Remember Swine Flu?

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deus-ex-machina

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Jan 22, 2010
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Swine Flu, 'Bird Flu' before that, 'SARS' before that.

To be honest, it's a case of Cry Wolf. Sure, we can all laugh at it now, but the potential risks are all there - were all there. It isn't scaremongering when your government pays huge sums to ensure the vast majority of the population can be vaccinated or when health care centres are preparing for the worst case scenario. It's reality.

Sure, with tabloid newspapers, it goes OTT. But one of these days, a strain may develop that is worth worrying about and by then, we'll probably still laugh it off. Antibiotics are still being over used, the drug companies realise it isn't the safest viable choice to invest in developing original drugs and people beg for antibiotics when all they need is lemon juice in steaming water.

MRSA, multi-drug resistant TB, C. diff and Acinetobacter strains... they're all out there and they all pose huge risks in the future, especially if you end up stuck in hospital. Some strains exist and they are already resistant to all known drugs at safe doses and here, I'm not talking about those random bacteria that actually pose no pathological threat. I'm talking about the things that give you the Death.

I think it's all rather selfish of us to be blaming people of scaremongering, when really, those people deserve our thanks for making us aware of it, setting up measures to limit the damage and actually making sure it didn't cause its full potential damage. I imagine most people here are young, healthy people so you probably would have just felt awful, but there are millions - parents, grandparents, children, siblings etc - who could have easily been killed by an unfamiliar strain of influenza.
 

ZodiacBraves

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Jun 26, 2008
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Souldemon8 said:
JakobLogan said:
Souldemon8 said:
Well I could ask the same question. Do you remember MRSA? Outbreaks usual die when people realize the chance of getting what's ever flying around.
Of course, MRSA is actually dangerous and there isn't really a "season" of it. Sure the chances of getting it are low, but it makes swine flu looks like a sore throat in comparison. Unfortunately I have a mother who works in the health care field so I am regularly reminded that MRSA is still around.
I remember at my old middle school we had all these assemblies and classes about it and stuff kids were scared to touch each other and carried around hand sanitizer. A couple of weeks later everyone was all hugging and you had to search for some PURELL
Haha, nothing like that ever happened to me, just the consistent reminders from my over-paranoid mother
 

deus-ex-machina

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Jan 22, 2010
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FinalHeart95 said:
Yeah, I got it. I didn't even throw up. It was quite the pathetic little influenza virus.
Were you tested for it? Or did you just get the meds?

A lot of people think they had it, but if you said you didn't even throw up... I doubt you had any form of the flu. Usually the flu has you in bed for days and you know you've got it.
 
Feb 13, 2008
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deus-ex-machina said:
A lot of people think they had it, but if you said you didn't even throw up... I doubt you had any form of the flu. Usually the flu has you in bed for days and you know you've got it.
I had it. And I KNOW I had it. Didn't puke once. It just sapped my strength enough that sitting upright was a strain on my neck. But that's all it did. Makes you sweat like a pig and saps your energy. Oh, and makes you breathe like an asthmatic.
 

spinFX

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Aug 18, 2008
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Colonel Alzheimer said:
Yeah, I remember swine flu, just like I remember bird flu, Y2K, and just like how I will remember 2012.
Perfectly put.

PS: There should be OUTRAGE over how many millions of units of the vaccine EXPIRED.

EXPIRED. WHAT_THE_FUCK. What a waste of money, god I hope my country (Australia) didn't buy into that vaccine... So useless, so unnecessary (except for weak old people and children).
 

Ultrasnail

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Feb 3, 2009
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ah swine flu. that was a crazy crazy time, some people out there are really really dumb. seriously one person said that we are were all going to die from it unless we just quarantine every one and that if we eat pork we'll die of swine flu.

swine flu really wasn't a serious thing and i can say that because i had it. the media over dramatizes everything.
 

Frankydee

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Mar 25, 2009
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vaguely. My little bro had it and passed it around the house, I never caught it for some reason.

Then I got injected with it before boot camp and still didn't get ill.

so it came it went for me.
 

Danpascooch

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Apr 16, 2009
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Marter said:
I remember how scared some people were. I got dragged out to get the shot, but I really didn't care one way or the other.

But it was way too overblown for it's own good.
I think I had it, I never got the shot, I got a fever that hit 105 at a couple points.

It sucked, it was horrible, but it was NOT anywhere near it was hyped to be.
 

FinalHeart95

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Jun 29, 2009
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deus-ex-machina said:
FinalHeart95 said:
Yeah, I got it. I didn't even throw up. It was quite the pathetic little influenza virus.
Were you tested for it? Or did you just get the meds?

