theNoosphere.com

Well everyone, Mexican piggies have the sniffles and we're all goin down. Better brush up up on my Stephen King. The Stand, after all, is the bible for apoclytpic disease survival. Just kidding I only made it three chapters in. Makes ya think though, what if this disease actually gets around? As a killer of already 81 hombres, and sickening 1,324 since April 13, this is an issue to be noticed. Also, in America 11 Have been confirmed to have the disease and 8 more in NYC.

Asian Bird Flu now Mexican Pig Flu!?!? What next? French Ferret Flu?

Mexico fights swine flu with 'pandemic potential'

There it is. What are your thoughts? How far do you think this might get?

And since I mentioned it; end of the world, or more accurately for those who do not believe in any form of architectured apocoloypse, the global fall of mans 'glorious' civilization. How will we go? WWIII?? On the whole WWIII subject, my moneys banking on Middle-Eastern countries gaining nuclear weapons and turning a 2000+ year religious war into a 1 day full blown religious apocolypse complete with hell fire and disease and doesn't include the happy ending from Sum of All Fears (not a very good name honestly, the SUM of all our fears is not ONE nuke killing millions, it's alot of nukes killing billions and eventually every living thing).

Duncan, once again I'm going to invite you to take a peek at a thread-in the Poll Dance forum you might want to check out the Biggest Threat to Mankind thread. I think you may have an idea or two to add to make that discussion even more interesting, or evolve a perspective for here, or wherever.

Well, it's certainly very, very concerning, but we don't need to panic...yet.

Fact is, no one in the public health field really know the scope of this problem right now. This could fizzle out in a couple weeks or it could become a massive pandemic. No one can predict this with any level of accuracy at this moment. We certainly are acting aggressively to prevent this from spreading, I can tell you that.

86 people is not a pandemic. It's an eyebrow-raiser.

Now they're cancelling classes: SCUCISD Classes Canceled All Week - Health News Story - KSAT San Antonio




OMG, accoring to "reliable" sources, we're all going to turn into pigs: SWINE FLU COMES TO AMERICA|Weekly World News

I'm still wondering what wiseass turned off the "can-we-show-some-intelligence-here?" switch.

OMIGOD-so that was the problem with my geometry teacher my sophomore year in high school. Who knew?!?

All right all right not yet it's not. Just you wait...

Oh, and as of today there are over 200 cases reported in the US alone.

Actually, there are only 40 confirmed cases in the United States per the CDC.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Only one case required hospitalization, everyone else was just isolated in their homes.

And no deaths. None even close.

I bet there were 20x more cases of the common cold reported in the US today. Is that a pandemic?

If this thing spreads fast and kills people it's a pandemic. Until then, it's a strain of the flu that some people who have recently been to Mexico are getting.

What strikes me in tracking this affair is how we continue to cling to the illusion we (the big "we"--humanity) are somehow, or better should be somehow, out in front of this thing. That that there should be established local, national and global immediate response contingencies in place to auto-respond to any significant outbreak of any kind anywhere in the world.

That would be nice, no doubt ... just unrealistic in the extreme.

I think, particularly in the "developed nations," we have become increasingly insulated from the realities of our species' position in the world and universal order. We seem to think we are in control and masters of our domain. We are not.

The world and universe send us reminders of that truth on a regular basis--this latest medical scare for instance, on a global scale, and not that long ago Shoemaker-Levy on a universal scale--but by and large I get the sense the vast majority of us do not recognize them as such.

Not excusing neglect or bureaucratic quicksand here ... just reminded yet again just how close beneath the surface of the perceived normalcy of everyday life lies the harsh reality of just how tenuous is our real situation, our real control, over our brief slice of geologic time on the thin, brittle crust of a spinning blob of mud, orbiting a nuclear cataclysm in a remote corner of one of countless billion galaxies, each so vast and violent we cannot begin to imagine, all heading ... we know not where.

And now for some lunch.

Swine Flu Spreading, but Officials Say Travel Restrictions Do Little to Help - washingtonpost.com

Yea, I realized my mistake on this one, I should have put "200 cases world wide" my bad.

All right I give. Uncle!

me-> <- you

History repeating itself, perhaps?

1976: Ford Orders Swine Flu Shots for All

From the link Bishop posted ...

"The most devastating pandemic in recorded world history" happened just 90 years ago, and has been largely lost to history. I wonder why that is?

I'm wondering about something that possibly may be a contributing factor to the apparent near-panicked state of both institutions and the public at large concerning this swine flu outbreak. Maybe it's just me, but it seems as though there is a tendency in the media, more specifically media journalism, to melodramatize everything. All too often, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the media journalists when reporting a new scientific breakthrough or discovery seem to automatically extrapolate to the most dramatic outcome be it either a "potentially mankind saving" or "potentially mankind ending" scenario. It doesn't seem to be limited to science either-politics, business, international news, crime reporting, even sports reporting seems aimed at evoking the maximum intense emotional response from the reader, regardless if the posited scenario makes any logical sense or not.

What I'm wondering is-is this perhaps causing a Chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling mindset that prevents the public-or governments, who, after all, have to at least appear to be responding with concern lest their countrymen turn against them-from devoting enough rational analysis to assess the true nature and extent of the problem rather than simply give a knee-jerk reaction?

If this is indeed the case, then IMHO, mass media journalism is doing us all a terrible disservice.