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frustrated Ugh. Okay, Swine Flu.
I don't know how bad it's going to be. Yeah, this isn't 1918. We have ventilators, and anti-viral drugs, and intensive care of a sort they didn't, and faster communication between nations. But we also have rapid world-wide travel, which 1918 didn't. Mexico's problem is New York's problem and California's problem within days.
I've also been hearing stuff on the news about how bird flu was over-hyped and SARS was over-hyped, so swine flu is probably also being over-hyped, and we don't really need to worry. This idiot, for example. I just heard the same thing from the CNBC hosts.
That's dangerous, ignorant bullshit. Yes, bird flu was over-hyped. It never showed any disposition to spread to humans unless you raised chickens in your living room. I've never worried much about bird flu.
But SARS was not over-hyped. We came horrifyingly close to a world-wide catastrophe during the SARS episode. It was the Cuban Missile Crisis of infectious disease, and it seems that hardly anyone realizes it. SARS was essentially a mutated version of one of the common cold viruses. It spread like colds spread, and in the winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, every other person gets a cold. It had a mortality rate of 10-20%, which is getting close to Black Death levels. If SARS had gotten loose, a billion people would have died, and human civilization itself would have stumbled.
SARS didn't get loose, because of smart, fast, ruthless doctors and public health officials in Hong Kong, Vietnam, elsewhere in SE Asia, and Toronto, and wherever a case cropped up. Draconian quarantines and travel restrictions were established. Man, did I hear people whine about that. Those whiners are alive today because public health officials ignored them and did what was necessary. It all worked. I was surprised, but greatly relieved.
How bad H1N1 Swine Flu is going to be? Even at its worst, not as bad as SARS. For one thing, the two standard antivirals against influenza seem to work against it. (Until worldwide stocks run out, that is.) Plus, the reported mortality rate from Mexico isn't anything close to the SARS mortality rate. So even at worst, it's doubtful Swine Flu will kill a billion people. Maybe only a couple of million. Or tens of millions.
Or maybe only a few hundred, IF WE TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, YOU BRAINLESS PUNDITS. Grrrrrr.
April 27 2009, 13:15:38 UTC 3 years ago
April 27 2009, 14:38:04 UTC 3 years ago
Reading back over my post, I think I made my point very badly. What I was trying to say was that Swine Flu, even if everything goes to hell, is unlikely to be as bad as that. But it could still be pretty damned bad, and pundits sneering at the idea that it might be bad aren't helping things. We may need to institute drastic public health measures, and jackasses not believing in the danger, and not respecting those measures, will make things worse.
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April 27 2009, 13:44:06 UTC 3 years ago
As I was trying to explain to the spouse last night, there is nothing that we can do proactively NOW; this is the sort of thing that you can only react to. The time to be proactive was 50 years ago--and the CDC was. Ad Council campaigns to educate the public about not sharing utensils and cups, covering your mouth when sneezing or coughing with a tissue, then throwing away the tissue, washing your hands--normal stupid stuff you learn in hygiene class--was disseminated and those children grew up and became parents and taught it to their kids.
Now, to remind and convince the kids how important it is now to wash those hands.
On the proactive front, the only thing we can do is on the individual level. Maintain healthy lifestyle habits, take your vitamins, bone up on the Vitamin C and the echinacea (I'm not looking for an argument on naturopathic medicine here. It hasn't been proved to cause harm, either) and keep your own germs to your own self.
April 27 2009, 23:48:51 UTC 3 years ago
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April 27 2009, 15:05:01 UTC 3 years ago
And so totally with you on SARS. That was a Near Earth Object of a pandemic crisis. And I was living in Vegas at the time. 0.0
April 27 2009, 15:17:15 UTC 3 years ago
Frisson.
This is the first time I've read Vinge. Damn great novel.
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April 27 2009, 15:09:59 UTC 3 years ago
And while there are some odd similarities between 1918 and what is being seen now (at least superficially through my none medically trained eyes), we are MUCH better prepaired this time around.
April 27 2009, 15:39:45 UTC 3 years ago
They had no vaccine infrastructure for influenza in general to work with, either.
April 27 2009, 15:21:08 UTC 3 years ago
April 27 2009, 15:21:57 UTC 3 years ago
April 27 2009, 19:17:15 UTC 3 years ago
April 27 2009, 15:48:38 UTC 3 years ago
April 27 2009, 15:53:30 UTC 3 years ago
Influenza is scary stuff. SARS is very scary stuff. A lot of that conference was people talking about what they'd learned from SARS, and I lost track of the number of times someone said "We got very lucky". I agree that this particular strain probably won't be as bad as SARS, if we're careful and lucky. Oseltamivir is doing its job, though people really need to stress that it only works well within 48 hours of symptom onset, so if you get any symptoms of the flu, don't put it off and hope you'll get better on your own! But yes, quarantines and travel restrictions work, and if we need them we should absolutely institute them, and that is maybe the one place where the WHO is falling down right now, though at least they haven't ruled out the idea of travel restrictions if things get worse in Mexico.
My report from that conference (co-authored with my mentor, Theodore Bosworth, a top-notch medical writer whom I would gladly recommend to anyone working in this field) is here (warning, big PDF), free for the downloading and reading by anyone who wants to know what the real actual experts have to say about this stuff. It mostly focuses on H5N1 bird flu, but the sections on SARS and 1918 are still very relevant.
