DOOM - Britain faces 100,000 swine flu cases a day

[Menelaus]

What makes it dangerous is it appears to be easily transmitted and humans have little or no immunity.

Now at present it is pretty mild, but if it mutates and the mortality rate goes up, we're looking at a lot of dead bodies.

The very young, elderly, those with underlying medical problems add up to a lot of people.

For the young, I'd imagine that breast-feeding will become an absolute requirement. None of this "it hurts, I want to feed by bottle" stuff.

For the old - sorry, not a hell of a lot we can do, you're going to slowly drown in your own lung secretions.

For the underlyingly ill - see above.

At least from a pensions perspective it solves the mortality problem!

/wanders off whistling "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life"

[d000hg]

Is it really doom-worthy when it's no more harmful than normal flu?

Do we get 100k people catching regular flu a day in the middle of summer?

[DimPrawn]

Do we get 100k people catching regular flu a day in the middle of summer?

Exactly. Everyone is going to get this. And if it combines with a nasty flu variant, we won't be worrying about house prices.

Well I will be, but that's beside the point.

[d000hg]

I don't go outside much since I work from home. Wonder if I can avoid it by staying in...

[Menelaus]

I don't go outside much since I work from home. Wonder if I can avoid it by staying in...

Only if you have no visitors.

Doomed!

[Cyberman]

It's a good thing. The more people that get this early version, then the more that will have immunity if the deadly variant arrives at winter-time. A few dead now is a risk worth taking to ensure fewer dead in the future, unless we do really want that cure for unemployment.

[PM-Junkie]

um....pardon my ignorance, but since when did people pay any credence to what a health secretary said??

Bird flu anyone?
CJD anyone??

Here's an interesting factoid for you to mull over. Tamiflu has a shelf life of 3 years. The world and his dog stocked up on tamiflu for the bird flu scare. That was three years ago so countries have had to restock by buying another few million doses of it to "cope" with piggy flu.

Funny ol' coincidence that, isn't it?

[ferret]

Evolution - H1N1 will eventually adapt to become tamiflu-resistant.

I think I read that it is already showing resistance to Tamiflu. Having three and half year old and year old daughters it is quite worrying...

[Menelaus]

I think I read that it is already showing resistance to Tamiflu. Having three and half year old and year old daughters it is quite worrying...

Indeed. I'm sorry to hear that, and I don't know the first thing about treatment protocols for swine flu, other than to take care when sneezing.

[RichardCranium]

Ha, ha! All the working contractors will get resistant 'flu and die, and us benched ones will get their gigs!




Did I say that out loud?