It looks like this is heating up:
Tests show that eight students at a Queens high school are likely to have contracted the human swine flu virus that has struck Mexico and a small number of other people in the United States, health officials in New York City said yesterday.
The students were among about 100 at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows who became sick in the last few days, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, New York City’s health commissioner.
“All the cases were mild, no child was hospitalized, no child was seriously ill,” Dr. Frieden said.
Cross your fingers.
And seriously, what is next? Locusts? Rivers of blood? Enough already.
MattF
This is quite scary. Try googling ‘cytokine storm’.
Cat Lady
You forgot to mention the Taliban have basically taken over Pakistan. The Islamic country WITH nuclear weapons.
You’re welcome.
El Cid
I’m thinking nuclear plant meltdown. Haven’t been one of those in a while. And it would have the necessary apocalyptic flavor of the times.
jrg
The media’s never going to decide to tell us that the world won’t end tomorrow. That’s why the news has no credibility – If you really believed it, you’d spend every day like it was your last day on Earth, instead of reading the news.
Cat Lady
@MattF:
Wow. I want my mommy.
jon
I was just driving home from work yesterday and already the right wing radio nuts (well, in this case, just one) are calling this a plot to get Americans to give up their civil liberties. Yeah, I’m sure the dead in Mexico are just patsies who were killed to keep another one of those highly-effective Tea Party events from happening. She even mentioned those trailers I’m supposed to fear in the event my home is destroyed and I can’t afford to get deep in debt to stay in a Motel Six.
That being said, this scare may be getting overplayed (drugs have shown some effectiveness) and the deaths may be attributed to other causes (after all, Mexico is about to collapse into chaos, according to the crazed hostess.) Still, if another pandemic looks like it’s going through and killing the healthy*, I’m staying the hell out of its way. I’ll go Galt for safety’s sake rather than go teabagging in the public square.
*the 1918 Pandemic, that one that killed millions worldwide, mostly killed healthy people. Why? Because the deaths were caused by the immune system doing everything it could to destroy the virus. And healthy people had more effective immune systems doing more destruction on their seek-and-destroy missions, which often led to dead hosts. Clearly, the intelligent designer needed a better model.
Keith G
My view from here in Houston…..expect this to feed into the immigration debate.
ajf
From that story: “Gov. Rick Perry of Texas asked the C.D.C. to send 37,430 doses of Tamiflu.” Secession what?
dmv
And there are at least 10 kids, possibly more, in NZ who have Influenza A, and it is “likely” to be H1N1. The kids recently returned from a trip to Mexico, with a stop-over in L.A.
They’re telling passengers on the same flight to seek medical attention if they feel sick. No shit, Sherlock.
R-Jud
Hmmm. Suddenly flying to the US in July doesn’t seem like such a hot idea.
John Cole
Malkin was blaming it on illegal immigration yesterday. I’m not kidding.
Svensker
@Cat Lady:
Pakistan has been an Islamic country with nuclear weapons for years. If the Taliban takes over, which is still doubtful, why would they be dangerous with the nukes? Were they particularly warlike in Afghanistan? (Not talking about how they treated their own people.) Just because they’re Islamic fundies doesn’t mean they are crazy — they know that nuking someone would mean nuclear retaliation. They are human, you know, and basically have the same wish to survive that other humans — like you — have.
El Cid
They’re having this problem in New Zealand and Israel. This, of course, is all part of Obama’s secret plan.
El Cid
Can you imagine what you’d be thinking right now if this was a McCain-Palin led virus response effort? We’d be hearing how the most effective anti-viral right now would be capital gains cuts and investing Social Security funds in Wall Street.
chrome agnomen
like all the other recent plagues, this one is also bound to disappoint.
Violet
@Keith G:
The immigration debate has been a somewhat dormant while everyone has been focusing on the economy. This may be just the thing to bring it back to the conversation. Look for Gov. Perry to demand big fences to keep out the swine flu. Oh, wait, they have things called airplanes that can go over fences? Stop all the airplanes too!
liberal
@jon:
Yeah, was just joking about that with a friend who was late fixing up a door for us—he was waylaid for awhile because of his bad lower back.
liberal
@Svensker:
Honestly, I’d sleep much more soundly if Iran had the bomb than if the Taliban had the bomb.
liberal
Nearby star goes supernova.
Svensker
@liberal:
I’d like it if no one had the bomb. But mutual assured destruction seems to have a pretty serious effect on governments. I really don’t believe either Iran or the Taliban would use their nukes for anything other than deterrence. We’ve just been led to demonize Muslims to the point where they’ve become the big boogy monster. Propaganda works.
