There are now 466 cases of swine flu in ILLINOIS do you think the flu is spreading slowly or faster than usual?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090511/hl_鈥?/a>There are now 466 cases of swine flu in ILLINOIS do you think the flu is spreading slowly or faster than usual?
Consider that those are only people who have gone to the doctor and been tested for the new flu strain.





Hundreds, maybe even thousands more just in Illinois, have been exposed to it and either fought it off or became ill and recovered without ever seeing a doctor. I don't go to the doctor when I get the flu. I stay at home, drink lots of liquids, take OTC meds to feel better and wait the two or three days it takes to get better. I generally don't get it, but did last year for the first time in about a decade, so I just stayed at home and rested. Many people do the same thing and therefore have never been tested for the strain.





Right before the news broke (which was not immediately when the flu started, by the way, it had been cooking for a little while before the public in general ever heard of it) about a quarter to a third of the kids in my child's grade level at her middle school were sick. They weren't all sick at the exact same time, rather it sort of cycled through them. Many of them had the flu, but worse than usual. And many felt poorly for a week or two afterward, which is a bit longer than usual. It seemed to hang on longer and drag them down a bit more. My daughter missed 4 days of school over it, and I was angry at the time because I had a hard time believing that she felt so bad without any clear symptoms beyond the first couple of days.





I live in Illinois, which is the state with the most confirmed cases right now. Who's to say if those kids hadn't been tested they wouldn't have found some cases then?





Old strains of the flu kill people every year, something along the lines of about 36,000 people in the US. Right now, this flu shouldn't alarm anyone. If it mutates, then there may be cause for worry. But even then, scientists have said it doesn't have the same kind of markers that the flu virus known as the Spanish Flu that killed 40 million people in the early 20th century did. They think it's unlikely that this particular flu virus could come back and cause that kind of damage. I'm sure when they find a virus that does have those potentially devastating characteristics, they will instill panic in the public even more than they have this time.





To answer your specific question, I think it's spreading at about the same rate as regular flu. Clearly not everyone who has been exposed to it has become ill, just like the regular flu. And so far in the US, the only deaths were people who had underlying health conditions. But more people are probably going and being tested when they have flu-like symptoms out of sheer fear than ever do when they get the flu and there is no one using the word ';pandemic'; on television. That escalates the numbers. If no one was talking about this, there would be fewer confirmed cases of any flu because fewer would go to the doctor and end up taking tests.





So it seems that while the media have been right to let us know there's a new virus and what that could potentially mean, they've also managed to freak out a lot of people by using the words ';pandemic'; and even mentioning things like the Spanish Flu and things like SARS the very DAY the news broke about this one.





Because you have the WHO escalating the pandemic ';level'; higher than ever before (remember that the WHO didn't even always have that system, so it's not like we're dealing with the biggest threat ever, just the biggest threat lately) lots of people started imagining worse case scenarios. It's harder to find, but there are a lot of experts out there telling people that this is really not nearly the big deal other outlets are making it out to be.





Yes, it's possible that it could mutate and come back in the fall as a real killer. But that's true of ANY VIRUS. The experts like to point out that this one doesn't have the virulence markers of the 1918 strain that killed millions, and in the next breath hint that it could still happen. They may just be hedging their bets on the chance that it does get worse so they don't look narrow-minded in hindsight.





The good news is that today that slight change is acknowledged and a vaccine as well as medication to help those who have been infected are already being developed. That didn't happen in 1918.There are now 466 cases of swine flu in ILLINOIS do you think the flu is spreading slowly or faster than usual?
i think swine flu has been blown out of all proportion and is not that much of a threat, there is more chance of you dying in a car crash!
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