Head for the hills! I just saw someone sneeze:



Newspapers just love the possibility of millions of dead - anything to hype up the figures.

LOL love the graphic. I keep thinking I'm living in racoon city all over again =)

---

Nobody is nobody. Everyone has something to offer

This is the new 20 Pesos bank note from Mexico:



I wish fastest recovery to everyone...!
And greetings/thanks to Jaime who sent me the pic.

---

Oh no! It's the Masked Peso. ;)

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I'm not sure when the pandemic scares started but for at least the past decade there has been a pandemic scare in the media every year.

I've decided that Big Pharma creates incredible profits for itself by promoting the pandemic scares.
Donald Rumsfeld is involved with the Tami Flu company and is no stranger to scare tactics. (see the Bush administration tactical playbook)

Living in fear has become so common for so many for so long, that they don't remember not living in fear.

Time for everyone to stop thinking like potential victims and ignore the fear mongers.
You can't go through life wrapped up in plastic like a weird aunt's sofa.
Even the healthy people are going to die someday.

Just watching the News now and the Government say this is heading rapidly towards Pandemic status. It is now in 10 Countries and human to human contact has been proved.

I see the US have had their first death from it (Texas) and the next County to me (Devon, UK) has it's first cases of Swine Flu which has closed down a school as pupils have become ill.

Still hoping to get across on Saturday, just hoping there aren't further travel restrictions now...

The company I work for are insisting that anyone returning from holiday in Mexico is not to come back to work for a further 10 days. I do wonder too if that will be extended beyond visits to Mexico.

---

actually big pharma makes almost nothing on flu and flu related product that they sell to governments. their profits lie in cancer drugs and other areas.

Where you'd pay $85 for a tamaflu dose the gov't pays $19. I hardly think theres an incentive for big pharm to scare up more work for little or no profit. Currently it takes about 6 months to create and distribute a flu vaccine. Also of note. Current population growth far exceeds the amount of Flu vaccine that all the PHarm companies can produce in a year. This is why the flu shot are encouraged for the very sick, immunocompromised, those having lung problems, the very young, very old, medical personnel and individual needed to maintain society(police, firemen and politicians(yeck!!)).

Normal reasonably health individuals are secondary and should take appropriate precautions to prevent exposure. A big precaution would be shopping at times when stores are not packed with people

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

A big precaution would be shopping at times when stores are not packed with people

I go for shopping quite often on Sundays, that´s the cheapest day of the week!

---

I keep thinking I'm living in racoon city all over again =)

Milla will be there to save you.

---

me@rescam.org

Head for the hills! I just saw someone sneeze:



Newspapers just love the possibility of millions of dead - anything to hype up the figures.

ring around the rosies
pocket full of posies
achu achu
we all fall down

---

Flu fight hits high gear

---

me@rescam.org

ring around the rosies
pocket full of posies
achu achu
we all fall down

That little ditty was about bubonic plague.

This is much more in the media-hype category.

Everyone please, keep this in mind: We (collectively, as a society) pay politicians, lawyers, religious leaders and journalists to lie to us.

Take all the news reports with a very large grain of salt because when it comes to scientific things (and ultimately, this is a scientific thing) the media is woefully ignorant.

---

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

I see the US have had their first death from it (Texas)

Actually, the child that died in Texas contracted the disease in Mexico City, then traveled to Texas. The child was a Mexican citizen.

---

Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

In a world of 6+ billion people, just how many people, do you think, would constitute a 'PANDEMIC'. That word is thrown around an awful lot. Mind you, I am aware of the global proximity when factoring in flight, making the world a much 'smaller' place than it was during the 1918 influenza outbreak.
Any thoughts or comments?

---

...
BETTER THE WORLD ~ PAY IT FORWARD
...

In a world of 6+ billion people, just how many people, do you think, would constitute a 'PANDEMIC'. That word is thrown around an awful lot.
Any thoughts or comments?

The thing to remember is this: the flu kills people. That is the way of it.

In January, one of my mother’s friends died of respiratory issues as a result of whatever flu/cold/virus that was going around then.

This is all and in it’s entirety, media madness. Literally thousands of people die every year from the flu. Sad? Yes. A reason to panic? No.

---

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

I see the US have had their first death from it (Texas)

Actually, the child that died in Texas contracted the disease in Mexico City, then traveled to Texas. The child was a Mexican citizen.