Peter J
The Mexians have dug a tunnel all the way to New Zealand?
Someone should tell Stalkin’ Malkin about this.
Roy Schwartz
You may also want to read this:
http://bit.ly/vaC5
Keith G
@Svensker: I agree with everything you typed. Still I wonder just how much more “adventurous” a group of folks might get if they have nukes to make sure their opponents back off.
Theoretically, a state with nukes can serve as a base for terrorism and not fear invasion. Or as we and the Commies proved, such a state can be outwardly aggressive with non nuke neighbors minus the fear of significant intervention.
SGEW
Remember: the nation who has the most to fear from a nuclear armed Pakistan is India, not the United States. (And I actually have no idea what the Taliban’s stance on Kashmir is.) Therefore a good question would be: is the Taliban more of a threat to regional instability than the Pakistani military and intelligence services? Again, the danger isn’t so much a nuclear weapon, but the delivery mechanism.
Of course, Pakistan falling into chaos and/or Islamic militancy is, overall, a rather bad thing; but a nuclear weapon is a less worrisome aspect than the border issues, the “conventional” terrorism (relatively speaking: the citizens of Mumbai might use a different adjective), and the socio-economic collapse for the urban and suburban Pakistani people that the rise of the Taliban threatens.
Meadow Lark
I work with Christian fundamentalists and one of their favorite things when hearing about this kind of stuff is “it’s the end times.”
So, you give up all responsibility for trying to make this a better world? Christ told you to go hide in a hole and wait for Him?
The message is completely missed.
It is impossible for me to understand how a person can be a conservative and a Christian at the same time. If you believe the teachings in the New Testament, Christians have nothing to fear. Conservatives have only fear to offer.
Meadow Lark
I work with Christian fundamentalists and one of their favorite things when hearing about this kind of stuff is “it’s the end times.”
So, you give up all responsibility for trying to make this a better world? Christ told you to go hide in a hole and wait for Him?
The message is completely missed.
It is impossible for me to understand how a person can be a conservative and a Christian at the same time. If you believe the teachings in the New Testament, Christians have nothing to fear. Conservatives have only fear to offer.
somguy
Man, you guys are getting all heated up about this flu thing and Pakistan. Obama has both situations well in hand – Richard Holder is on the scene in Pakistan and looking to negotiate peace with the Taliban, and I’m sure Brownie can be brought out of retirement to help us seal the Canadian border. Naah, wouldn’t do anything to keep swine flu out of the U.S. but it’d protect the only country on this continent that’s worth a shit, that doesn’t engage in systematic torture of brown peepul, from being destroyed by our occasional national temper tantrums.
What’s the big deal here? You people see a big culling of the herd as a bad thing, I see it as a chance for nature and maybe some cavemen with guns to put the brakes on the world’s leading polluter and squanderer of resources. So unlike you all, my glass is half full… of CFCs, but I’ll take what I can get.
dmv
I’m waiting for the nut-bags to pick up on this:
Where’s Michelle Bachmann on this one? Someone get her on the case!
ironranger
As soon as the flu news came out, I wondered how long it would take for the wingnuts to blame it on immigrants. Not long at all.
When the media continually over hypes or under reports, how can we know what the facts really are on the flu outbreak?
Cat Lady
@SGEW:
This. Having the Taliban with nuclear bombs is like having loose nukes. The Taliban are non-state actors. Who is running their show? Who negotiates for them? From what I understand, they’re mostly uneducated illiterate peasants. The Iranian mullahs are models of responsible citizens compared to that rabble.
Ash Can
@Svensker: It’s not an issue of Muslims, it’s an issue of extremists, who only incidentally identify themselves as Muslim, acquiring the means to up the damage ante against a foreign invader that deposed them in Afghanistan for harboring someone who engineered an attack against said invader. I’m not saying I’d expect them to do anything as drastic as launching a full-out nuclear attack against said invader. But then, not being privy to the intelligence reports that Dubya blew off, I didn’t expect suicide runs of commercial airliners into landmark buildings either. Mutually assured destruction works only when both parties feel they have something to lose. Extremists, of whatever stripe, don’t always feel that way.
SGEW
@Cat Lady: A very good point, but:
There is a rather good argument that a significant amount of Pakistan’s current military and security apparatus are, in fact, “non-state actors.”
