WHO declared first flu pandemic in 41 years

What? Sales of Tamiflu dropped? Rumsfeld needs to harvest more money?

 

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so AIDS wasn't a pandemic?

 

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My bad. Forgot to put flu in title. Fixed.

 

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off topic, but was AIDs ever declared a pandemic?

anyways, what does WHO declaring it change? Prompting a gvmt seems kinda lame.

 

Hm... Obviously it was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_pandemic

Just raising the fear and increasing sales of drugs.

These are important parts of the text:

And...

 

Wait a tick. There specific definitions according which the WHO assess spread levels. As mentioned, it does not take the lethality into account.

Obviously this requirements have been fulfilled now. It is intended as a guideline to assess preparedness.

 

How does the swine flu compare with other forms of influenza in terms of spread and lethality? Is there really a crisis?

 

No. But it sure makes for great TV!

~String

 

so 144 deaths world wide makes it a pandemic?

 

One theory could be: About the time the Swine Flu "pandemic" was saturated all over the media the Mexican government also relaxed its drug laws. A convenient smokescreen for a more lethal pandemic.

 

No, the deaths (or severity of a given disease) are irrelevant for the declaration of a pandemic. Read my post again. It exclusively pertains to the spread. In other words a global spread appears likely by now. The important bit is that this particular strain is spreading rapidly, even more than the seasonal (and apparently more severe) strains. In its current form it appears to be of little danger to health itself, but possibly to health care in some poorer countries, if sufficient people get infected.

As mentioned, it has a larger spread than other strains (that is why it is declared pandemic, whereas seasonal flues are not), yet the lethality is lower apparently. On curiosity is, however that it has not yet been elucidated why the people actually died, as some of the victims were apparently young and healthy. Deaths due to complications are, of course easier to explain. So far there is no real crisis as most cases are mild and do not require hospitalization. It is the job of the WHO, however, to monitor spread and update on developments. It is, for instance possible that this strain will co-infect an individual who is already infected with a more lethal strain. A recombination of these could lead to, well, an unhealthy outcome. An early heads-up would be very important (or a declaration that the pandemic is over), though they usually do a post-monitoring for a while, just in case it flares up again.

 

Plazma your wrong on that, AIDs IS a pandemic BUT it was never RATED as a pandemic by the WHO's pandemic alert system. Thats because the system never existed when the AIDs pandemic started and there for it couldnt be rated.

 

James, plazma, orleander. Im wondering how each of you would be commenting if it DID follow the same patten as spanish flu and the WHO and goverments had said "oh its just a mild disease there for who cares"

As far as it being concidered a mild disease, Australia's CMO was interviewed a couple of days ago on the ABC and her comment was there have only been 1000 cases in australia. Therefore " There are not enough cases to establish morbity and mortality rates" , we need alot more cases to establish the epidemological data in order to determine if this is the same as, more mild than or worse than seasonal flu. "However its highly unlikly this will be more mild than regular seasonal flu"

 

I think the worry is because this Swine Flu is so contagious.

It's a great trial of the system really. I mean, it'd make the perfect practice run as it's not all that bad in terms of killing people.

 

michael the worry is that its a practice run for the same virus next year. That is the patten spanish flu followed, ie mild pandemic with low mortality rate 1917, massive pandemic, very high mortality rate especially outside the vulnerable 5 killing 50-100 million with 500 million infected.

Now for the naysayers rember that is a mortality rate of ONLY 20%. SARS for instance had a mortality rate of 50% even in countries like canda with high quality, freely avilable health care

 

What is the point of playing this kind of "what would you do if" game? Obviously they would be commenting differently if this particular flu was behaving differently. But it's not.

 

I think most of the reasonable experts out there are more concerned about it mutating and becoming a worse strain, than the previous hysteria created to drum up flu drug sales.

 

The lethality rate of this flue outside of Mexico has not proven to be any worse then the normal flu, so why should we worry?

 

Yes, the WHO declares a pandemic for the H1N1 Influenza Virus?

Asiatic (Russian) Flu 1889–1890 1 million

Spanish Flu 1918–1920 20 to 100 million

Asian Flu 1957–1958 1 to 1.5 million

Hong Kong Flu 1968–1969 0.75 to 1 million

CIDRAP >> Novel H1N1 Influenza (Swine Flu)
The world tally of confirmed novel H1N1 influenza cases grew to 27737 today, ... The death toll increased by 1, to 140, while the number of affected ...
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/index.html


What is wrong with this picture?

140 people dead across the world and we have a pandemic?

Never let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to manufacture one......