I wonder if catching the Swine Flu would help Paco's shitty L4D performance any.

I've found the Swine Flu horribly disappointing. After getting 3-4 emergency alerts and CDC instruction emails from my school I expected some terrible, devastating virus. Then it turned out to just be the regular flu with diarrhea and more highly contagious. Lame.

Only if he's playing on the Infected side. Otherwise he'll just swipe all the pills before anyone else can use them.

At least he'd actually be picking up health for once. Sounds like an improvement to me.

My PIG HIV was cured by green tea. And The Macallan.

Yes. I know that FOX News is "A FUCKING VIRUS, NOT A BACTERIA."

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO ADD, CAPTAIN HYPERBOLE?

A bacterium.

But yeah, the antiviral medicines seem to work fine against the disease, so there should be no worry in countries with at least some developed medicine or healthcare (=America's screwed).

Hey, some of us are preferred patients.

Paco, I don't know if I misread, but it pisses me off whenever anyone talks about using antibiotics to cure something viral.


It's a touchy subject for me because the idea of super-staph scares the shit out of me.

Couple of confirmed cases in my area. A pair of kids from the same class in (I think) elementary school got it, and two others are being tested. Quarantined them all. They're trying to figure out what the vector was right now, and have closed all the schools. My job is also offering liberal leave for those who don't want to take the risk. Unfortunately, I'm triple booked for meetings next week and can't do any such thing, otherwise I'd be going for an unexpected vacation.

I dunno what fucking homo deleted my post, but I still think that people blow this one out of all possible proportions.
So the WHO (the institution, not the band) just decided to make people around the world insecure by jumping to level five. Fuck the WHO, they have no fucking idea what they are talking about.
So there are a couple of swine flu victims in Mexico. Fuck Mexico, their health care system is barely better than the democratic system in North Korea.

Now everyone is jumping around, TV stations drawing worst case scenarios (seriously, fuck those idiots). Geez, you guys all need a large cup of chillax. You CAN shake other peoples' hands. You CAN eat pork. You will NOT die. Okay?

Swine flu. Hai hai, next hype, please.

Yeah, I too don't understand why someone would want to raise awareness of a possible pandemic to allow local authorities to prepare for handling the situation.

Do you also oppose volcano monitoring?

I do. I like the element of surprise in my eruptions.

Well the confirmed cases have jumped up to 85 at this current moment, Its kind of alarming to see how many new cases are popping up since only a couple of days ago there were only 19. Thankfully, there have been no cases of swine flue in my home province of Newfoundland. Alberta on the other hand, which is where I'm to right now have 15 cases of the swine flu at this moment.

Who knows, I could have it, I've been fighting a horrible cough over the last couple of days. I'm not going to get paranoid about like every body else has. The camp I'm staying at is being really strict about it, because since this camp holds about 2700 people, we have a lot of guys coming back on their holidays down south especially Mexico. So we were provided a notice by our employer is that anytime we fly home if we come down with any kind of sickness while we're home, they encourage us to stay home for another week till you feel better in fear of the swine flu. I'll just take a wait and see approach. That's all I can do.

In terms of other swine flu related news, this little tidbit happened in canada today.

Alberta Pigs likely infected with swine flu

A friend of mine who refs soccer recently got an email from the USSF telling him to red card any children that shook hands. In an attempt to stop the spread of swine flu. This really... saddens me, actually.

There's been a case of it confirmed one town over from me. I'm still not terribly worried. Angel, you mentioned that it seems to be spreading quickly... I'm not so sure I see it that way. I think 'pandemic' and I think of countless infected, full hospitals, etc. Granted, its probably not the easiest or quickest thing to diagnose, but I feel like the common flu had more confirmed cases on my college's campus than this one does through the world.

Maybe I'm just being too lax and not considering all the unconfirmed cases, but 85 just isnt a spectacular or threatening number on the WORLD level.

No, I don't oppose volcano monitoring (good comparison by the way, got you some props!) but just in case you haven't noticed yet, there is a pretty huge hysteria about a flu that is probably not any more dangerous than a common cold. It's been the same with BSE, it's been the same with SARS and it's been the same with the bird flu. Why should it be any different this time?

The SARS fatality rate is around 15% to 20%. Bird flu goes as high as 60%. If you think they're "not any more dangerous than a common cold" you are severely uninformed.

I guess you got my point.

When the bird flu hit the planet in 2006, scientists went as far as predicting a pandemic that could kill a large fraction of the human population. There was a huge panic, Germany even thought about cancelling the Soccer World Cup. In the end, there have been 421 cases, of which 257 resulted in death. Not exactly a serious pandemic if you ask me. Same with SARS ("we're all going to die"). And what the heck, dude, you know about the health care situation in some Asian countries just as well as I do.

WELL GUESS WHY IT DIDN'T END UP BEING A SERIOUS PANDEMIC

Because they spent billions of bucks for research and killed hundreds of millions of birds to try to contain H5N1. What exactly is your point?

You're on the right track here. Now tell me, why would they bother spending "billions of bucks for research" and kill "hundreds of millions of birds"? Isn't that the "huge hysteria" you just credited for preventing a pandemic?

Are you interested in a serious debate?

All I am saying is that it has yet to be proven that the swine flu is as dangerous as many people say it is. When I speak of "mass hysteria", why would I mean spending money for research? Of course - and I guess you know that - I was talking about some people around this planet drawing worst-case-scenarios, which I think isn't really helpful at all. I am very well aware of the fact that spending a lot of money for research can help to contain a flu, and why exactly would I oppose a move like that?

I predict that in a few weeks, nobody speaks about this anymore anyway. Sure, I might be wrong, but then again, that's just my prediction which of course I know not everyone agrees with.

So what if it's yet to be proven? You've had 19 deaths in Mexico so far. That's one flag. Most of the victims were young adults. That's another flag. And most importantly, unlike avian flu, H1N1 spreads relatively easily from human to human. Adopting a "let's wait and see" attitude would simply be retarded.

The true danger of swine flu has not yet been proven, as there is still a lot of debate going on as to how strong the virus is after it moved from pigs to people. Yes, people have died in Mexico, but you do have to take into account that a lot of the victims waited to see a doctor or couldn't afford medication. The only thing that is really worrying at the moment is the incredibly fast rate at which it spreads, not on how lethal it is. Even so, the chances of another Spanish flu, were death rates of 1000 people a day were not uncommon, are pretty slim.

I do agree that measures need to be taken, but panic needs to be avoided. Closing down entire school districts (Texas), killing every pig in the country (Egypt) come of as too drastic. I even saw a woman walking around with a fucking mouthmask yesterday, something I never expected to see outside of hospitals and Japan (and gave me quite a startle actually).

Haha, our University just required us to post our temperatures to a special website every freaking day...

I wonder what happens if I self-report 39 degrees