Swine Flu! Mexico city

[Gaara♥]

i havent really heard anything about swine flu within the last week so now im not freaking out anymore lol

 

[thesage]

Well if you're in Mexico, you should probably be freaking out that your healthcare system sucks so much.

 

[Prawn]

Well if you're in Mexico, you should probably be freaking out that your healthcare system sucks so much.

OUCH.

Anyways, the town next to me has cases. It's a zombie virus, I know it.




.........I'm stockpiling weapons.

 

[Goldberg]

Well if you're in Mexico, you should probably be freaking out that your healthcare system sucks so much.

Our health system isn't that bad, free (and decent) healthcare is given quite often, the sucky part is that NO ONE did anything about this kind of flu until people started dying.

The virus has stopped spreading like it did a couple weeks ago, let's just hope people don't neglect the sanitation rules and allow a "rebound" to occur.

 

[victra♥]

Shigeru Miyamoto has Swine Flu.

http://kotaku.com/5270820/

I can't help but lol.

 

[StinkomanFan]

The Swine Flu or H1M1 (Ham1 lol) is just a scam like the cold war, or Elvis's death

 

[slave1]

...
so i have been hanging out with a friend, who just said he found out he had swine flu, like everyday for two weeks..

suck

 

[Morrigan]

Go see a doctor.

 

[slave1]

Go see a doctor.

the thing is i am not feeling sick at all. well not yet

i am going to wait a day or so and see what happens

 

[Morrigan]

Better safe than sorry

The title should be changed to "Swine Flu! World" now.

 

[thesage]

Our health system isn't that bad, free (and decent) healthcare is given quite often, the sucky part is that NO ONE did anything about this kind of flu until people started dying.

Your healthcare system was so amazing that it was able to contain and prevent a new strand of flu from killing several people.

Apparently somebody just died in Florida. It's the third death in the US I think. The first was a baby who immigrated to Texas I think. The other was that guy from the School in New York...

 

[GoldShadow]

Your healthcare system was so amazing that it was able to contain and prevent a new strand of flu from killing several people.

How can you blame the Mexican healthcare system for this?

If a new, deadly strain of the flu arises, there's really nothing you can do. There is no effective treatment or cure, there are no vaccines (and even if you were able to develop one, which would take months at the least, it would take several more months to distribute it and another couple months before people who were given the vaccine developed a potential immunity), nothing. All you can do is shut down schools and businesses and whatnot and quarantine people who are known to be infected (which can very difficult to tell, since only a small percentage of people actually get very sick or die... the rest show mild or no symptoms but are still capable of passing it on to others).

Mexico made the right calls for the most part.

 

[thesage]

Um... the treatment for the H1N1 virus uses medicine that has been developed previously. Of the 4 (I think) total flu antivirals that have been developed, H1N1 is resistant to two of them. That means that they could have treated it if they had proper materials/ resources/ funds.

A vaccine does not treat a disease. It can only prevent the spreading of the disease. There has yet to be a completely sucessful flu vaccine since the virus reproduces very quickly.

The situation is overhyped anyways. The only notable thing about this flu strand is that it is resistant to some antivirals, which means that we will need to come up with new antivirals before a strand is created that is resistant to all of the current ones we have, which was already known...

 

[GoldShadow]

The first confirmed fatality of swine flu occurred in a woman in Oaxaca, Mexico on April 13 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8024394.stm), after she went to the hospital on April 8. This woman worked as a door to door census taker in what is one of Mexico's poorer areas; no doubt an excellent location for a virus to begin its spread. By the time the virus was well-established in Mexico and people started dying, it was only just beginning to take root in the United States. Once the Mexicans figured out what it was and started taking measures against it, a lot of deaths had already occurred and the infection had spread widely. So the rest of the world had an advance warning; the US and others had enough time to take all the necessary precautions before a lot of people started dying. You can't fault Mexico for this. If the virus had originated in Canada, then there would be a higher proportion of fatalities in Canada than in the rest of the world.

