So, this swine flu. It's all everyone is talking about in the UK (and across the rest of the world, I'm sure), and the masses are starting to show signs of panic as the government warns a pandemic is imminent.
Being a healthy and sturdy South African, I tend to ignore warnings about outbreaks of strange diseases. Mad cow disease? Whatever. I've been eating beef all my life, I wasn't going to stop just because people were getting all hysterical about batty bovines. Bird flu? Yes of course it might kill our feathered friends, but I'm about 50 times their size. I was quite sure I'd live.
This attitude might be a product of my parents' distinctly unsympathetic approach to childhood illness. You feel sick? Got a cough? Sore throat? You better be projectile vomiting from your too-inflamed-to-breathe oesophogus and coughing up blood before you stay home from school. Flu? Stop being a ninny and get out of bed, some people have to work with cancer. They do love me, I'm sure, they were just never going to raise a sickly child. I shudder to think of the consequences had I actually been one! Nevertheless, their method worked - I am quite scornful of mild maladies such as colds and flu. I must develop a raging fever before I take any personal symptoms seriously and even then, I will only take medicine if I feel I may not make it into work in one piece otherwise. I'm not a martyr, just very practical. And completely convinced that my body can fight 95% of anything I catch entirely on its own. So far I have not been wrong, and I have always gotten over my summer-winter sickness without the help of a flu vaccine.
So I haven't given this latest melodrama much thought, despite the fact that you can no longer cough or sniff on the tube without people glaring at you suspiciously. However, I decided to google the latest on swine flu, just for mozzie.
This is what I found:
According to the Department of Health, a pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus, which people have no immunity to, emerges and starts spreading as easily as normal influenza. Swine flu will not become a pandemic until this criteria is met.
Being a healthy and sturdy South African, I tend to ignore warnings about outbreaks of strange diseases. Mad cow disease? Whatever. I've been eating beef all my life, I wasn't going to stop just because people were getting all hysterical about batty bovines. Bird flu? Yes of course it might kill our feathered friends, but I'm about 50 times their size. I was quite sure I'd live.
This attitude might be a product of my parents' distinctly unsympathetic approach to childhood illness. You feel sick? Got a cough? Sore throat? You better be projectile vomiting from your too-inflamed-to-breathe oesophogus and coughing up blood before you stay home from school. Flu? Stop being a ninny and get out of bed, some people have to work with cancer. They do love me, I'm sure, they were just never going to raise a sickly child. I shudder to think of the consequences had I actually been one! Nevertheless, their method worked - I am quite scornful of mild maladies such as colds and flu. I must develop a raging fever before I take any personal symptoms seriously and even then, I will only take medicine if I feel I may not make it into work in one piece otherwise. I'm not a martyr, just very practical. And completely convinced that my body can fight 95% of anything I catch entirely on its own. So far I have not been wrong, and I have always gotten over my summer-winter sickness without the help of a flu vaccine.
So I haven't given this latest melodrama much thought, despite the fact that you can no longer cough or sniff on the tube without people glaring at you suspiciously. However, I decided to google the latest on swine flu, just for mozzie.
This is what I found:
According to the Department of Health, a pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus, which people have no immunity to, emerges and starts spreading as easily as normal influenza. Swine flu will not become a pandemic until this criteria is met.
The worst pandemic of the last century occurred over 1918 to 1919. Often referred to as "Spanish flu", it killed between 20 to 40 million people worldwide. (Hey?????)
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned the world is now in the grip of the fifth of six stages in the progression of a pandemic - which would be confirmed at phase six.
If pandemic flu does break out in the UK, the Department of Health gives the "reasonable worst-case scenario" as involving up to half the population falling ill.
The number of deaths could be anywhere between 50,000 and 750,000.
Perhaps, just maybe, I might take this one a little more seriously. Where's that vaccine?
3 comments:
So no pork spare ribs this weekend? :P
I'm not really worried. The odds are so little of getting it.
I think last time the swine flu reared its head in the US, 1 person died from the flu and 25 died from the vaccine...
I'm a bit like you when it comes to paying attention to these dire health warnings...
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