Community Comment

Swine flu hysteria…

Posted by Dave

May 1, 2009 2:42 p.m. • 13 comments

Good afternoon, Netizens…

This time of year, Cancun, Mexico is typically bustling with touristas. Compare that mental image to this picture shot yesterday.

Is this hysteria we see unfolding before the National News Media? What about the people in Mexico who have died of Swine Flu Virus? Are more people here in the United States going to die of Swine Flu? There are a lot more questions and even a tinge of hysteria in the News Media about Swine Flu that perhaps do not apply to health care in the United States.

Adela María Gutiérrez fell ill in the beginning of April with what she thought was a bad cold. She tried aspirin, antibiotics, bed rest and moist towels, but nothing brought down her soaring fever, reduced her aches and pains, or boosted her energy level.

It would be more than a week before Mrs. Gutiérrez, a mother of daughters ages 10, 17 and 20, went to Oaxaca’s General Hospital, where she arrived listless and barely able to breathe, her extremities blue from a lack of oxygen. Thus, because she waited to get medical assistance, she became the first victim of Swine Flu (H1N1) to die. The mindset in Mexico seems to be, according to various medical sources, that you wait until you have tried everything else before you go see the doctor. That, rather than hysteria, may be why people are dying of the latest variant of Type A flu.

Furthermore, Mexico’s public health budget is approximately 3% of their gross domestic product — within the range of spending by other major Latin American economies, but well below the rate in developed countries such as the United States. Mexico has only about half as many hospital beds per capita than the United States. Hospital overcrowding in Mexico is common everywhere you look and sometimes medical help is hard to get.

In an acknowledgment that Mexicans frequently act as their own doctors, the government’s announcements, played repeatedly on the radio, advise people not to self-medicate and instead to seek out medical attention.

There is a lot of confusion about H1N1 flu virus, but several facts stand out rather clear: disease forecasting — like weather forecasting — is more of a guide to what might happen rather than a certain prediction of what will happen. Of course we remember how people ignored the hurricane warnings that preceded Katrina, don’t we?

Heed the warnings, but be shy about accepting hysteria. (Portions New York Times)

Dave

13 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

JeanieSpokane on May 01 at 3:17 p.m.
Very good article, Dave. And I don’t think Americans are any less self-medicating. We all do it. We get the sniffles or achy feeling and we just bear up, take Tylenol or aspirin, drink orange juice, and nest. We have all said to ourselves, why go to a doctor when he’s only going to say, “You have a cold. Go home, take two aspirin, go to bed, and call me in the morning.” I sure don’t want to pay my $35 co-pay for someone to tell me what I already know. But in this case, if I get the sniffles and achy all over feeling - will I be paranoid if I actually go to a doctor; or will I ignore and persevere and not wake up in the morning?
mhibbs on May 01 at 5:34 p.m.
I don’t know about you folks, but I’m heading for Lithuania. I’ll drop a note from there.
spokelooneh on May 02 at 12:20 a.m.
Ummmmm, didn’t you forget something there Dave?

That’s word for word from today’s NYT article…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/health/01oaxaca.html?ref=global-home
Dave Laird on May 02 at 6:27 a.m.
Good morning Spokelooneh…

Actually, not 100% but close enough I should have attributed it, yes. I’ll go back and fix it. Sorry for the oversight.

Dave
ChefGus/ John Olsen on May 02 at 8:16 a.m.
Well i’ll jump in here… i read the article supplied in the Times.. and the Key here that the woman went to a Mexican Drug store and bought some ANTIBIOTICS.. which should be used to treat Bacterial Infections… they do NOT treat Viral infections… and what occurred then was that ALL of her normal Bacteria in her system were killed off… so the Balance between the B ‘s and the V’s was tipped highly in favor of the Viral infection.. the homeostasis in our system ( our immune system) is largely the balance that she so seriously disrupted.. there is no Medicine other than the questionable Tamiflu (sp) to “treat” a Viral Flu…

So the bottom line here is that her self medication signed her death warrant.

Baby boomers are the biggest pain in the ass for Physicians… because they think they know how to treat illness.. and demand antibiotics for themselves or their children for minor viral exanthem and we feed antibiotics to our entire animal protein food chain… poultry/pork/fish along with beef are putting unneeded and from a medical view unwanted stuff in carnivores every day that harm us in untold ways.

The flu (this new strain) is only more dangerous than prior strains because of it’s newness… the fact that it came from an american (Smithfield farms) pork factory in mexico points to the Antibiotics in the pigs systems as the reason the Virus had a happy home..

The woman participated in her own demise, and the hysteria around this is a remnant of the Bush Years of driving fear into our hearts over any and all supposed “scares”… a second illness we must get some therapy about. Dr John
spokelooneh on May 02 at 2:31 p.m.
John, I noticed the Smithfield’s farm thing early on, however:

“Mexico’s top government epidemiologist said Wednesday that it is “highly improbable” that a farm in the Mexican state of Veracruz operated by Smithfield Foods Inc. is responsible for the nation’s swine-flu outbreak.

Miguel Ángel Lezana, the government’s chief epidemiologist, said in an interview that pigs at the farm are from North America, while the genetic material in the virus is from Europe and Asia.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124105320874371313.html

Course it’s the WSJ, which since Murdock took over, their reporting has gone downhill a bit.

Not sure we’ll ever know for sure on this.
garfnagn on May 02 at 8:40 p.m.
If we lived in afair and just world we wouldhave interspecies translation headphone wecould wear and thenwe could interview the pigs in Mexico andbe all like “hey Senor Piggy, did you start this Swine Flu thing up? Is it your fault that cable tv news casters are all feverish and blathering about a flu that currently sounds less severe than a bad cold or explosiv diarrhea! and Senor piggy, if you started this what would you like to tell america who anxiously awaits more bacon and pork chops from huge swinelots owned by fat American business mens?”

And the pig would be like “hey, man, dont blame me because we got it from men who are lonely and without women and when they make crazy hot man-pig love to us and kiss us while coffing what do you expect? We don’t like beingblamed! Call it “Man Pervert Flu” why don’t yhou?”

And theteevee newscasters wouldsay “and there you have it, America, pigs are blaming mankind, specifically man pig lovers, for this pandemic causing dozens of elementar schools to close ina few states, and now let’s go to Connie with weather for the greater Tri-State area”

Or like the man-pig romeos say “once you’ve had swine, nothin else is as fine”

We willalways have these viruses as long as interspecies marriage is banned in America.