People die from flu all the time. The media is just scare mongering

It's not the country's job to protect anyone from a disease.

Wash your hands often.

Actually, s0lidgr0und, this is very true!

Dealing with 40+ patients a day myself, SICK patients at that, I have never gotten sick. I usually wash my hands after each and every patient, which really gets irritating since I'm washing my hands about 2 times per patient, so about 80+ times in 8-9 hours

I agree ;)

Failure to keep up a standard of hygiene can have many implications. Not only is there an increased risk of getting an infection or illness, but there are many social and psychological aspects that can be affected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrNJt73BG_8

Poor personal hygiene, in relation to preventing the spread of disease is paramount in preventing epidemic or even pandemic outbreaks. To engage in some very basic measures could help prevent many coughs and colds from being passed from person to person.

Sometimes this is all thats needed to prevent the spead of infections, Just remember next time you see a guy coughing all over the place or sneezing without putting a tissue or their hand up to their face. Sheer arrogance. :erm:

Swine Flu = biggest media beat up ever.

Anyone seriously scared about it is a gullible fool.

IMO. It's a tad over hyped. Have you noticed most of the people who have died from it had problems in the first place?

for example one had heart problems.. So that's to be expected anyway even if they got normal flu.

The lil girl, who had it, the way she described it, it sounded a lot like normal flu. So I think people are panicking to much.

Really... There is only so much a country can do. Now that they have released all the Tamiflu and made the H1N1 virus into an antibiotic resistant strain, we're in for a bumpy ride. I doubt it will be as virulent as originally thought but there are over 40,000 cases and 263 deaths in the United States attributed to this virus so far. Though that is about the same level as annual flu outbreaks. New York City probably sees more deaths than that every year from annual strains. We'll see how far it goes once it gets colder and people confine themselves inside at work, school and play.

I suspect there will be a shortage of Flu shots this fall. Get yours early.

I don't trust those flu shots TBH.

My grandma's brother, got the flu jab.. 2 weeks later he ended up with flu.

Very affective ;)

Let's hope that Tamiflu will still be effective in the fall when the flu season starts. There are already cases of a resistent variant. Also please note that Tamiflu is only effective (if at all) during the first 48 hours if being sick. You can not take it to prevent you get sick, you can only use it after you got sick, and within 48 hours, to mitigate the symptoms. Worst case scenario would be that by the time the flu season starts, most of those infected with the H1N1 will have a resistant variation and Tamiflu would be useless.

As of now there is no vacination against the H1N1 flu and a vacin is not expected until the end of this year.

PS A big difference between normal flu and the current H1N1 seems to be that where the normal flu infects mostly (or at least to such a level that doctor intervention is needed) are the elder and the weak. The H1N1 infected more "strong" people, ie. youth and younger healthy adults.

hah..that is usually what happens to most people. The flu shot is them giving you the live virus...

That is because that age of people usually don't go and get the flu shots unless they are in hospitals or schools. There is really no need for them to do so. So this 'stronger' flu hits them first (or more often) because they are less treated or don't think they need treatment, because they are young and 'strong' ;)