Swine Flu Info Blog

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This isn't the first time the public has been warned about swine flu. On February 5, 1976, an Army recruit told his drill instructor at Fort Dix that he felt tired and weak but not sick enough to see military medics or skip a big training hike. Within 24 hours, 19-year-old Pvt. David was dead, killed by an influenza not seen since the plague of 1918, which took 500,000 American lives and 20 million worldwide.
Two weeks after the recruit's death, health officials disclosed to America that something called "swine flu" had killed Lewis and hospitalized four of his fellow soldiers at the Army base in Burlington County.
President Gerald Ford orders a nationwide vaccination program to prevent a swine-flu epidemic. Ford was acting on the advice of medical experts, who believed they were dealing with a virus potentially as deadly as the one that caused the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. Ford administration attempted to use the infection of soldiers at Fort Dix as a pretext for a mass vaccination of the entire country.
In the end, 40 million Americans were inoculated, and there was no epidemic. Later, a technically advanced examination of the virus revealed that it was nowhere near as deadly as the 1918 influenza virus. However, the swine flu pandemic itself never materialized and more people died from the swine flu vaccine and not from the swine flu.
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Within a few months after the massive campaign, claims totaling $1.3 billion had been filed by victims who had suffered paralysis from the vaccine. The vaccine was also blamed for 25 deaths. Several hundred people developed crippling Guillain-Barré Syndrome after they were injected with the swine flu vaccine. Even healthy 20-year-olds ended up as paraplegics.

July 21, 2009 at 10:01 PM

Homburg Molly said...

It would depend on where they are in the world.
I live in a state in the US where there are only two confirmed cases, about three hours from my location, and the panic seems to be minimal, if only because of how suppressed it is.
Other places, such as Mexico, are probably suffering more. If and when it hits a level six, some countries will fly into an unprecedented panic. Others will put on a strong face and brave it out. Some will have a little panic, but not much.
♥//♥
EDIT:
Actually, Lilly Lou, Harry is right. It'd be the same as what happened with the Black Plague. With no form of vaccine, we would have to take every available precaution, including the enactment of Marshall Law and burning the dead.
"Ring around the rosie,
a pocket full of posies,
ashes to ashes,
we all fall down."

July 22, 2009 at 5:01 AM

Harry said...

Worst case scenario:
It would continually get worse and worse. The government would shut down schools and public transit. They would also hand out masks to the healthy. Strict curfews would be enforced, and the president would enact marshall law in order to make sure people obeyed curfew. As people started to die, the government will burn their dead bodies in order to prevent the continued spread of the virus. Hospitals would be strictly quarantined. If people got panicked enough, riots could even start.
I don't think it will get bad enough for any of this to seriously happen, but it is possible.

July 22, 2009 at 5:23 AM

lilly lou said...

omg!!!! harry r u mad??? that is soooo over the top it will be fine people will get ill but im sure they will get it all under control before that happens some people jus like to scare people and its reli pathetic

July 22, 2009 at 10:17 AM

ice queen said...

People will be freaking out, the germ aphobes will lock themselves inside.

July 22, 2009 at 1:54 PM

sixfootf said...

the media would make it out of this world insane, like they are right now.

July 22, 2009 at 2:04 PM

Kelly M said...

Oh, it would be horrible.

July 22, 2009 at 2:49 PM