This NEEDLESS Fear Over The Swine Flu  

Hi neighborhood biologist..

From what I read about Spanish Flu though, it wasn't so much the "flu" that killed people but the staph infection that often resulted from it, and I'm guessing (guessing mind you) that in the case of the deaths now from the swine flu it may also be a result of a further staph infection...in that case, antibiotics do work...but in the Spanish flu days they didn't have them. Also, the Tamilflu stuff...doesn't that have to be taken within the first 48 hours of diagnosis of the swine flu???

You are right about the limits of the antivirals. You have to take them early on to be at all effective. In the long run it shortens the duration of symptoms about one day. I am not buying it.

Hey, now I spent 8 years of my life getting this masters of biology. Ya'll gotta let me trot it out every now and again. Plus the whole treating a virus with an antibiotic is one of my biologist's pet peeves. That doesn't do anything but lead to antibiotic resistance.

But I did a little searching and you are right it wasn't the flu per se that killed people in 1918 it was secondary bacterial pneumonia that did them in and antibiotics would have helped.

Yes unfortunately, doctors, especially in the past were too free about handing out antibiotics for just about anything and everything. Probably the whole reason why they had to keep coming up with stronger and stronger types of medications, when years and years ago, simple penicillin types worked

I second that Aurone! I hate when people say that antibiotics work against viruses. Viruses aren't even "living" creatures! Their genetic entities! If you split the word apart Anti - against bio - living. Viruses, for all scientific purposes, are not living!

Congrats on your masters! I'm looking into going back to graduate school in microbiology or biotechnology. (I did my undergrad as a microbiology major.)

Any chance you can to through some knowledge out there, do it! You worked hard for your masters! :)

I guess maybe the news media is having slow days/nights so they have nothing else to "pick" on to talk about...LOL. I read/heard that even here in America people are buying out the masks to wear as a "just in case thing"---what most people don't know those masks are only really effective for a few hours

I think we should only have a genuine panic though only if millions are affected by the flu...not just a handful, don't you?

Hi Tamara. I've not been scared of these outbreaks until the news about the Swine Flu. I've heard about SARS and Bird Flu before, but this one seems to be "more outrageous". I do not like the panic that it's caused everywhere. Each time I switch from one channel to another, they're always talking about the virus.

Pye, thank you so much for the info that you shared. It IS great to read about the same subject, but in a different light. It sorta brings hope. I really appreciate it. I do agree with you that the numbers right now don't come at par with the figures of the Spanish Influenza cases. It makes me think that in some way, it's being exaggerated.

Hi russso,


There is no need to panic but there are more people in the UK have caught it, there are lots of holiday makers that are coming back from Mexico, that is the problem, all we have to do is kepp our selfves clean and wash hands often.


Tamara

To quote you:

I do agree that all these people with their total terror of any germ getting close to them are creating super-bugs, and it seems that this whole "cleanliness" thing is creating a lot of the allergies children seem to be aquiring.

The real irony is that the superbug MRSA started out....in hospitals where in many cases hygienic practices are usually a lot more stricter than the norm...though not always so. We have antibacterial/antiviral sprays, soaps, lotions, cleaners--and like you said no wonder kids are more allergic since they aren't being exposed to the germs that would actually strengthen their immune systems

My kids grew up healthy, they played in the dirt, had pets, and their mom had a dirty house. LOL

so true, Pye, that flesh eating strept did first show up in hospitals

I had a friend of my mom's who spent several weeks in the hospital and then in isolation at the Health Care Center because of it, happily she didn't lose her leg.

Yes freaking out can have the potential of more harm than good. Yes any virus has the potential of being dangerous, especially if it mutates, but then viruses/bacteria are mutating all the time

Paranoiax.... You are sooo right! I think that's what everyone should know. We should all be aware, but not freak out. I agree that the freaking out thing is not helping.

You're mentioning about food being thrown out...this is one of my pet peeves. I see the sheer waste all the time. For instance in some of the supermarkets near me, say the freezers break down, meaning that slowly but surely that food is defrosting....well BEFORE it does completely defrost the different food banks could pick up the food for soup kitchens...but what is the store's policy? For "insurance" reasons and so the store can get the money back, the store's policy is to simply throw the food away...what a friggin waste! Then as you say...you see people in Africa starving...I'm sure they would LOVE to have that food

Mire su boca embromarme son mexicana de la parte--which means
Watch ya mouth kid...I'm part Mexican....

They seem to be tracing the ground zero spot to some village outside of Mexico City where there is this big pig farm/plant....it's actually an American based company...famous Smithfield--mmm...maybe shouldn't buy any Smithfield bacon for awhile..LOL. But yeah, their health care system is practically non-existent there and it is a third world country....hell, no wonder so many want to come here...legally or illegally...LOL. Don't even know if they had a "border" issue when my Mexican/Spanish grandfather (from Puebla) came over...how he made his way to Brooklyn, NY, then hooked up with my one-hundred percent Irish grandmother remains a mystery...LOL. My grandfather was considered an outcast to his family...they were all involved with the govt and military...he comes along, sympathetic to the "cause"----Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata who were anti-govt...so in other words my grandfather had to leave.....quick or probably been imprisoned and shot by his own family.

