That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘aporkalypse’

It’s a Quote of the Day!

Health scares enable media-hungry doctors, public health officials and drugs companies to benefit by manipulating fright.

That was Guardian hack Simon Jenkins being totally unironic while bitching about how scares such as the current swine flu thing are normally propagated by people who have something to gain from it.

Yes, Simon, they are called “newspapers” and they gain because they make money selling more of their newspapers.

We are not currently at panic stations here at TFS, in fact we are lunching on mini pork pies as is the case on most Tuesdays. The reason we are not panicking is because any sort of pandemic is going to take a lot longer to develop and we have had plenty of time to make our preparations for Pigageddon should it arise.

So what do we know so far? Deaths in Mexico – check. Cases confirmed worldwide – check. Deaths outside Mexico – not yet. I say ‘not yet’ because it’s possible but the likelyhood is unknown; this does not mean that we can rule it out and it does not mean that deaths will definitely occur in fact it’s a pretty significant marker which will give us an idea of where this is all going. At the moment the media is on fire with ignorance because the smart people are sitting tight and watching the developments rather than speculating; this means that things like twitter get filled with amateur speculation which seems to be at either end of a pretty extreme scale.

On the one hand there have only been around 150 deaths, this is not a lot in the grand scheme of things but if they are in a tight area then it could be an indicator that the 150 deaths is a pretty high death rate for a small infected community, the absence of a greater number of deaths could be indicative of a slow incubation period for the bug. The incubation period is not currently know but the significance of it is pretty big. A long incubation period may indicate that the disease is widespread and we have an inevitable pandemic right under our noses. If we start seeing infection rates jump rapidly in the next week then this would seem to be the case.

As for the killer capabilities of the bug the cases that we know about outside of Mexico are being treated in hospitals or in the community by medical staff; this is great news for the people who have spotted a link between recent travel and the seasonal sniffles. The people we need to be mindful of though are those who may have gained an infection from someone else who travelled to Mexico. These people are unlikely to be showing symptoms now (based on a 2-5 day incubation period like human influenza) but may be going about their business spreading the bug as they go.

So the potential for a pandemic is still there, but we are not there yet. It’s like a lit fuse that may ignite a bomb or it may fizzle out and right now there is very little anyone can do to tell which way it will go; but what should you do? First of all the key is not to panic: if it’s going to happen then there is very little you can do about it so just chill out and take some basic precautions. Keep away from any large gatherings that you can avoid, ensure you have some basic supplies of food and water in the house and wash your hands with soap after contact with others. Other than that there is not a lot to do at this stage so don’t be alarmed by the media hype but also don’t buy into the cynicism of the stupid and ill prepared.