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?

It is very difficult as a new parent to know for sure what is serious and what isn't. It must be difficult for doctors to know the difference between overreacting and underreacting parents too. When Brendon was only a few weeks old he had what I thought was much worse than a bad diaper rash. My doctor had me bring him in and he had a staph infection and had to be admitted to the hospital with a tiny IV in his head for days. At that point I could have easily turned into a parent that rushed to the ER at every sniffle.

It's tough. People should wash their hands more though. There has always been hand disinfectant stuff around doctor's offices, but this week when I was at a couple for training people the stuff was on every surface. And my doctors all had lame swine jokes. I didn't ask them their thoughts because I figured they had enough of that from their patients.

Yeah, parents are sort of in a no-win situation. If they rush to the doctor with every sniffle, people say they're overreacting, but if they go, "Eh, it's just a cold," and their kid dies of pneumonia then it's, "Why didn't you go to the doctor?"

But I still really, really doubt my friend's baby has swine flu.

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.

I think that it is an overreaction if the swine flu is no more virulent than the "regular" strains of flu (of which there are about 30,000 reported to the CDC every WEEK).

*Is* the H1N1 swine flu more virulent than the other flu strains already extant? From the data reported so far, it doesn't seem to be.

Again, I'm not suggesting the swine flu is bullshit, or that we should all go around getting up in the personal space of people who we know have it. But closing schools and businesses when there are only a few confirmed cases -- particularly things like Kristin's school closing for 14 days -- really seems like overkill to me, and all it serves to do is to stir up even more panic and overreaction.

(All that said, I'll probably get swine flu and lose a kidney or something, as divine retribution for my devil-may-care attitude here. Karma is a bitch.)

Gotta go get free comics now.

But I still really, really doubt my friend's baby has swine flu.

Yeah, wasn't disagreeing with that-- given your location and the fact that the baby's teething, which is enough to drive a parent over the edge in and of itself.