Swine Flu Info Blog

4 comments:

Melvar_1 said...

Im not 100% sure on what the mortality rate actually IS, but i do know that this disease only has the potential if EVERYONE keeps freaking out. Sure its bad, but flying to a different country when you can possibly HAVE the infection won't help nobody. A virus is successful if it can spread, influenza is great at this. New strain, and people go freaking out. As for only Mexicans dying, its mostly because some Mexicans don't go to the hospital until it is too late. I'm Hispanic, but the same goes with me. This virus is weird though.....

May 3, 2009 at 12:56 PM

Baby Sleep Positioners said...

The death rate is a little less than 15%, it really depends on your environment. Swine Flu kills by damaging the respiratory system, Mexico City has terrible pollution (Much worse than Beijing and New York) and the people there probably already have some respiratory illnesses before they caught it.

May 3, 2009 at 12:56 PM

lexi said...

There has been only one death in the U.S. due to this swine flu out of the current 118 cases that have beeen confirmed, and it was a mexican child of two years old, whose immune system wasn't developed enough to handel it; the swine flu developed into pneumonia, and that's what struck him.
The reason so many people in Mexico have died from it is because they lack the adequate health care, their immune systems are already low, and it originated there so its already stronger there. In Mexico there have been 12 deaths out of 260 cases.
The swine flu is so serious because the influenza is morphing/mutating between people, so there is no single cure.
It is also considered an epidemic because it is affecting 20, 30, and 40 year olds who are still young and healthy, and it is hitting them hard.

May 3, 2009 at 12:56 PM

grannyni said...

Tamiflu and Relenza are not always used for regular flu. They both have side effects and the use of them can cause a virus to become resistant (and some normal flu strains already are). There are two other drugs that are also used to treat normal influenza (but are not effective on swine flu) that also have side effects and are not effective with some strains due to resistance.
Because of this, the standard treatment for regular flu is no drugs at all in otherwise healthy people. The antiflu drugs are only used on regular flu in people who can develop complications, like the elderly, people with weak immune systems (chemotherapy patients, people with organ transplants, etc), and people with chronic breathing problems (asthma, emphysema, etc).
Swine flu follows an opposite pattern from this. It is the most dangerous to young, healthy people, who in normal flu wouldn't be treated with antiflu drugs. Everyone who contracts swine flu must be given Tamiflu or Relenza--but they didn't know this.
The first cases of swine flu in Mexico occurred in a rural area with substandard medical care. Doctors there were able to determine that it was a new strain of flu, but as new strains develop all the time they weren't particularly worried. It wasn't until people began to get sick and die in more urban areas that they realized they had a problem. Then, they had to figure out what the virus was--but the only labs that had the capability to do that were in the US and Canada. They also did not know exactly how the virus worked, so they continued to follow the standard flu treatment regime--not knowing what medications, if any, worked, and treating those who were in danger from normal flu. Many people got sick and died during this time. Eventually, the strain was identified and shown to respond to Tamiflu and Relenza. And doctors in Mexico realized that everyone must be treated with one of these due to the deaths of young people. But it took awhile to discover this. And people died in the meantime.
The poverty and stretches of rural ares in Mexico also plays a part. In a small farming village, the doctor may not be able to test flu strains at all in office. (In the US, many doctors are able to test for normal flu strains, and anything that doesn't type is possible swine flu.) The town may not have any antiflu medications at all, and they would need to be shipped. But Tamiflu or Relenza must be given within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms, and in many rural areas it would take longer than this for the doctor to test the strain and get the medication. If people develop complications in these areas, they may not be transported to the hospital in time. Even if they get there, the hospital may not have any mechanical ventilators--and if they do, they are not the newer, more effective ones that hospitals in the US have.
An accurate mortality rate for developed countries is not really possible yet. The US has had one death in about 100 cases, which would place the mortality rate closer to normal flu, but until more people get sick, we won't know. Many of the people who have gotten sick in the US are children, who are less susceptible to the complication of swine flu that kills people than young adults.

May 3, 2009 at 12:56 PM