That's what CNN said, The child who died in Texas was visiting relatives in Texas and had lived in Mexico, So far No US Citizens have died yet from this Flu bug, There is a US Marine down in 29 Palms who is a confirmed case of the swine flu and there are 90 odd other suspected cases in the US today.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Oh, Dog, people. Please keep things in perspective.

A couple of years ago a single cow in Alberta was found to have Mad-Cow Disease. The panic, largely due to media-hype, was palatable. They were breathlessly reporting the possibility of thousands of luckless Canadians coming down with BSE.

Well, guess what, not one Canadian has BSE. And, most likely not one ever will.

Yes, there is a nasty flu going around. Yes, it is probably going to kill a lot of people. But not nearly as many as cancer or heart disease or car accidents will kill. Keep things in perspective, please.

Please always remember, the job of today’s news media is not to report accurate facts, it is to sell newspapers/TV airtime/online hits. Modern day journalists are in the business of selling corporate advertising. They are not in the business of providing factual information. Please remember that.

Scepticism, of all things, is good.

---

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed anywhere between 20 million and 100 million people - mostly healthy young adults. The worry is that another flu pandemic will kill a similar portion of the population. 50% of the world population got sick. Between 1% and 5% of the world population died.

The 1918 influenza killed more people in the 2 years it was active than the 4 years of bubonic plague. It also killed more people than WWI, possibly by a factor of 6.

BTW, bubonic plague is still endemic in some locations. If you actually catch that rabbit by running it down, you REALLY did not want to catch it.

---

BOINC WIKI

I'm with the skeptics on this one! It's the flu... and yes influenza kills people... primarily the very young, the very old and those already compromised by other medical conditions.

Andy the decision is yours, but personally I wouldn't cancel my travel plans. When you return home, you may want to avoid kissing babies, grandmothers and sick people for a while - at least until you are sure you haven't picked up any bugs.

I read in the paper today that about 4000 people die of influenza in California each year. Not sure why new flu strains make such splashy headlines.

Doesn't it seem like flu strains always look fairly lethal initially, simply because the people being tested and confirmed as infected in the "first wave" tend to be those who get sick enough to be hospitalized? I mean, for every person who hits the ER on death's door with the flu, there tend to be hundreds of the rest of us out there who are home feeling crappy, shivering under a blanket and drinking hot tea. Then 9 out of 10 people hospitalized with the new strain of influenza die and the papers scream stuff about the flu being 90% fatal. Those of us at home drinking our tea never have our Swine flu, Avian flu, SARs etc confirmed medically, we recover fully and our numbers don't go into the fatality statistics.

Yesterday I saw two people in masks! One person was in the waiting room in the hospital where I work, the other person was on BART (our public transit system here in the SF Bay Area). The funny thing was that both masks appeared entirely ineffective. One mask was a wrap around rectangle, fairly open around the perimeter. The other mask was a hardware store dust mask without a good seal. I am fashion-challenged enough without donning one of these silly things! I simply refuse to panic until confronted with more reliable flu information than appears to currently be "out there".

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed anywhere between 20 million and 100 million people - mostly healthy young adults. The worry is that another flu pandemic will kill a similar portion of the population. 50% of the world population got sick. Between 1% and 5% of the world population died.

The 1918 influenza killed more people in the 2 years it was active than the 4 years of bubonic plague. It also killed more people than WWI, possibly by a factor of 6.

BTW, bubonic plague is still endemic in some locations. If you actually catch that rabbit by running it down, you REALLY did not want to catch it.

Just made a screen shot of this post. Will post it again in 6 months (assuming the horrid Swine Flu hasn't killed me by then, of course.)

If this flu has killed off 1% of the present world population by then (60 000 000 people) I will gladly eat crow. If not, will you?

BTW. Bubonic plague is really not all that nasty: a mere 60% fatality rate. If you want nasty, try Ebola: close to 90% fatality.

I am not suggesting that we take this lightly, but the blind panic that I see will do more harm than good, IMHO.

---

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

The cartoon guy with a sandwich board reading THE SKY IS FALLING will eventually be vindicated when an asteroid hits the Earth.

When will that be?
Could be today, could be in 100,000 years.

Right now, the corporate media is that cartoon guy.

No one ever fears the cartoon guy but I'm viewing breathless television reports, hearing seriously tense radio reports and reading headline banners in newspapers with photos of frightened, mask-wearing people.

I choose to not live in fear and have no other comment on this yearly, and very predictable, pandemic scare.