Note that I am not saying that the international security situation would be the same should the Taliban topple Pakistan’s government; rather, I am saying that the threat of nuclear weapons, or the rampant proliferation of same, might be a lesser concern than the other negative consequences.
Also: I think I’m more comfortable with Iran having a nuclear weapon than the current regime in Pakistan having one.
tavella
Me too. Hell, I’m less alarmed about Iran having the bomb than I am about *Pakistan* having the bomb. Iran is a stable, fairly sensible government. Hell, it’s probably the closest thing that the middle east has to a representative democracy, along with Israel.
Even *as* a state actor, Pakistan spread nuke technology widely and wildly. And now it’s falling into the hands of non-state fanatics, and that’s scary as shit.
GregB
In light of the recent pirate attacks I predict a spate of Viking assaults on the east coast.
-G
Comrade Darkness
If it’s locusts, at least we’ll have something to eat.
SGEW
@tavella: kismet
dmv
@ tavella:
Really?
You must be ignoring: (1) the oppression and persecution within Iran, which, while not as egregious as other spots in the world, still exists; and (2) Iran’s support of Hamas and the direct Iranian proxy, Hezbollah.
I’m comfortable with neither Pakistan nor Iran having nuclear weapons.
I’m not entirely comfortable with the United States having nuclear weapons.
GregB
If the first case was seen three days before President Obama visited, then the outbreak was NOT coincident with President Obama’s visit. The outbreak began 3 days before his visit.
I think that whoever wrote this report is deliberately fanning fears of paranoia.
-G
dmv
@ GregB:
Nah. I think if anything it was just to note (a) the coincidence and (b) that the person who welcomed Obama at the museum died the next day and had flu-like symptoms (though it was not established that he actually died from the flu, swine or otherwise).
The latter, of course, is relevant, because if the guy who greeted Obama did die from swine flu, and swine flu is human-to-human transmissible, we might want to be vigilant about our President’s health.
But, of course, I think the real point is just that it was one of those meaningless, weird coincidences. I just brought it up because I wouldn’t be surprised to see people like Bachmann and crew dropping hints that something nefarious is afoot.
SGEW
@dmv: Not to speak for tavella, but I think the “Who’s More Atomically Dangerous?” question comes down to a slim, marginal debate on intent, accountability, and capability.
Does Pakistan really want a full-on war with India? Does Iran really want to nuke Israel? Is Iran in control of their own security forces? Is Pakistan? Would the Taliban be? And how the heck would any of these actors even get a nuke out of their own borders? If we’re worried about loose nukes (and we ought to be!), we really really need to get on the ball with the Lugar-Obama Act, and follow it up with specific action in the former Soviet states: it seems to be much more likely for terrorists to get their hands on WMDs through criminal enterprise (see A.Q. Khan) than by actually seizing nuclear facilities through force of arms.
And as far as the “closest thing to a representative democracy in the middle east” appellation, it’s kinda neither here nor there. Besides Israel, it might even be Iraq, right now. Lotta good that does them.
[wait, this thread is about Swine Flu. O/T, I guess]
Joshua Norton
Ring, Ring. Hello?
I’m sorry where did you say you were calling from…TEX-AS? Um, I’m sorry I don’t see TEX-AS on our list of recognized states. Are you sure you sent in your annual renewal form? Oh, I see, you DIDN’T send it in? But you were hoping you were still covered? Yeah…oh-kay…sure I see why you’d want to check on that but I’m afraid we can’t help…
You guys are pretty close to Mexico, right? I hear they have pretty good drugs over there…maybe they can…oh, I see, you’re not speaking to Mexico. Well, I’m so sorry we couldn’t help you today Mr..uh..Perry. Buh-bye.
Robertdsc-iphone
The first thing I thought when I heard of this is Stephen King’s The Stand. Scary stuff.
Iron-Ick-Ally
In an interesting development unique to this strain of flu, one of the early symptoms of this flu is to blame Mexicans for this flu; its main vector is high-volume blowhards. The 1918 pandemic strain has now been renamed the “Mexican-Asian flu”.
Nethead Jay
@Robertdsc-iphone: The Stand (in its full un-expurgated version) is my favorite Stephen King story. But yeah, not comforting.
HyperIon
It is H1N1 according to CDC.
Et Tu Brutus?
Oy Vay people, take a deep breath, then do the math: the mortality rate for this virus is around 5% at worst- hardly Captain Trips or something of Biblical proportions ( and that rate is in mexico, where many complicating factors exist- poor access to health care and clean water, high levels of tuberculosis,etc) .