It was not until April 28 that laboratory tests were completed and the use of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) was indicated in swine flu cases (whereas amantadine and rimantadine were found to be ineffective).
http://www.cdc.gov/media/transcripts/2009/t090426.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5816a5.htm
http://www.modernmedicine.com/moder...nd-Zana/ArticleNewsFeed/Article/detail/595655

They could not really have assumed this sooner based on previous H1N1 viruses. There have been H1N1 viruses in the past that were resistant to oseltamivir (Tamiflu), and you really cannot afford to waste stockpiled antivirals based on an unproven assumption (ie, you're not sure it will work in a new strain of influenza A).
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr57e717a1.htm

This blog brings up a good point:

I hesitate to speak too soon but I’m actually somewhat impressed by how the Mexican government, at least at the national level, has responded. There have been many failures of Mexican health care systems at local levels but keep a few things in mind: a) some of the problems lie with citizens who won’t go see doctors, or who won’t go see non-shaman doctors, b) too many Mexicans self-administer antibiotics, and c) when there is so much air pollution it is harder to discover flu cases, especially in the midst of flu season there. Nonetheless Mexican reporting systems seem to have discovered an unusual flu fairly promptly.

Once the national government discovered what is going on, they acted decisively and without undue panic. There has been very little denial, a common feature in the early stages of health crises (how long was it until the U.S. government acknowledged AIDS?).

http://isiria.wordpress.com/2009/05...rted-mexicos-handling-of-the-swine-flu-virus/

And these NYT editorials as well. The first talks about Mexico's response to the outbreak and how it, as well as Mexico's preparation for epidemiological outbreaks, was handled well:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01frenk.html?scp=1&sq=mexico%27s%20fast%20diagnosis&st=cse

The second article also discusses the fast response, which was actually praised by officials from the WHO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/health/02global.html?_r=1&hpw

An article in the Economist discusses criticisms of the response, but brings up this important idea:

The critics, of course, enjoy perfect hindsight. Miguel Ángel Lezana, the government’s chief epidemiologist, notes that between 1,500 and 1,800 Mexicans typically die of flu each year during March and April. There was no reason to suspect a new virus, he says, until a spike in cases among the young and healthy appeared towards the end of the flu season in early April. The subsequent fall in the number of cases is because of the government’s decisive action to impede the spread of the infection, according to José Ángel Córdova, the health minister.

http://web.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13610935

Also an interesting read:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/04/did_the_mexican_state_prove_itself_in_the_swine_flu



So yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is that nobody can fault Mexico for its response. It was quick, adequate and effective.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

I thought swine flu was just a normal strength flu that we don't have a safe vaccine against. Is it still a big deal?

 

[GoldShadow]

The issue was (and is) that it was a new strain of flu that crept up right under our noses (sort of... sporadic cases of this thing have been popping up for years, though there was no indication it would do this) with a high initial mortality rate, although the proportion of people that have been killed by "swine flu" is about the same as the regular flu. But the fear with any new strain is that it may recombine with existing strains to create newer strains, especially with something like swine flu that spread so quickly.

 

[Jim Morrison]

I don't fear Swine Flu.

At all.

 

[Morrigan]

The issue was (and is) that it was a new strain of flu that crept up right under our noses (sort of... sporadic cases of this thing have been popping up for years, though there was no indication it would do this) with a high initial mortality rate, although the proportion of people that have been killed by "swine flu" is about the same as the regular flu. But the fear with any new strain is that it may recombine with existing strains to create newer strains, especially with something like swine flu that spread so quickly.

Are you sure about that? Do you know how many people die of regular flu each year?

 

[SuperBowser]

Number is not proportion

edit: Here's a link. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8081356.stm

''Between one and nine in every 1,000 will die. This is in line with the death rate for normal seasonal flu, which most of us don't worry about. ''

 

[ZYPHR]

how long has this epidemic been going on?

 

[slave1]

i am ok. no problems with me. i defeated the "deadly" virus