The World Health Organization declared a swine flu pandemic today, raising the global H1N1 alert level to six, on a six-point scale. It’s been 41 years since the last pandemic, the Hong Kong flu, killed about a million people worldwide.
While WHO is urging people not to panic, emphasizing that the declaration represents the virus’s global spread, not it’s severity, DemFromCT (in a lengthy post on Daily Kos that is really worth the read) argues that we should take full advantage of this teaching moment:
While the media includes “don’t panic’ overtly or subtly in every message they put out, complacency is a bigger danger than panic, and the right thing to do is to keep talking about it and bore the hell out of everyone until it’s routine to wash your hands, cover your cough and stay home for seven days from onset (or 24 hours of no fever if longer than seven days) before you go back to work or send your kids out to infect everyone else. And if you think ahead, you’ll stock up on what you need to stay in the house for a week (or two) in case you’re too sick to go out.
Even if, as it appears at the moment, H1N1 proves no more severe than the typical seasonal flu, its novel make up gives it the potential to infect many more people. Seasonal flu typically kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people worldwide; if the number of flu cases were to double or triple, the number of fatalities would rise proportionately.
Wash your hands.
Oh, such a panic the Flu will do when spread by the people down in WHO-ville.
SO…. THE WORLD HAS UNAVOIDABLY BECOME “INFLUENCED”
THIS IS AMAZING!
they said it wouldn’t happen. when pigs fly, they said.
well…
…in this case…
swine flu.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
they said it wouldn’t happen. when pigs fly, they said.
well…in this case…
…swine flu.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!
I hope the Repricans remember that Bush tried to cut the Center for Disease Control.
u idiots, this is a test to see people reactions, and to get you used to the idea of declaring pandemics. first, it is for the enrichment of the drug companies, when they force you to get vaccinated, second, in the future, they’ll use it to restrict your movement
wow manoftruth, a post without a single anti-semitic word. good for you.
Veterans of WW II were taught in their basic training that cleanliness was extremely important to their survival. This experiment in hygiene by the military is a leading cause of the rise in the longevity of the average person.
Another thing the soldiers were taught was that if you cleaned a cut or abrasion and there was no pain, then you wer3e not killing the germs. Many children of the 50’s are familiar with the spectre of former buck Sergeant Dad taking the injured child to the sink, where he could scrub the cut vigorously with a heavy brush laden with soap, rinse the abraded wound, and apply copious amounts ‘tincture of iodine’ — the most painful anti-germ agent anywhere.
Kids learned to take care of cuts themselves and to wash their hands frequently.
I still wash my hands frequently — for obvious reasons.
Get a grip. It’s a mild flu strain. More people die each year of the regular flu.
Pandemic just means it spread to just about every part of the world.
It doesn’t mean it’s the Black Plague.
More people have died from violent right-wing hate groups this year than Swine Flu.
you’re wrong gbs, more people have died from left wing hate groups