Swine Flu

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='T-Bone _' post='1930538' date='Jul 24 2009, 11:41 AM']The swine flu is allegedly less severe than the "regular" flu. I don't see why there's a bunch of hubub about it.[/quote]
This depends on how you define " less severe". Puking your guts out for several days or laying in diarrhea because you are too weak to get off the bed or gettting put on oxygen because you can't breathe are NOT my definitions of mild. Flu is not pretty no matter how you define it.


I will be getting whatever shots they offer.

[morostheos]

From what I read about Swine Flu, it's a respiratory flu, not a stomach flu. So primary symptoms are not so much puking but congestion instead. Can anyone else confirm this? I read most people who become seriously ill are so because they develop pneumonia.

[homeschoolmom]

My understanding is that if it's gastrointestinal in nature, it's not truly "flu" (ie influenza). Flu, as I understand it, is repertory, fever, achy...

[Sojourner]

The flu is never primarily gastrointestinal, although sometimes that is a secondary symptom.

Here are symptoms from one hospital's [url="http://www.healthpartners.com/portal/3498.html?cid=aw1114001"]site[/url] (emphasis mine):
Q: What are the symptoms of H1N1 novel flu?
A: H1N1 novel flu symptoms are the same as symptoms from the seasonal flu. It usually starts with a fever, sometimes as high as 104, sore throat, dry cough and muscle aches. Most of these symptoms improve over three to five days, but may last as long as eight days. Vomiting and diarrhea are unusual, but can occur. True influenza is a respiratory disease. [b]What some refer to as the flu, or stomach flu with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, is not influenza.[/b]

Morostheos is right that the primary problem complication is pneumonia.

Note: The CDC lists these same symptoms on their site.

Edited July 25, 2009 by Terra Firma

[CatherineM]

I really hate the idea of my husband getting it. He burned his lungs at the South Pole, and he has one of those old man smoker's kind of coughs that makes me think if he gets pneumonia that it could go bad really quickly.

[puellapaschalis]

I have just been happily sneezing halfway round Europe. Everyone here seems fine.

Maybe that's cos the ill people are at home though.

[Hassan]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1930562' date='Jul 24 2009, 11:26 AM']My dad lost most of his family in 1918 to the flu. He was terrified of us getting the flu when we were kids. It is hitting the aboriginal communities here pretty hard. When you've got 15 people living in two room houses without running water, that's certainly ideal conditions for the spread. Also ideal conditions for mutation. We may not have guys crammed into muddy trenches, but that doesn't mean we don't have other populations world wide who are similarly under stress.[/quote]

Yes, but how mobile are those individuals?

I thought the key point to the WWI hypothesis was that then millions of millions of those young men were then quickly dispersed all over the western world after the war ended and they were shipped back home.

[CatherineM]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1931808' date='Jul 25 2009, 03:39 PM']Yes, but how mobile are those individuals?

I thought the key point to the WWI hypothesis was that then millions of millions of those young men were then quickly dispersed all over the western world after the war ended and they were shipped back home.[/quote]

You're basically describing what happens at our international airports everyday. There are several First Nation reservations less than an hour from here in Edmonton, or down in Calgary. They come and go all the time. It's not like they are behind barbed wire out there. In fact, they just had a meeting to pick the head chief in Canada, and chiefs from every group were crammed into a hotel together.

[Mercy me]

I guess my attitude is all wrong but it seems to me that I am looking at a 100% mortality rate no matter what. So, what difference does it make if it is swine flu or something else. I do not know when my time is coming but I do know that it is coming.

[Gregoriana of Nyssa]

People in my area have been dying from the Swine Flu, so if a vaccine comes out, I certainly want to get it for my 5-year-old son, at least.