First, for your paranoia needs, Google has compiled a nice map of the H1N1 outbreak so you can watch it coming for you. The ones with the dots are non-fatal cases.
View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map
In other news, The Huffington Post reports (via The Nation) that the GOP, led by Main Senator Susan Collins, fought to strip funding for “Pandemic Preparedness” from the recent stimulus bill. They reasoned that a global pandemic would have no effect on the economy, and therefore was unrelated to the bill.
Plus, when’s the last time preparedness prepared anybody for anything?
UPDATE: Nevermind! Paul totally just posted about this not 20 seconds ago.
When the flu vaccines are distributed, Senators who voted to eliminate funding should of course be denied a dose, right after everybody who claims to not “believe” in evolution. No evolution, no vaccine, since there’s no way it would work. I mean, if there’s no evolution, this whole flu virus isn’t even real anyway, so they’ll be fine.
Vancouver, eh? Luckily we’ve got an impenetrable border protecting us.
Again, pure panic-mongering. The first link on that map I clicked on was a kid who felt ill at a school, and they closed the whole school to see if it was swine flu. No update on whether it was or not. But its flag on the map is just as big as any other, even though NOTHING HAPPENED THERE.
Here’s another one: “the cases do not appear to be related”. Here’s another one: “The man and woman […] were not hospitalized and the state is describing their illnesses as mild”. Here’s another: “in the process of figuring out if a person in Wood County has come down with the Swine Flu”. Many of the links are duplicates.
That map is designed to give the impression that we are being swarmed by an unstoppable scourge. There is not a shred of evidence that this is true. This is obnoxious as hell.
In the meantime, 36,000 people die every year in the US from flu — not swine flu, just ordinary flu. This new one has killed nobody here, and a handful in Mexico; but what is the normal flu death total in Mexico? 15,000?
One side effect of the annual flu panic is that people no longer believe in them. Everyone who helped spread the bird flu panic last year is helping to kill people when the real one eventually comes. Did you see the article in the Seattle Times about the great flu debacle of ’76? I think the public health officials need to explain to the public why anybody should pay any attention to them ever again.
The Economist had it yesterday.
@2: it’s worth worrying about, but not panicking over (yet). The big difference is that this flu is killing young, healthy people, rather than the sickly & elderly normally killed by the flu. That’s a warning sign.
Personally, I’d rather us all get alarmed and then have it play out like 1976, then fail to be sufficiently active and end up like 1918.
It’s in Vancouver!! We’re doomed!!
(and, I personally know a frequent Slog reader/sometime contributor who has been in MEXICO for the last week with his old lady and, THEY’RE DUE BACK ON THE HILL AT ANY MOMENT!!!!
SHUN THEM!!!)
1918 was ninety years ago. Our public health system is just slightly more advanced now. 1918 is not a serious threat, though obviously pandemics in general are.
What I take exception to is not spreading legitimate information, it’s stuff like that map, which purports to display the spread of swine flu, but actually displays a whole bunch of unrelated stuff, including rumors, false alarms, duplicate news reports, and reports from elsewhere.
Leave to the Grand Old Pigs to be against the saving american of lives while waving the flag. All they care for is the mighty Dollar and even at that they fail when they can’t seem to comprehend that if there are no people or the population is reduced due to a pandemic the economy will not function.
So … you’re saying I shouldn’t have flirted with that hot Vancouver woman?
Oh, well.
Pandemic as far as I can tell, is defined as both far reaching and affecting many people.
Not to be harsh, but a few hundred people, spread over 7 continents, doesn’t seem to warrant that much concern. Look at SARS and all the other false alarms in the past decade.
Now, if it actually did affect a lot of people, we already have the CDC.
So, yes, it’s a big scary term “pan-demic”…but it simply means widespread, not necessary encompassing a lot of people.
Please also note that all of the entries on that map were placed there by the same person: Henry Niman of Recombinomics, Inc., which has a financial interest in increasing panic. He was a big promoter of the avian flu panics in ’05 and ’06. AND he appears to be a freeper. Joy!