Remember Swine Flu?

[thejayk]

lol people thought that was like the end of the world as we know it

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

I was talking to my friend 2 days ago and we got onto the long forgotten topic swine flu. Do any of you remember Swine Flu? The last I heard of it was March. Then it just flew out of existence. Personally, I think the Oil Spill killed it, then it will kill our bad Econmy.
Edit: Also, I got the next day. The swine flu must of heard me.

Swine what? Was their a pig epidemic or something?

/sarcasm

 

[superbatranger]

The swine flu was just the flu, only pork-flavored. That's it.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

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.

Ok, let's put it this way. I had a huge temperature, no energy, trouble breathing, inability to eat or walk, I'd been in direct contact with someone who had swine flu, and I had to be lifted home because I couldn't focus on walking.
Flu's a different set of symptoms, as you get aches and less of the swollen throat.
I think that allows for capitals

 

[TurboPanda]

All I remember is this joke.

A lion a crocodile and a pig are talking to each other. The crocodile claims "All i need to is open my mouth and everyone near the riverbed runs in fear. The lion claims "All i need to do is roar and the whole of Kenya shakes in terror. The Pig then claims "that's nothing. All i need to do is cough and the whole world shits itself."

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

There was genuine cause for concern. The virus was killing healthy young people and pregnant women(rather than old people as normal flu does, so considerably more years of life were lost, if not considerably more lives), and really did have the potential to spread alot further than it did. The frenzy may have been distasteful in many ways, but it did get people to be hygienic and germ fearing...which more than likely helped prevent it spreading.

 

[Jfswift]

I think it wasn't anymore dangerous than a regular flu although I do question why it seemed to only affect healthy adults 18-45 (mostly). I think that's very strange.

 

[Milo Windby]

I was not even worried about it when it was on the news. Nice to see that its gone from the news now.

also

Spoiler

 

[Firia]

Oh and don't forget West Nile, Mad Cow and SARS!

In all fairness, SARS was actually pretty deadly. In china, people were executed because they had SARS. The inability to find a cure for that occationally deadly epidemic turned into a 100% death rate for those that had it based on the nation a person caught it in.

Swine flu and bird flu definitely sucked for anyone that got it because it was so over hyped by the media. But SARS was a real problem. It was just also a real problem that got the hype treatment in North America.

 

[DreadfulSorry]

lol, I actually just went to a lecture last night about infectious diseases during the American Civil War and the speaker asked if we knew what the latest epidemic was...someone said SARS. So obviously you are not alone, OP

Although, I'm not sure if H1N1 was actually ever classified as an epidemic...

 

[mjc0961]

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, but until we hit that point, it was so facepalm inducing how people were flipping out. Here's a bunch of hand sanitizer EVERYWHERE, don't leave your house if you have even the slightest fever, etc etc... So silly.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

It was nothing else than complete media overkill. A different strain of flu - and nothing else, in fact I think it killed much less than the normal flu did.

I remember seeing people wearing surgical masks and Latex gloves in school, and I openly (and obnoxiously) told them they were worrying about catching a overhyped disease. Anyone with a temperature above normal was sent home for the week, people prayed for the vaccine while I spent that time like any other school day.

 

[Avelestar]

Yeah, I had it...sucked about as much as a normal flu. Had to take a week and a half off uni. New strains pop up all the time, the news just needs stuff to talk about...and blow far out of proportion because OMG WE'RE DOOMED!!

 

[WaywardHaymaker]

Spoiler: You mean the serial killer?

 

[Zacharine]

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.

Care to give a source on that overstated lethality and it being no more contagious than any other influenza?

 

[L-J-F]

Although I haven't researched it, I think the "independant" sources the WHO used were funded by the company who created the vaccine ... could be wrong, but I heard that somewhere.

 

[ZephrC]

Care to give a source on that overstated lethality and it being no more contagious than any other influenza?

Here's the overstated lethatlity (They mention it at the bottom): http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/05/swine-flu-us-ca.html
And here's an article on contagion: http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/12/31/swine_flu_may_be_less_contagious_than_feared/

I actually couldn't find the originals for either article I read, so I dug those up with google. So yay, multiple sources. For me at least. Swine Flu can apparently still be contagious after the fever breaks, which is unusual, but you're no more likely to catch it from a contagious person than you are with an average influenza virus.