A lot of people think they had it, but if you said you didn't even throw up... I doubt you had any form of the flu. Usually the flu has you in bed for days and you know you've got it.
Now that I think about it, I probably didn't have it. I was sick, and my mom called the doctor, and they said to assume everyone has swine flu... without even asking the symptoms.

It's always possible I got a really mild case, but still.
 

deus-ex-machina

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Jan 22, 2010
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
deus-ex-machina said:
A lot of people think they had it, but if you said you didn't even throw up... I doubt you had any form of the flu. Usually the flu has you in bed for days and you know you've got it.
I had it. And I KNOW I had it. Didn't puke once. It just sapped my strength enough that sitting upright was a strain on my neck. But that's all it did. Makes you sweat like a pig and saps your energy. Oh, and makes you breathe like an asthmatic.
You still didn't answer my question. :( The symptoms you listed could still have been a bad sniffly cold. Man-flu, perhaps? It was very easy to test for and unless you're a microbiologist and you tested yourself, saying you KNOW you had it still doesn't mean much, even if you spell it in capitals.

Edit: Ah, sorry for sounding like an asshole, but it just irks me because I was working in a pharmacy at the time and everyone was saying they had it even though most of the idiots were coming in themselves for their medication and sneezing around me. The few people I know who did have it were stuck in bed and haven't got much to boast about because it reduced them to snivelling idiots.
 

Evil the White

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Apr 16, 2009
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Heh, I caught the damn thing. It's just that most people don;t get flu in the summer, so most people stopped caring. It looks like the vaccination is going to be put to use again this winter, though.
 

Marik2

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Nov 10, 2009
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child of lileth said:
It went away long before the oil spill. Besides that, it's no more dangerous than the normal flu. Once people realized that, it wasn't worth mentioning anymore.
Yeah pretty much this the media blew the whole swine flu thing out of proportions (like they always do with every topic)

Which is why I dont even watch the news its all for mass hysteria.
 

ezeroast

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Jan 25, 2009
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Swine flu was the funniest thing ever, I want it back.
Soooooo many paranoid people about. Some of the people i work with said it was released by the American government "LIKE THE SPANISH FLU!" so they could track its worldwide spread and the same people also said "Australia should of completely sealed its borders to prevent outbreaks, imagine the money we would of saved on treatments!" LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
 

MetaKnight19

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Jul 8, 2009
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Yes I remember it. I didn't get the dreaded swine flu, but a friend told me it was no worse than normal flu, seeing this topic got me to root around the newspapers to see what they were saying at the time.

For example, the Daily Star ran with the headline 'PIG FLU STRIKES TWO BRITS', prompting them to say 750,000 people could die from it. *facepalm*

Then again I wouldn't touch the Daily Star with a 10-foot barge pole because of the amount of crap they put out. Other papers were just as bad, running with headlines like 'The whole of humanity is under threat' *massive facepalm resulting in falling of my chair*
 

ZephrC

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Mar 9, 2010
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SakSak said:
findler said:
Hahaha I was just thinking about how stupid the whole swine flu thing was the other day and how it went away virtually overnight. They always want just one big story to hype over and over and over. Remember before the oil spill it was Haiti? Now I never see stories on that. Even the spill is getting stale, prepare yourself for the next tragedy.
However, in the case of potentially pandemic diseases there is a correlation between public and private action, availability of information, and reduced severity of said disease.

The reason we do not hear of swine fly anymore is because all the measures taken reduced the threat of pandemic to levels where it is no longer any more dangerous than common seasonal influenza. Because in the case of global diseases the one thing we lack is time to respond and develop medicines, as well as build resistance on population scale. Washing/disinfecting hands, visibility in media (for informational, educational purposes and repeating of given preventitive instructions), and extraordinary measures at transportation hubs and entertainment centers etc can drastically buy that time.

It wasn't a case of hype, it was a case genuinely global deadly disease that was defeated in part due to said 'hype'.
No. It was never any more contagious or deadly than any of the other forms of influenza that have been around for centuries. This particular form only even got on the news because a couple Mexican doctors overstated how fatal it was in the first couple weeks and it's a distant relative of the Spanish Influenza, which was actually bad. The whole thing was in reality a sadly overhyped mess.
 

Natdaprat

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Sep 10, 2009
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There's always something that's going to kill us all. Global warming, Bird and Swine flu, Y2K and 2012, God. What's next? Are the fucking Vikings going to reform?