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I just read in a news article that 1800 people have died from the swine flu worldwide.
But how many people die worldwide from the regular flu.
So why isn't the regular flu considered a pandemic? Doesn't make sense why they would scare everyone everyday about this swine flu when it's only killed 1800 people.

6 comments:

You may be right said...

Yeah, when they pull out words like epidemic, and pandemic, makes things sound scary, but to answer your question, you need to know what the words mean.
An epidemic is an outbreak of disease that EXCEEDS the EXPECTED number of cases in a given time frame or area, in other words, more people get sick of a particular disease than is expected.
a pandemic is simply an epidemic that has gone global.
so, for the regular flu to be an epidemic (or pandemic) there would have to be more cases of it than expected. yeah, the regular flu is more dangerous than the swine flu, this swine flu is actually pretty mild, BUT while the regular flu kills more people than the swine flu, the reason it's not an "epidemic" or "pandemic" is because the number of cases of the regular flu have been what is expected in the given time frames and locations during the flu season.
epidemic and pandemic are just words, you could have a disease that kills NOBODY, but is declared epidemic/pandemic, because there are more cases than EXPECTED in a given time frame/location

raynesto said...

There are different types of flu's that have killed people.In Haiti in the early eighties,there was similar flu and it was known as swine fever,which killed 75 to nearly 80,000 people,and the Haitian government had to have all Haitian creole pigs killed along with an entire breed.Regular flu is not a major pandemic,because it's not as lethal as swine flu or swine fever,but it can still kill people,but regular flu is becoming very rare "killer disease" these days,or depending where you live or who has it.
There not trying to scare people,there trying to warn people that there
are people in various countries world wide that have this annoying disease.I say it's annoying because it is non-stop. Just imagine if the board of health did not inform the government of this wide spread disease that they have tested from from people and animals,people like me and you can contract it from anyone,anywhere,at anytime and would not even notice it until symptoms start to kick in,then go to the doctor and have the doctor tell you that you have contracted swine flu.
Did you know regular flu has a cure?Yes,yes,yes,but the board of health won't give that information,because if they do that,pharmaceutical would run out of business,and there treatments will no longer be needed.
If anything for all we know, the government probably spread these
diseases in an effort to slow down the population of the world to better control the six billion people that are living on this planet or maybe not.

littleel… said...

Technically it is the pandemic.
The flu is a collection of many different virus of which swine flu is one. So the flu is a pandemic but the swine flu is the newest strain. Influenza A(H1N1) virus is a subtype of human Influenza virus A.
Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pa…

sarah said...

First off, pandemic doesn't mean deathrate, it only means widespread. Secondly, what regular flu? There are hundreds if not thousands of regular flus which makes them rather tricksy to quantify.

B said...

because. they haven't developed a complete vaccine for the swine flu.

raynesto… said...

LMAO too funny I asked myself this same question a couple months back and did some research, this is what I found....
In the US an estimated 36,000 people die from the flu each year! But majority of those deaths aren't directly from the flu....it's actually death from complications from the flu....such as poor immune systems, senior citizens, very young children. These are people who have poor immune systems and the flue causes respitory problems that cause death.
The swine flu is different, it is the same strand as the spanish flu (which actualy started in Ft. Riley, KS not Spain). Anyway with the Swine Flu, the normal people who are high risk with the regular flu are now low risk, and those who are normally low risk are now at a high risk....
The reason?
Well normal flu attacks the body and if you have a good imune system, you're body kicks it's butt and you get through it...
with the swine flu, it actually feeds off you're immune system....so the better your immune system the worse the swine flu gets....
Where if you have a poor immune system the swine flu can't flourish and will eventually get out of your body.
So people who are normally high risk with normal flu are people 60 years or old or children 5 years and younger....a very small number of the population...
Where with swine flu the people high risk now are 6-59 years old....A HUGE number of people at risk now and a bigger possiblity of people dying!
With the Spanish Flu it started just like the Swine Flu....it made a presence early in the year and people got sick and died....then dueing the off flu season...when the flu was low risk....people were still getting the SPanish Flu...but still the numbers were low....
Well when the next flu season came...the Spanish flu had mutated over the summer (off flu) season....and when the next flu season came around 50 million people died!
The strand of the Spanish flu was: H1N1
The strand of the Swine flu is: H1N1
See why they are taking it seriously?
History is repeating itself...same strand, same circumstances...
Back then they didn't take it seriously and 50 million people died...
This time they are trying to prevent that....

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