Swine Flu

[orichalcum]

For folks who haven't been paying attention to the news lately:

There's a reasonable chance that the swine flu is going to turn into a global pandemic. For most people, it just results in mild flu symptoms. In Mexico, however, there has been so far a 6% fatality rate, entirely among young, healthy adults (which is not normal for the flu). If you're having flu symptoms and having any respiratory distress, going to the hospital and getting things checked out is not the world's worst idea.

We are planning on picking up a few emergency supplies and, if we can find them, some surgical masks later today, in case there's a "no congregating in public places" warning that goes out. I don't think this is time to push the panic button, but it may be time to press the caution button.

CP and I, fyi, have had 2nd-degree contact with a flu victim (the same archaeologist that President Obama met directly, oddly enough), but the point of contact was long enough ago that we would have already come down with symptoms were there any danger. (There's a 2-5 day incubation period; the disease appears to be airborne and highly infectious. We had lunch with my cousin 6 days ago, who 8 days before that had been at a conference with that archaeologist.)

Comments

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

I don't know. You have extra reason to be cautious, but for my part I'm a bit tired of the fearmongering in which the media engages. I will never forget the time when I was in high school and my parents reacted to one of these bulletins by buying huge amounts of stable foodstuffs. All they got for their troubles was the worst outbreak of meal worms I have ever seen or heard of in my life. No one has died in the US.

Normal caution is good caution all the time, but I'm not locking myself in the house over this.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is time to lock yourself in the house. But the problem with pandemics is that by the time it is, it may be later than ideal to buy the foodstuffs (which should be bought for the week rather than year sort of quantities.)