Sheesh...

[pandorablue]

Why is everybody freaking the fuck out about H1N1? Seriously. I mean, I am not running around trying to catch it, but people are seriously up in arms about something that still hasn't killed as many people as regular flu does every year. UNM has stopped testing kids that come in with flu symptoms for H1N1 after every test they ran came back positive.

I will admit that death rate among children is slightly higher with H1N1 than with regular flu, but I still wonder what other complications could be involved in that. I guess I just don't understand the ignorance of people with the *OMG, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!11!!!* Do they not read or watch the news? Oh yeah, that's right the news is covering up the government conspiracy to implant us all with microchips...





Yeah... MICROCHIPS!!!!

Comments

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

i'mnot thinking the microchip claim is very credible...

[pandora-blue.livejournal.com]

What freaks me out is that there are people that believe this. I just don't get it.

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

conspiracy theorists can find a reason to believe anything...

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine was telling me that the thing about H1N1 that alarms doctors is how many healthy people with no underlying conditions have died. Mostly the flu kills children, the elderly, and the sickly. H1N1 has been knocking out healthy teenagers (which is very rare for a flu).

Also, I think the incidence rate has been lower than expected, but the death toll has been as expected or higher -- which would suggest that the death rate is higher than expected, even though the actual numbers of deaths has been relatively low.

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

On the other hand -- some people are just not well informed about how vaccines work.

I think this is the question that I will ask next time someone starts ranting about how the government wants to kill them:

"Why? You won't pay taxes when you're dead."

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

i heard from a lady at the cdc this summer (it was the conference day on epidemiology) that the people most likely to die from H1N1 were obese teenage smokers. which is a weird subject group, but i guess people around in the seventies have already been exposed to something similar. and smoking is obvious.
i guess it can be more virulent than most... but i think it might be mutating out of that as it spreads.
i don't really know, too much. i just haven't heard about it spreading the kind of death and destruction like it did when it first emerged in mexico city (though i have a friend there whose daughter got sick, so maybe that overemphasized the original ferocity of it.)

[pandora-blue.livejournal.com]

And that all makes perfect sense. I guess my complaint is that people are over paranoid about it (not just the oddballs with the fliers like above). I got reamed on FB by a person in the health care field about posting that UNM isn't testing anymore. She is not someone I even *know*, nor does she live in NM. She tore into me because she has kids and how dare I say that it is running rampant through daycares and elementary schools. That would mean her kids are at risk. No sh**!

Maybe I am not the same type of parent. I expose my kid to germs (not on purpose all of the time). I don't feel that keeping him sequestered from them is good for his overall health in the long run. I am also not actively seeking for anyone I know to catch it, but gosh, you would think I was saying that I hope everyone catches the plague.