Swine Flu????????

I heard the swine flu is moving into the states and the WHO fears a pandimic. Of course ith my way of thinkin i am freaking out about it. It's making my OCD go crazy.

From what I have read today there have been no person to person spreading, only animals to humans.

I'm not scared, but then again I live thousands of miles away from the outbreak.

Found this if anyone wants to read: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30398682/

I'm a little anxious, too!!!

FYI: "Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A flu viruses. Human cases of swine flu are uncommon but can happen in people who are around pigs and can be spread from person to person. Symptoms of the flu include a fever of more than 100 degrees, body aches, coughing, a sore throat, respiratory congestion and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea."

Lol, I posted about this a few hours ago. It is being passed from human to human, and I spent hours on the CDC website. They have a podcast and everything. I live right by the border of Mexico and my son brought something home from school so we are all sick. Of course I was obsessing about it all day, reading news reports, taking temps, finding out all the symptoms. They say 200 kids, (8 confirmed and the rest with the same symptoms), in NYC had it but they just returned from a trip to Mexico and 2 others in Kansas were just reported but I haven't heard whether they were exposed to it in the US or out of the states. Of all the things, now I am terrified of a pandemic. If you scroll down they have tips and the podcast. It's not very helpful, it says to stay away from sick people (i.e. all three of my children lol), wash your hands, and all the other stuff they tell you with the regular flu.

If you scroll down they have the podcast and other info
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/investigation.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...prss=rss_world

I'm going to start by saying I understand how severe this can be & hw it is a big threat for people in under develope countries, really young, the really old or people with a fragile immune system....

that being said this was used as a fear mechanism under the Bush administration a few years ago when they called it the bird flu.

If you are a healthy adolescent or adult, this would suck to get but won't kill you. A couple months ago I came down with a strand of influenza A, which was very close to being the first case of bird flu in America...it was aweful, I never want it again but it wasn't fatal

I also would like to see a study done by how much more likely we are to get sick soley by the amount of repeatively reporting the possibility you get sick.

As I type this though even though I'm healthy it does make me conserned for my mother, grandmother & kids....

crap scratch all I just said....now I'm freaked

I live in Texas, and its got me kinda freaked out as well. Part of that, though, I blame on reading up on the Spanish Flu while I was between Twilight books before this story broke. I've been keeping up on it, I admit it. Just trying not to dwell on it... as thelionkinglives said, they said all this about the bird flu. I guess I just scare myself more than the flu scares me. Then again, same token, it IS freaking me out... I'm like 200-250 miles from the border! Yikes!

Yes...as an out of work Nurse, this makes me not want to return to my profession. Since my infection and surgery last year, I have been much more terrified of bacteria and viruses. This makes it very difficult to work in a hospital!!

I don't live anywhere close to the US/Mexican border, but I'm still getting a face mask!!

They do this a lot, I have to agree with that. West Nile Virus, MRSA, Bird Flu. The thing that freaked me out was that they said it isn't just killing young and old but that for the first time in a very long time it's mostly killing healthy people between the ages of 20-40. They are starting to quarantine people at airports now and take their temps to keep it from getting out even more since France and New Zealand have had cases.

It's funny you should mention the Spanish flu and Twilight because in about three articles I read yesterday it compared it to the SF, mostly because it kills young adults. Man I loved Twilight, it's like a history lesson and a guilty pleasure wrapped up in a few hundred pages of bliss. lol.

This whole thing is freaking me out a little even though I know better than to trust our government -- they do like to stir the pot. I think what is messing me up is that they're being very careful about what they say about it instead of blabbing about it everywhere. They sandwich reports of it in between Obama's first 100 days, GM possibly closing, and random acts of violence. For some reason that makes me more suspicious, like it's more serious than they let on about.

......maybe I just watch too many movies!

a facemask if you're not even close to mexico is a little bit over the top if you ask me... There's so many things that *could* happen and the risk so small that it's just not worth worrying about it.

I would question any source that you see that says that it is MOSTLY killing HEALTHY people between 20-40. That's just not logical for any virus. I'm not saying that in underdeveloped countries that healthy young adults haven't died but I highly doubt that it is taking the healthy age group MORE than the others. Perhaps it is claiming more healthy people than typical but I can't see it being more than people who are already compromised from a health aspect.

BTW, The federal government just issued a "public health emergency" over 20 confirmed U.S. cases...I don't believe there has been ANY deaths in the states. Of course I have no problem with being pro-active...

I'm just more coserned about this being over hyped by the government again at this point. Perhaps I'm being paranoid to suspect the gov would have reasons to want to scare the public intentionally, I dunno

My worry is not for me personally. I am conserned for family members who aren't as healthy...

I wonder if "marshal law" is coming

New York just confirmed that it has 8 known cases. They are teenagers. They went to Mexico on spring break:mexican:. They say it is spreading from person to person because now the family members are feeling sick. Here is the link to the story : http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090426/...ine_flu_states

Yeah, there are some cases of kids and their family in New York who got the swine flu because they traveled to Mexico during break. (My stepsister ALMOST did this, but decided to stay home because of the drug wars) they said though that all of the cases were mild and recovering.Call me weird if you want but this isn't triggering my anxiety switch like the Bird Flu or Lyme Disease (or god forbid someone with ebola explodes gets blood in my eyes or we exchange some fluids, yes, I am scared witless of ebola even though it is pretty much only in africa).