April 27 2009, 17:00:36 UTC 3 years ago
April 28 2009, 03:47:03 UTC 3 years ago
April 27 2009, 17:05:59 UTC 3 years ago
Fuel for the fire
Oh! and also this!http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-gordo
April 27 2009, 17:20:46 UTC 3 years ago
Yeah, maybe people here in the U.S. didn't take SARS seriously and feel it was overhyped. And I'm sure there are lots of scientists and doctors who feel that's stupid. But if you're, say, someone who serves hamburgers or fixes cars or works in an office selling paper for a living, exactly how much do you know about viruses and their danger in the first place? How much can you be expected to know.
If the pundits are being stupid, they're responding to a public that doesn't understand when something is serious and when it isn't because they just don't have that kind of information or education. Not to mention that when you say "flu" to the American public, they imagine spending a week on the couch with a bunch of tissues, watching Oprah and missing school and/or work.
It just doesn't conjure that kind of fear in us.
I won't lie. I didn't realize that SARS was serious for a very long time. All I saw was a bunch of Chinese people on the news wearing funny masks and warnings not to go to Toronto. I lived in Kentucky at the time. What was some virus in China and Canada to me?
Same with this Swine Flu. I mean, I live in Queens, NY and most of the people around here really aren't concerned. All we've seen are a bunch of kids who got sick for a few days, stayed home from school, and didn't even need to be hospitalized. For us, it's just a bug going around that might keep you home from work.
Not to mention that the American public is kind of immune to numbers. You tell us that 81 people died? Ha. We can tell you about 11,000 or 500,000 or 2.5 million that died of cancer and HIV and hunger and whatever else people throw mortality statistics at us for.
So, yeah, the pundits are being idiotic and some people are underselling this. But they're not being deliberately stupid. They're being stupid because most of them just don't know.
If you're going to rail against this (and yeah, you should) then maybe acknowledge that part of the reason is because people just don't have the kind of education to know what half this stuff means.
Yeah, maybe SARS was (as
April 28 2009, 02:21:10 UTC 3 years ago
But pundits aren't supposed to respond to the public. They're supposed to be smarter than the public. That's (presumably) why they're pundits, and more worthy to listen to than Joe spouting off at the water cooler. If you're paid to deliver opinions in the newspaper or on TV, they'd better be good opinions. They don't have to be right all the time, but they'd better be right more often than Water Cooler Joe, or why is your boss paying you the long green?
There's no excuse for op-ed writers and TV talking heads to get this one wrong. The info is readily available.
You tell us that 81 people died? Ha. We can tell you about 11,000 or 500,000 or 2.5 million that died of cancer and HIV and hunger and whatever else people throw mortality statistics at us for.
This gets into perception of risk, which is a fascinating issue. But see, people *should* be alarmed, because it's not the number of deaths, but a bunch of deaths close together that gets attention and makes people change their behavior. An airplane crash in which a hundred people die makes the national news. 40,000 deaths a year in random auto accidents doesn't raise a ripple. A hundred deaths within a short period of time from a new infectious disease would normally get attention.
I mean, I live in Queens, NY and most of the people around here really aren't concerned.
There have been several cases in NY. No deaths, yet, and the cases seem to be mild. But let a handful of deaths happen, and people will change their behavior.
The trick is to get them to change their behavior *before* the deaths happen.
Afterward, the hipsters will all say, "See, no one died after all. It was all a bunch of bullshit." Someone will publish mnftiu strips about swine flu on his blog and everyone will say, "Yeah, I knew it all along. They can't fool *me*."
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April 27 2009, 17:48:46 UTC 3 years ago
On the one hand its April and we have moved away from the traditional flu season, but on the other the annual movement of migrant workers for spring planting is going to mix populations that might've been exposed. Michigan is already reporting one case, and Ohio has some. I heard a report this morning that some European governments are suggesting people not jump the puddle for a while.
Of course this weekend I have Penguicon 7.0 to go to, a SF/Linux con, and everyone knows you go to a con for a weekend and come back with con crud. Hopefully it won't be a real winner... I'm still not completely over these stupid sinuses from January.
Dr. Phil
April 28 2009, 02:25:55 UTC 3 years ago
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April 27 2009, 20:19:52 UTC 3 years ago
April 28 2009, 00:57:14 UTC 3 years ago
On the other hand, what lots of public buildings *don't* have is hot water for handwashing - but then, neither do too many US office buildings.
April 28 2009, 01:33:57 UTC 3 years ago
Oh, wow. That's fascinating. Creepy, but fascinating.
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April 28 2009, 01:38:33 UTC 3 years ago
April 28 2009, 12:13:43 UTC 3 years ago
H and N refer to two types of proteins on the surface of the flu virus. There are fifteen types of H protein and nine types of N, I think, unless I have that backwards. Because they are (fairly) easily identifiable, they're used to identify the strain of virus. Sort of--but not really--like blood type in humans.
Jim Macdonald has a good layman's-level explanation of what flu is, how it works, and how it makes one sick at Making Light:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ar
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April 28 2009, 03:27:05 UTC 3 years ago
How much more seriously should they be taking it?
April 28 2009, 07:12:15 UTC 3 years ago
I'm glad CNN and Fox have been more serious. Still, two stupid pundits is two too many.
April 28 2009, 12:03:28 UTC 3 years ago
Okay, I am officially concerned.
April 30 2009, 17:04:01 UTC 3 years ago
See, and this is part of the news coverage that's bothering me. There's no middle ground. It's either "OMG! Civilization may fall! It's a pandemic! Governments are urging people not to panic, but this is a big deal!" (which leads to a Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf scenario when the doctors' orders work) or "Meh, the governments are over-reacting" (the villagers not believing Peter). There are precious few people pointing out that pandemics are preventable through containment and hygiene and that if everyone stays calm and follows medical procedure, humanity can keep this from being a problem of 1918-proportions.
DragonLady