter (July as I live in the southern hemisphere). I was
bedridden for some days but the hype far too high. It had a strange upside.
While delirious I had the most pleasant dreams...

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jhawk28
I am so glad that I am taking all Online courses.

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killerrabbit
Scary, huh? Makes me rethink my current "cold".

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onreact-com
"Swine flu is "the one that we're most concerned about," Frieden said.

"Because if it does become more deadly, it could cause a very severe scenario"

It could, but it does NOT. Swine flu is by far less deadly than seasonal flu.
In Germany we have 15k swine flu cases and not a single death in 4 months. In
contrast there care 20k flu related deaths in Germany each year.

~~~
tokenadult
That doesn't say anything about a difference in the case fatality rate between
the two strains of flu until you tell me how many cases there are of typical
seasonal flu in Germany each year.

~~~
onreact-com
Did you read my comment actually? I just wrote:

"20k flu related deaths in Germany each year"

~~~
gjm11
But you didn't say how many _cases_ of (non-swine) flu there are each year,
which makes it difficult to extract any information about the per-case
fatality rate. On the other hand, if your figures are right then we can be
pretty sure that swine flue is relatively mild, unless just about everyone in
Germany gets flu every year. On the _other_ other hand, (1) one thing that's
unusual about the current swine flu epidemic is that it's happening out of the
normal flu season, so some of the credit for the low death rate may be due to
the fact that people aren't yet getting it in winter; and (2) no one is
actually disputing that swine flu, as it is now, is pretty benign; the
question is how likely it is that a slightly mutated version will turn up that
starts killing a lot more people.

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onreact-com
You still haven't read it: "not a single [swine flu] death". So the 20k deaths
obviously refers to seasonal flu.

~~~
gjm11
_sigh_

Yes, 20k deaths obviously refers to seasonal flu. 20k deaths OUT OF HOW MANY
CASES? No information. So we don't know the death rate for ordinary seasonal
flu. So we don't know just how the rates for swine flu and ordinary seasonal
flu compare.

(Of course we know -- assuming your numbers are right -- that the observed
death rate for swine flu is zero. But we don't know, e.g., whether the death
rate for seasonal flu is so low that a figure of zero would be unsurprising
even if swine flu were worse than typical seasonal flu.

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asdlfj2sd33
Quick, get the FBI to harass some of those gene hackers and put some more
regulations and restrictions around med. tech, that'll help.