Natural mechanisms ensure that as a species overpopulates it’s ecological niche, opportunistic organisms increasingly prey on that species until die back to sustainable levels of population are reached, and viruses feature prominently in such scenarios, but this virus is certainly not presently up to the task.
iluvsummr
I noticed that all the recent swine flu cases in the US related to the Mexican outbreak have been mild ones in which people recovered completely. I’m wondering whether that’s because many people in the US get flu shots, and one of the killed viruses may be similar in some ways to the current one (just speculating here, don’t really know how/whether the flu vaccines confer immunity to strains similar to, but not the same as, those in the vaccine). If this is like the two-wave 1918 flu scenario (mild in summer, devastating in the fall); getting a flu shot that has the killed swine virus by October would nip things in the bud wouldn’t it? And as the article pointed out, in 1918 they didn’t have Tamiflu, pneumonia antibiotics, or powered ventilators.
Zed
Also, remember that our ability to treat respiratory problems today are significantly better than they were in 1918.
More importantly, when did we go back to the 1970s? What’s with all these gas crises, Presidential abuse of power investigations, and now swine flu? Should I start printing some “whip inflation now” buttons?
Cat Lady
@Nethead Jay:
I’ve been thinking a lot about The Stand lately. It’s one of those stories that, although fantastic, seemed entirely possible.
The Stand was so epic. In fact, this blog would be a great place to compare dreams. I’m in Boston, so if we all start having the same dreams, I don’t really want to have to go to Vegas.
Comrade Darkness
@GregB, wait, which way is this to be read, that Obama GAVE him the flu? o_O or that Obama is now on borrowed time about to come down with the flu?
I know which one I’m worried about.
Perry Como
Yes.
Ok.
Started at 7% and it’s dropping, no deaths in the US so far.
There’s no reason to panic about this flu outbreak yet. The early deaths seem to have been caused by misdiagnosis (easy to do when you don’t know about a new strain). Thanks to the conservative bugaboo of Science! we have people on top of this. It’s amazing what those dreaded “taxes” can do.
sab
I’m old enough to remember the 1975 swine flu panic. The CDC issued a warning about swine flu. The Ford administration (Don Rumsfeld was Ford’s chief of staff) did a big push to get everyone vaccinated, and also persuaded the Haitians to kill all their pigs. The flu outbreak never happened. The Haitians are trying to reconstruct their breed of pig that in retrospect was an important part of their rural economy, and Don Rumsfeld got to be the CEO of the pharmaceutical company that profited from the mass immunization. I thought it was innocent then. After eight years of Bush-Cheney I’m less naive.
I believe the WHO is being serious and responsible in their warnings. I also believe that the cable news panic this weekend is not serious or responsible, and that we will eventually be able to trace it back to the right-wing-political/ war-profiteering machine. CNN had Fran Townsend (since when is she a public health expert) on all day Saturday saying that Obama is being irresponsible by not immediately reacting and telling us what to do NOW.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
1) Solis likely died of a heart attack, not flu, and Obama has been out of Mexico for 9 days with no symptoms.
2) There are cases in Nova Scotia and BC now, so it’s hit Canada. This thing is not going to be spread much by illegal immigrants, as many more primary vectors will be middle class people of all colours who flew in and out of Mexico for a vacation.
Janet Strange
@iluvsummr: re vaccines – This year’s flu vaccine contained antigen to H1N1 and the swine flu is an H1N1 type flu. HOWEVER, the swine H1N1 has such different antigens from the human version that it is generally said that flu shots won’t protect you.
But there have been studies showing that being vaccinated (or actually having had the flu) with a related, somewhat similar strain may offer some slight protection. Statistically, (that is, means nothing for any particular individual), among people who had been vaccinated with a similar strain there were fewer cases and many of those who did get the flu had a milder form of the illness.
No need to panic. So far, this looks like a mild strain. But it never hurts to be prepared and take reasonable precautions. (One of my students who works at a hospital emails me that they are “somewhat on alert.”) And I’m glad I got a flu shot this year, just in case it helps. I really hate having the flu, of any kind. I got the Asian flu back in the 50’s when I was a kid, and the Hong Kong flu when I was 20. Ick, awful, never again if I can help it. Flu shot every year thankyouverymuch.
liberal
@dmv:
From the point of view of the security of the US, how Iran treats its own people is irrelevant.
Though if you want to go down that road, I’d claim that it treats its people a lot better than Saudi Arabia does.
It’s a lot, lot less than the support Israel gets from the US. Though for Israel and the US, it’s not clear who’s the proxy.
