William Gibson > Bruce Sterling

@21 (@24 hinted at this, just read it heh)

Also do not forget there 2009 has a much larger population and a much facilitated spread route for viruses (airplanes, trading ships, etc).

No 2 virus are alike, but if we accept the working hipothesis that this outbreak has the same characteristics as the spanish flu then we must try to picture it in the current world.

The influenza virus shares genetical info and evolves, this evolution is related to the ammount of different strains and virus types present in the same hosting organism. If you have a pig virus or a bird virus nearby a human virus together in the same cell, the chances for building up a whole different strain increases.

This new virus not only poses a specific current threat but also adds an interesting genetical building block for future developtments, specially considering 2009 world dynamics.

Remember 1918 pandemic had a peak in 1918 and another one in 1919.

Besides, again @21 do not forget antibiotics are widely misused and there are plenty multiresistant bacteria lurking around hospitals. In hospital infections are the worst to have and treat, how do you imagine preventive measures to be in an hiphotetical 2009 flu pandemic striken hospital?

Even though its too early to tell exactly how bad this might turn out to be i believe its time to remember the old proverb, better to prevent than cure. Dont panic, get informed and hopefully try and learn from the experience, as good old Homer said, oportuncrisis, with death lurking around it might be a good time to double check believes, values, life standards, etc etc.

Whats important really important to you guys?

In these times of large-scale medical treatment in the U.S., people forget how common death from epidemics used to be. My grandfather wanted to attend one of the Nickelodeon theaters in Pittsburgh (the town where they were invented)and get a vaccination for smallpox. My mother’s Uncle didn’t want to accompany my grandfather and do the same. My grandfather’s brother contracted smallpox and died. A lot of effort has been put into making the country healthier places than some third-world countries. Just a short vacation in numerous countries will remind us how well-off we really are. (A friend of my sister recently came home with a case of malaria.)

The 20th century’s stupidest meme. Bishop Berkeley is rolling over in his grave, I bet.

The CEO of an American corporation once beat on the boardroom table and shouted “I don’t care if the customer’s perception is wrong! Perception is reality!” and I said “I’m afraid the speeding truck you haven’t perceived is more likely to flatten you than the one you see coming.” I was lucky to make it out of that room alive.

The most deadliest thing about the flu is not the flu as such but the causes: pneumonia. And penicillin works quite good against pneumonia.

Not sure what you mean by the first sentence, but while penicillin may be of use against bacterial pneumonia (which is sometimes associated with flu), it’s not much help against viral pneumonia (which is sometimes directly caused by flu virus).

In any case, it’s thought that many of the Spanish Flu fatalities were caused by exaggerated immune response rather than pneumonia.

There’s no vaccine now.

One will take six months to produce.

By which time the virus will have mutated.

I’m looking forward to the O’Reilly “Pandemic Hacks” book. Plotting the death of friends and family on Google Maps will be kinda cool.

So in a typical school around where I live, that would only be between 3 and 10 deaths. In my company, we’re only 50% likely to have to go to a funeral.

I’m not ready to freak out over 2009 swine flu, but methinks too many flying statistics can bury the seriousness of past pandemics.

Oh, and other people who are panicking.

Not too bad uh?

Well picture what would be the situation in urban New York alone with a population of 18,223,567 having to deal with 5,102,599 sick persons and 127,565 dead…

Yes, your personal chances of surviving a pandemic such as that of 1918 are quite good but unfortunately this does not make it any less of a catastrophe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H3N2

In a homeopathy retreat, you have a non-random population which tends to be of better wealth (say hi to “disposable income”) and accordingly better health.

Moreover, at a death rate of .007, you’d expect the 8000 people they claim to have had (according to your link) to have only had 56 deaths.

0 deaths deviating from 56, given a non-random population that *should* be in above-average health?

Yeah, that’s called “sampling error.” That deviation is well within the range of error for the topic under discussion. It’s proof of nothing except that homeopathy and its adherents are as well-versed in biometrics as they are in biology.

More people died in the global Spanish influenza pandemic in 1918-1920 than died in both WW1 & WW2 combined.

Panic is the stock in trade of demagogues and yellow journals, but doing nothing, as the Repukelickin’s & Blue Dogs suggest, is not an option.

A health disaster today on the scale of the Spanish Flu, from pole to pole, London to Sydney, would mean up to two billion sick and fifty million dead, worldwide.
.

If we have a 0.001% mortality that is as much as we will have, that is just a guess, but an informed one. These may well be the old, young and immunocompromised and most unfortuante of all the poor and the homeless.

So relax all ye healthy people with homes, medical care access and decent nutrition.

The overall numbers of deaths don’t take into account the lives irrevocably changed, individually and culturally. My grandmother was sent home from her first semester of college, never to return, because of the outbreak.

But it is a good point to make– running around like a headless chicken is not necessary for this current flu. Wash your hands and practice Kung-foo-choo (sneeze into your sleeve).

Apoxia– how do kiwis sneeze with their nostrils at the wrong end?

http://xkcd.com/574/

Like the many thousand dead Iraqis in the ongoing war: as far as the US media aer concerned, only dead enemy Iraqis sometimes have names: the rest are insignificant, mere numbers. To the US media.

Statistical descriptions of human suffering and death can, by itself, lead to an inhuman way of thinking about these deaths by (man-made or natural) disaster. As was shown by the lack of ‘death counts’ for Hurricane Katrina, in the US media, during the disaster, and for long after: they did not want to be seen as “de-personalizing” the citizenry of their own polity, IMO.

Becoming “just another faceless, nameless number” in the column of deaths: versus having a name, surviving family with names, a definite place(s) of residence, etc. That is, “becoming a statistic” is a horrifying thought to the individual. With good reason: statistics strip the humanity from their subjects, and intentionally so.

Abstraction from, or ignoring, personal individuality, in the treatment of human beings is essential for institutional (or perhaps any ‘indifferent’ [ie not based on personal hatred]) cruelty to operate with a ‘clear conscience’.

But it can (sometimes) help in medical (and other) science. But great care is required in the just use of statistics: their use can create indifference to individual suffering.

In general, treating patients/prisoners as mere numbers (or as ‘means to our ends’), is evil. And that habit of thought – that people are just statistics – can breed contempt, for the dignity inherent in human life itself.

Water and vibrations…please..AFAIK that HOLISTIC…not homeopathic.
Homeopathic uses whole herbs, plants, and well…natural stuff to make remedies. And YES…THEY WORK! Not ‘as good’ as pharma…but they relieve symptoms just the same. They won’t kill a virus…they’ll let your body do that. It makes the time more bearable. I don’t know how may times I’ve passed over Pepto or Maalox for a sprig of peppermint. With almost instant relief.

Plus…wasn’t there just a study released that showed hyper inflated numbers for the efficacy of big pharma sponsored drug studies? IE…instead of the 50%…it was more like 25%?

Don’t get me wrong. If your really sick, see your doctor! Also…big pharma sometimes uses synthesized compounds FROM plants to make drugs…

Mosquitoes are responsible for the deaths of about 2,000,000 people a year. Mosquitoes: anybody can be bitten by one! Mosquitoes: The diseases they transmit can travel by train, plane, automobile, bird, cow, baby and boat. The filthy little buggers change lives irrevocably all the time.

Not trying to minimize your horror of the flu or anythin’. Not at all! Just pointing out that there are other things in the world that you also shouldn’t forget to worry about.

While from a survival-of-the-species-perspective, those are good odds,that would still be really, really horrible, for everybody.

And even if mortality rates were the same as 1918, that would mean 1.5 million dead in the US alone. That’s nothing to sneeze at.