I is a certified emergency call taker! My now ex-coach brought cupcakes :) *bounce*

heh, and we have new sticky notes on the medicaly triage guides to help us screen for particularly virulent flu patients. Good times!

Congrats, erin!

In 1918, the US -- and the rest of the world -- was recovering from World War I, with widespread poverty, hunger, and unsanitary living conditions, coupled with no available antibiotics (a very large amount of flu deaths are from secondary bacterial infections that set in after the initial flu infection) or flu medications or modern medical care.

Aside from the WWI part, this describes a large part of the world today. The top three killers of children in developing countries are respiratory infections, diarrhea diseases, and malaria, and almost all of these deaths could be prevented with improved sanitation and access to modern medical care (and bed nets). (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs272/en/). The conditions in the US and other developed countries might not be optimal hosts to a new superflu. But if the flu mutates in Mexico (or Indonesia or Benin) and becomes something more severe than the current strain, it could get bad. 'Cause viruses don't care about borders.

Of course, we also have the example of the last swine flu scare where Congress bowed to pressure from the drug companies to absolve them of liability so they could develope a vaccine faster and then... a bunch of people died from the vaccine and none (besides the initially identified case) from the flu. Oops.

Of course, this flu has already spread further than that one -- its just a good cautionary tale on "don't go nuts." Excessive school closures early on seem like a preferable overreaction. Its possible that isolating the population at Fort Dix is what kept it from spreading in '76.

Someone needs to take Wikipedia off-line for a few hours, I have shit to do.

But did you know there was a Swine Flu outbreak in the US in 1988? I have zero recollection of this. [link]

In 1918, the US -- and the rest of the world -- was recovering from World War I, with widespread poverty, hunger, and unsanitary living conditions, coupled with no available antibiotics (a very large amount of flu deaths are from secondary bacterial infections that set in after the initial flu infection) or flu medications or modern medical care.

Aside from the WWI part, this describes a large part of the world today.

I know. That's why I said, in the sentence before what you quoted, that the *developed* world today has vastly different conditions than in 1918. Not the whole world; certainly not developing countries.

But if the flu mutates in Mexico (or Indonesia or Benin) and becomes something more severe than the current strain, it could get bad. 'Cause viruses don't care about borders.

All flu strains mutate. That's what they do.

I'm not saying that the swine (or any) flu is nothing to worry about, that we should all go about blithely licking doorknobs and asking people to cough on us. But there's a lot of overreaction going on already, and it does no one any good.

That's why I said, in the sentence before what you quoted, that the *developed* world today has vastly different conditions than in 1918. Not the whole world; certainly not developing countries.

Yes, I know. And my point is that it doesn't really matter what the conditions are in the developed world, because diseases that we can handle here (like the current form of swine flu) can grow like wildfire elsewhere, change, and then come back here to hit us.

I'm sniffley today, but I know I don't have swine flu. Almost no one, relative to the world's population, has swine flu. And my eyes pretty much rolled out of my head today when a friend in Raleigh posted that her baby (currently teething and sniffley as often as not) was sniffley and feverish, and did we think he had swine flu? (Almost certainly not.)

But if there are cases confirmed in a school or a workplace or the like, I don't think closing the institution down until the risk of contagion has passed is an over reaction.

Selfishly thinks how cool it would be to not have to deal with school stuff for a couple weeks. No, I have nothing worthwhile to add to the flu discussion.

I am transport for basketball tournament stuff this weekend. The team is coming to my house after the games today to watch who knows where it came from Wolverine a movie. So I better get to a store to buy massive quantities of snack type foods and drink. Not surprisingly, a dozen or so HS boys can eat an amazing amount of food after 2-3 tournament games.

Can't go to see the parental units again this weekend because of fires closing Alligator Alley. So at least didn't have a conflict of schedule. Also, smoke stinks.

And my eyes pretty much rolled out of my head today when a friend in Raleigh posted that her baby (currently teething and sniffley as often as not) was sniffley and feverish, and did we think he had swine flu? (Almost certainly not.)

I can sympathize with the eye-rolliness, Calli, but parents of babies and toddlers can be odd creatures. It's a weird, weird place to be, mentally, on a normal day; when there's something widespread going on? The brain goes bananas. Especially since so many health care professionals have a way of making parents feel like they're stupid and overreacting, so we learn to downplay things until it's sometimes too late.

When Nate was about three years old (and had been ridiculously healthy up until that point) he caught a severe cold-- one of those that just sucks the life right out of you. He was running fevers and not eating or even drinking much. And I called his doctor's office three days running and the nurse wouldn't even put me through to talk to the doctor-- she kept saying it was a bad cold, everyone had it, and surely I was exaggerating his symptoms. And because I was exhausted with a three year-old and two year-old, I went along with it-- until his nails started showing tinges of blue and I rushed him to the ER where God love 'em, they didn't even stop to do paperwork, just got him into an oxygen tent and on fluids right away. He was diagnosed with pneumonia, transferred to the local children's hospital, and spent a couple of days in the PICU--

Next chance I got, I drove to that doctor's office, slammed the hospital paperwork on the nurse's desk, pointed to the diagnosis, and said loud enough for the entire waiting room to hear, "Pneumonia you clueless twat-- still think I'm exaggerating?"

Of course, I don't know how I might have reacted with something like a potentially pandemic flu going on-- given his symptoms at the time, I most likely would have been a lot more insistent. Hopefully, they would have been more understanding too, but who knows?