Jason F
Apropos of The Stand, Marvel Comics has been doing a geat adaptation of the book for the last 8 months or so. It’s being published as a monthly comic, with collections of individual issues being published periodically. The first collection is available, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is enough of a fan of the book that they’d be interested in seeing it adapted to other media.
D-Chance.
Quite a yawner of a subject…. Drudge fap material. How long has he been pimping “bird flu pandemic” hysteria?
Fact is, we already have tens of thousands of Americans who die every year from influenza. This is not an uncommon event.
iluvsummr
@Janet Strange: Thanks for that explanation. I started getting the flu shot every year after a horrible bout of the flu in grad school. One morning I was so weak, I couldn’t pick up the phone when it rang several times or bang on the wall to alert my next door neighbor who I knew very well and was also a grad student. After several *hours* of willing myself to get up, I managed to fall out of bed. Then I called friends and fam. I was in my early 20s and totally happy to be roommate-free for the first time and not arguing about who ate my leftovers or forgot to do the dishes. That episode changed my perspective for a while; I moved to a new apartment with a friend ASAP, had plenty of arguments about dirty dishes and “stolen” food and got flu shots every fall after that.
Robertdsc-iphone
And where is our Secretary of Health & Himsn Services? Ah, yes. She hasn’t been confirmed yet. GOP obstructionism FTW!
Morans.
As for The Stand, it too is a huge favorite. Along with two of Sai King’s Dark Tower series(IV & VII), the unabridged version is at the top of the list for his work.
Linda
The whole terror of The Obama Virus is scary enough but much of our real work we have to do is we have to keep awake and vigilant in protecting ourselves against this. We need to listen to common sense and the precautions given by our medical and emergency response authorities. The CDC has issued specs and lists about the things to do in these times and it’s now time to listen to them. I only wish someone could post the link to The CDC here somewhere.
Anoniminous
@sab:
Chaotic sensitivity to initial conditions means even a small shift of those conditions iteratively processes out as a positive feedback loop in the negative direction.
Newt Gingrinch
Tests show that eight students at a Queens high school are likely to have contracted the human swine flu virus that has struck Mexico
What these people need is a big TAX CUT!
Anoniminous
@D-Chance.:
A 5% mortality rate – similar to the 1918-1919 outbreak – would kill around 15,000,000 million Americans with the largest demographic being in the 18 to 30 cohort.
Since this is a new example of the H1N1 genotype we have no genetically based resistance.
The CDC is doing what they are supposed to do: Act before the fan hits the brown stuff. Part of that is getting the word out so people start taking precautions. The single biggest factor – pre-pandemic – to affect the final body count is limiting the initial number of cases.
FishGirl
So, I have 50 friends on facebook – I don’t want two to three of them to die and lots more to get really sick, certainly don’t want another 2 or three of their children or family to die…5% is a big deal. I’m with you @D-Chance
Texas Dem
I blame Obama. Anyone who has watched television or gone to the movies knows that a black man only becomes president when everything goes to hell. We were warned. See Dennis Haysbert, “24,” Morgan Freeman, “Deep Impact.”
ksmiami
I knew diseases and little tiny mites would get us in the end. Seriously, there were like 1.3 billion people in the entire world in 1900 and now 6.3 billion. WE are the unfortunate plague on the earth and we are the fresh meat for bacteria. Quite efficient really, but I think people are better equipped to handle this with fast telecommunications and better sanitation. What this does point out though is that Mexico, under the guise of the drug wars and the fact that the middle class has emigrated to the US, is a failed state and we share a VERY POROUS border.
time will tell
El Cid
I hope Michelle Bachmann and Joe Barton are lending their brainpower to fighting this outbreak.
Corner Stone
@Texas Dem:
Holy shit. Good freakin call.
It’s so obvious now. F it all up and then give it to the darkie to run down. After it gets F’ed up the A we can blame mister brownstone and hold them all down again.
Genius.
/snark because I loved this comment TX Dem
Corner Stone
@iluvsummr:
Pussy.
Perry Como
GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness
SRSLY
Tom Gearman
The best defense is washing your hands frequently, and if you are out in public, wear a FDA approved respirator.
The FDA approved respirators are available to the general public directly from 3M through their on-line store. There are two styles of NIOSH N95 certified respirators at http://www.Shop3M.com: a flat-fold (Model 8670F) that stores easily in a purse, and a cup style (Model 8612F). Additional information, including product usage instructions, is available at http://www.my3MN95.com.