Lol well yeah you might have mexican in you but your an american so that changes everything. Really? Interesting. That is damn cool. Yeah I wonder how they met, and what made him decide to go that far north, probably started running and kept running and then got tired of running when he got there lol. So you dont know anything at all about how they met?

He probably worked his way up being, what else, a migrant farmer picking crops for pennies a day...he wasn't a stupid person either but coming from the family he did was well educated. One thing I do know since he was willing to try and get any job possible, he wound up as a painter, painting people's homes...think it may have been a case that he was "hired" by my great-grandparents to paint their Brooklyn home where their daughter (my grandmother) lived. My family unfortunately were never into family histories so never really spoke about it much so never really learned how they met...heck don't even know the full story how my parents met

Ahh that sucks, neither was my family, would love to know more. Specially since on my moms side of the family im related to lincoln, and my dads side im related to wild bill hickok. Would love to know more about that. Hmmm I wonder how thrilled your great grandparents were when their daughter fell for the mexican painter they hired lol.



Hmmm you know what would really really suck right now? Getting sick with the regular flu lol.

My great-grandparents weren't too bad about it....but my grandmother's brother was a real character and hated my grandfather---if I told you the one story that I do know and what happened you would never believe me in a million years as it sounds like a story from a script from a movie...LOL...but it involved how my grandfather had to go back to Mexico after he and my grandmother were married a few years and by this time my mother had been born...He could never come back to America again...the whole thing was a set-up and the family "rumor" was that my grandmother's brother had a hand in it after all it was mentioned to me that he had "connections" with the mafia...crap I should write this as a fiction story...even though based on reality---my family sure wasn't dull...LOL

Wow, so he couldnt and didnt come back? Hell the mafia was huge back then and ran almost everything, I believe it lol.

Nope he could never come back. Can thank my grandmother's brother for causing the problem

Damn that sucks. So I guess your grandma and mom didnt go with him then, that must have really sucked for them.

Well we did go down and visit from time to time...LOL---The real sad thing was I was basically the only one who kept in touch with him right until he died. Got pissed off at the fact that my grandmother (his wife) and my mother (his daughter) didn't correspond much to him and he only met me once when I was about six years old. The real irony???? Sometime later I was to find out, since I WAS the only one to write to him all those years, when he died (around the 1980s) he left me his grand fortune...LOL. $1,660.00 US equivalent...Families can be so weird
I do happen to have a photo of him...this is probably around the time my grandparents met..they were married on Nov 28, 1928....gee a year before the crash...great timing...LOL

PS--to bring this back to the initial discussion...many of the students coming back from trips to Mexico and coming back to not only US but back to European countries that were diagnosed with Swine flu had come back from trips to Cancun....a very pishy, poshy expensive area of Mexico and a famous resort area...so like why is the highest rate of flu incidences cited as being in Mexico City...some hundreds of hundreds of miles away??

Damn that sucks they didnt correspond with him much, I wonder why they didnt, you would think that they would have a lot more. Nice with how much he left you. Nice pic too.


Hmmm dont know why they would be saying that, maybe they are because people in other countries wouldnt know the difference that much? Specially in Europe and the middle east? I just read that Egypt has slaughtered all their pigs, 300k of them. Damn.

Well....knock on wood, I haven't had the flu since I was eleven years old...and NEVER had a flu shot. My mother also never seemed to get the flu either..save the two times she DID get the flu shot so figure that one out..LOL
The idea of getting in bed and sweating it out was an old time remedy of my great-grandmother's (who was a nurse)---she recommended a drink of really hot tea, lemon, honey and a shot of brandy...cover oneself up in lots of blankets in bed and sweat it out..not very pleasant but works.

The last round of the real stuff I had, I just curled up under every blanket in my house and died for awhile. I was over it in three days, though. Stayed weak. Hey, if you want to look at something interesting, look up thieves oil. Or you may already know about it. You work with herbs a lot, right? And essential oils. That may be why you do not get the flu. My favorite combo seems to be tea tree and lavender.

I dose up everyday on extra Vit-C, garlic pills and Echinacea. plus a regular multi-vitamin--even take Omega-3

You're right I didn't hear about the 13,000 deaths from the "normal" flu...was this worldwide? As for now, yup--maybe the news is slow now and the media has to grasp at something to report about

pye, I was watching Brian Williams on NBC "Nightly News", and when he reported that fact,and to my chagrin, I missed the reference as to it being just in the USA or worldwide.

As I got up this morning, I see that the number of states with confirmed cases nearly doubled (from 6 to 11), and number of cases from 60 to 109, all just in 12 hours.

On the upside, Mexico is claiming a leveling off of the spread of the swine flu, although, according to Associated Press, WHO is stating they do not have concrete evidence of a leveling off of the disease. For Mexico, the worst may be over, and since it seems to have happened fairly quickly, I think that the feared pandemic will not happen.

Yup--one only has to watch people in the medical profession to see what's going down. I happened to live a few blocks away from a major city hospital...so if I suddenly see them walking on the streets during their breaks and they were masks then I'll be concerned.
Mmmm....how about King's "Cell"----where people become zombie like and cannibalistic from using cell phone...that's even more common to see people with cell phones glued to their ears...LOL