Hi,
I heard that it does come from pigs and transmitted to humans. People in Mexico are getting sick as we speak. My concern is about the thousands of people travelling in and out of Mexico. Shouldn't they be banning travel there?

I'm sure they will if they havn't already...
I thought I read that they were stopping people from going to Mexico, and quarantining people coming back.

Swine flu aside, I don't know why people would be traveling to Mexico right now to begin with. The war with the Carteles is extremely dangerous, and by the way, it hasn't gotten any better since it's broadcasting (I know because I have to read news in Spanish for other countries for Spanish class ) I guess between fear of getting shot (or worse.) and fear of getting sick would kill off what little remains of Mexico's tourism.

My husband got MRSA about 4 years ago from a doctor treating my husband brown recluse bite. The doc did'nt use gloves or a wrapped Q-Tip MRSA is what set off my husbands Crohns. Nasty disese that MRSA

I guess I should have phased that differently. It's not like it's picking off ONLY 20-40 year olds but on the government website it says that it doesn't discriminate (for lack of a better term), the way other influenza viruses do. So there have been cases of healthy 30 something year olds dying while things like West Nile, (I was in NYC during that whole ordeal), mostly kill babies and the elderly. West Nile made me nervous mostly because I had to step over hundreds of dead pigeons everyday and they made us stay in our homes so they could spray all that stuff over the city about once a week for a couple of hours.

Thunderbear-MRSA used to scare me, mostly after they found it in schools in the US. I have always known about the chances of MRSA from hospitals but then all those teenagers from that football team got it and a couple kids around my sons age died and I started to freak a bit. MRSA is absolutely awful, I know people who have had it and it's no picnic that's for sure.

That's what I was thinking about who its killing... and the fact that I did all that background reading while reading Twilight... my recollections from my college history class were foggy... I mainly could remember little snippets of what my grandfather had told me about it (he was 10 at the time it happened) And speaking of Twilight... I may read it again... already!

imo i think its a issue worth watching. Before my cable went out this morning I had been watching updates from the WHO and other news . Normally the updates do not come in as fast as they are, Which is a worry but a good thing.
heres some links to it

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/26...flu/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/26....ny/index.html

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Pandemics of new flu viruses often do kill healthy adults more than the sick, old or very young. This happened in the 1918-1919 pandemic. The speculation is that the immune system in healthy adults is stronger and can create a fatal inflammation of the lungs.

It is the fact that the Mexican cases of this virus seems to have preferentially killed people in the 20-40 y.o. range that is one of the main reasons epidemiologists are alarmed by it.

But to put the alarm in perspective, afaik all the cases in the U.S. have been mild, and only one required hospitalization and recovered. The high death rate in Mexico may be a statistical problem - they were surveilling for people with severe illness (e.g. hospitalized), and out of those 7% or so died. But they may be missing a much larger pool of people with mild illness, so the real fatality rate may be much much lower in Mexico - maybe more in line with the ordinary flu.

And, in fact, they are still not certain that the deaths in Mexico weren't caused by something else in the environment (for instance another virus).

Also we in the US have a really good hospitals and Drs.

O.k. & I wasn't rattling your chain...I'm a math major & I'm naturally persnickity about numbers & statistical references.

It's worth being alert about without going into panic mode. Here in the united states I think that those high schoolers who got it will be fine...after a couple weeks. If they don't have lung, heart or immune issues to start with, it's still the flu...not ebola.

As for closing the boarder...it kind of would strike me odd that they didn't banned travel when they were talking about the extreme violence on the boarder, kidnapping, killings & beheadings in the street. It would be kind of bizaar if they let people travel then with those risks but not for something that could give them diareah or vomit...

Personally I would have banned travel for both instances. While I think there is a little of an over reaction in the country right now with this flu it still is in the best interest to take whatever steps to prevent it from entering.

Each day since I started reading about the swine flu in Mexico the statistics and death rates have risen and now there are multiple places and states where people are showing up with what is or is thought to be this new strain of flu.

Soooo, here's the deal. It is a serious thing and yes a scary thing. There are things we can do like wash our hands frequently, decide carefully where we want to go and we can take our vitamins and know that if we get certain symptoms we must call a doc quickly.

I personally thank God we do not live in the dark ages where the plague got so out of hand and we do not live in 1918 with less info. and help to deal with illnesses. I also choose to pray and ask God for help, which is part of how I get through the pain and difficulty in my life. This makes me feel a bit less helpless and a bit more selfless in that I can maybe help those who do get sick spiritually through prayer.

I struggle with fear and mistrust issues as many of us do, however in this instance for some reason I do not fear we are being manipulated. I think maybe they are just waking up to reality a bit quicker than usual and that is a Good Thing!!!

Do what you can and then seek to put your mind on other things. Lately when I get really bummed I go on "I can has a cheezburger" and laugh at the silly cat pictures with funny captions. They make me laugh and that is good for me.

See ya'll around,

Leslie

Don't panic.
Wash your hands frequently.
Keep your hands away from your face!
Stay informed.
If you feel ill, call your doctor, do not go to ER.

I personally carry a wet nap type of cloth when I have to open doors and push elevator buttons. I'm in SE Florida which has tremendous international foot traffic....and the only places I go near MIA are doctor's buildings. I'm taking a mask just because I can't take most medications, and have a compromised respiratory system already.

But I'm not panicked. Now breathe....