Normally, I take cold and flu season with a grain of salt. My son had the flu this year, he passed it on to me, and we both got over it. But this Swine Flu outbreak in Mexico has gotten me nervous.
Maybe it's because I read the book "Pandemic" last summer on vacation, or maybe it's just because I believe the terrorist when they threaten illness as a weapon of mass destruction, but this outbreak of Swine flu in Mexico concerns me.
When I first read about it a few days ago, it was a curious, "isn't this weird?" story about 2 kids dying of swine flu, nothing to worry about. Then, suddenly, WHAM- it was serious enough to shut down the school, libraries,sporting events, practically the whole town.
Here's some of what I've read so far:
"Alarmingly, the flu outbreak in Mexico is striking healthy young people -- a pattern that would be expected if a flu virus new to humans emerged.
"Because these cases are not happening in the very old or the very young, which happens with seasonal influenza, this is an unusual event and a cause for heightened concern," Hartl said in a CBC interview.(Hartl is a CDC spokesman)
Another disconcerting feature of the outbreak is that it's probably too late to contain it to limited geographical areas
Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic from viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals. This outbreak is particularly worrisome because deaths have happened in at least four different regions of Mexico, and because the victims have not been vulnerable infants and elderly.
Across this overcrowded capital of 20 million people, Mexicans are reacting with fatalism and confusion, anger and mounting fear at the idea that their city may be ground zero for a global epidemic of a new kind of flu — a strange mix of human, pig and bird viruses that has epidemiologists deeply concerned.
The most notorious flu pandemic, thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, also first struck otherwise healthy young adults"
Freaky, hmm?
Here's some articles that I read this morning:
Seeing how the illness had been tracked to parts of the US- I wonder how long it'll be until we have a death here- and will we really hear about it right away.
Am I nervous because I've read The Stand to many times- or am I right to have a niggle of nervousness? I suppose I'll run down to our local drugstore and grab a few mask, better safe than sorry, eh?
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