Texas Dem
Point taken. But if I show up to work wearing one of those I’ll be laughed out of the office. I mean, we haven’t reached “Omega Man” status yet, have we?
Perry Como
No, but I like to cosplay as Omega Supreme.
Texas Dem
Speaking of “Omega Man,” who is going to play the newscaster? Beck? Olbermann?
dmv
@ liberal
I didn’t say Iran’s treatment of its own citizens was relevant to our security, although I’m not so sure that you can cleanly separate them, either. In any event, I was responding to something tavella had said a few posts above mine.
Again, I was responding to something previously said. I think you should reevaluate the lenses through which you see the world, though, if you think that Iranian support of Hezbollah and Hamas = U.S. support of Israel. I say that, by the way, being myself completely and utterly dissatisfied with the obeisance we pay Israel. We too easily surrender our own interests for Israel’s and somehow think they are equivalent. They are not. We blind ourselves to the widespread human rights abuses Israel visits upon Palestinians, and we have a disgusting tendency to forget that Palestinians are human beings.
Having said all that, I still reject the notion that the two situations (our support of Israel and Iran’s support of Hezbollah/Hamas) are equivalent. Even if they do both suck.
Emma Anne
*moment of freak out*
My daughter is at Disneyland this weekend with her choir.
*end moment of freak out*
Brachiator
@Svensker:
If you discount little things like providing a haven and operational running room for bin Laden, the Taliban were pussycats. But of course, you can’t discount that.
It is worrisome that the Taliban have been granted any legitimacy in Pakistan at all. And just as this flu outbreak took everyone, including experts, by surprise, I don’t think that anyone can predict what might happen if the Taliban’s influence spreads in Pakistan.
Two words: suicide bombers.
The Taliban are not just Islamic fundamentalists. The are as nihilistic as the Khmer Rouge and similar extremists. They were eager to plunge Afghanistan into a social and economic Stone Age, just as the Khmer Rouge plunged Cambodia into a Year Zero.
I didn’t think that anyone could outdo Ann The Man Coulter in term of batshit craziness.
I was wrong.
ripstop
81 fatalities out of 8 million in Mexico City! No one seriously ill in the US. Sure seems like the politics of distraction.
Oh well, who wants to keep talking about torture, anyway.
Brachiator
@ripstop:
Uh, no. This is not just a garden variety flu outbreak. BBC News has a nice FAQ (Q&A: Swine flu).
Here is a worrisome tidbit:
When Mother Nature does “New! and Improved,” all kinds of nasty things might result.
coffeegirl
Susan Collins must be regretting this right about now…….
http://collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Articles&ContentRecord_id=46d6e846-802a-23ad-4ccd-8f37bc42d004&Region_id=&Issue_id=&CFId=960&CFToken=38005608
Flu? Schmu!
Perry Como
Footbullet manufacturers are working overtime to keep the GOP supplied.
bjacques
Does any one factory produce the majority of footbullets, or are they made mostly in garages by wingnuts and Scientologists?
dmv
@Brachiator:
You might be interested in checking out this post, an interesting take on precisely that issue.
CeriConversion
@GregB: Fortunately, there’s procedure to follow in case of Viking attack.
iluvsummr
@Corner Stone: Sniff, sniff, waaah. Y r u bein’ so mean to me? I’d have pulled myself out of bed with my bootstraps but I didn’t own any boots back then. Now though, watch out!
Mira's Desk
As with everyting in life it is best to be prepared. Here is a link to the CDC for information on the Swine Flu. http://pfx.me/NR
MIG
Jon,
What epidemic or pandemic in 1918? U don’t mean Polio do u? If so, carefully read the facts on that. Peter Salk was a stooge for the CDC. His results dont reflect the truth that 186K healthy people were infected and suffered from vaccines.
The fact is that problem-reaction-solution is here again. Problem? Swine Flu. Reason? – every freakin News media is doing its job of scaring americans and people worldwide. Soluction? Well, I am certain a vaccine is on its way just as Avian Flu did.
Remember how we would lose millions worldwide from Bird Flu? Never happened. In fact, 35 people died worldwide. 10K were infected worldwide. Does this in you small mind amount to pandemic proportions?
Bet they wont publicize how many people die from Tylenol use each year. How many people die from alcohol and cigarette use each month. You continue trusting all you here from the very groups who said Osam is alive and orchestrated any attacks.
Stopreading the news. Bet Mexico will give up some resource or right soon after they feel a crunch in their tourism. Just wait and see. Oh and how do you know the numbers of deaths are true? Have yu any proof?