"Swine Flu", everyone is always wrong

So yeah this is a huge rant, you should read it though, because you probably don't even know why you're wrong whenever you talk or think about H1N1v. But don't worry! You're almost certainly wrong.

Things you think that are wrong
"Swine Flu"
Yeah it's got almost nothing to do with pigs [anymore] so why do people still refer to it as this instead of H1N1v (which sounds much cooler).

If you refer to it as swine flu but also complain about the media view on it, you annoy me. You are clearly brutally swayed by media sources if you call it swine flu.

H1N1v is just as bad as regular flu
Death rate: 0.5%, moderately low for a pandemic yes. But flu is one of the most easily transmitted disease and with already ~4500k confirmed deaths in the US it is clearly not another weak disease (This number is estimated to be an underestimate as much as 5 - 10 fold). This is more than seasonal flu (which I think at the moment is H3N2, though it's being out competed by H1N1v) therefore stop saying it's not. We'll get to the ridiculous reasons behind this being said later.

H1N1v is a type 1 flu, which simply means it's potent. You may think flu isn't bad, but it is, you're either getting confused with flu symptoms (which I'm guessing you'd probably struggle to list) or type 2 flu (man flu "I'm ill I can't work).

But wait! That 0.5% is the average! If you're under 25 and healthy you have a greater chance of dying. Flu viruses are quite terrible at being efficient, as such their infection and replication method leads to the majority of symptoms being caused by your immune system. In young healthy people (especially if you're the kind of guy/girl who never gets ill) your immune system is going to kick off like a ****ing hurricane. That's bad. Hence why young fit Mexicans died and everyone got confused.

Swine flu is new/Generally lack of understanding about antigenic drift/shift

H1N1v contains a combination of genes from 4 flu strains that we know of. This mix causes it to be highly contagious (a recent study shows an infected person will pass the virus on to 25% of people they come into proximity of) and moderately deadly (though it mainly is secondary infections that are the problem).

Good news though, one of the genes is from a strain of flu from 1968 meaning people over 40 have some resistance.

Bad news though, that's not you and like I mentioned you're more likely to die.

Swine flu is just the new bird flu/Swine flu is the media trying to scare us

In some countries we trust our mainstream media because we're not hyper paranoid. And though scare tactics are used with this kinds of stories you can still trust some sources.

WHO
BBC (Pretty scientifically accurate + has this cool flash thing that shows the slow increase of deaths on a map).

On the topic of "another bird flu", H5N1 was presumed to be the next pandemic which was predicted to occur (obviously turned out to be wrong and H1N1v seemingly "came from no-where").

Good news, H5N1 has a 67%~ mortality rate and makes you bleed from your eyes and such. Better H1N1v than H5N1.

Bad news, if some animal gets infected with both they could recombine and cause a hybrid strain that could kill millions of people.

The vaccine is bad

In some countries we trust our medical system and don't have crazy witchdoctors trying to peddle crystal medicine and silver water on TV.

But anyway, the vaccine is the best bet on terms of not being ****ed over globally by this pandemic. 0.5% of the people in the world who get infected dying is still a lot.

With a vaccination of 70% of the population we'd probably be sound.



Yeah I might add to this idk. I hope you learned how you're wrong.

This post has been edited by Hippoman on Nov 2 2009, 09:44 AM

Very informative!

thinks you think that are wrong

I can't read so therefore can't spellcheck :(

Thank you for explaining this to everyone.

The only thing that you really missed is that people you have a previous medical condition, like asthma, are much more likely to die, because when h1n1 kills you by going into your lungs.

so when did h1n1 become h1n1v?

Actually you mean having H1N1v and a pre-existing respiratory condition can lead to increase in the potential to get a secondary fatal condition such as bacterial pneumonia.

It's mainly your immune response that does damage during a flu infection, so yeah.

The H and the V describe the two surface proteins, the v is "new variant". As there are many other strains of H1N1, it's used to describe the current pandemic strain.

H1N1 is still better than swine flu.

This post has been edited by Hippoman on Nov 2 2009, 10:20 AM

oh, okay.

bookmarking this

ah ok, just wondering.

Pretty cool info I guess.

But I don't like to think my defenses are going to mess me up. I mean whoa wtf it's almost like autoimmune

I'm sorry but I can't accept these "facts" because you are a shill for the biotech companies.

lol paranoia

Thanks (again) for reinforcing what I already knew; at least now I have some numbers to back up my knowledge.

Though some reliable outside sources would be nice if you have any.

Preventative measures:

Who the **** elbow bumps?

This post has been edited by BurninLeo on Nov 2 2009, 01:13 PM

I swear I've seen it before!


BRO-ELBOW

I like swine flu. People I don't like that go to my school keep getting it so now I don't have to deal with them while they're stuck at home.

LOL BRO ELBOW

swine flu is less syllables than h1n1
plus people know what i'm talking about when i say it so why does it matter again