Guest 670- Registered: 23 Apr 2008
- Posts: 573
I have it upon very good authority that a person in Canterbury has been confirmed as having contracted Swine Flu. Apparently they had not long returned from Mexico. The virus certainly seems to be affecting all parts of the Country now although the number of people at the moment who have contracted it is still small.
A few years ago we were all going to be killed by Islamic terrorists. A few months ago our world was going to be crushed into small pieces by recession. This week, we're all going to die from a nasty new plague. I wouldn't be surprised if next week we had alien invaders blasting capital cities to bits.
I do find it increasingly difficult to take these news stories seriously. I don't wish to seem callous about people who become ill, but let's face it, a few people become ill with flu that has a scary sounding name and all of a sudden the news media have a bloody field day making us all quake in our boots. According to one source on TV this evening, the pig flu isn't as serious as the media would like us all to think it is, and the number of people catching it and dying from it is perfectly comparable to most other types of flu. It's just new that's all, and it has a strange name like some diabolical compound from a James Bond villain. Swine Flu. Ooh, scary!!! Pig disease. Yuck!
The news media gets way too excited about such stories and blows them so grotesquely out of proportion that they probably stop resembling the truth and start looking like B-movie plots. I have no doubt that swine flu is real, and is probably pretty nasty, but does it really warrant all this hype and over-dramatic nonsense? Of course it does - news is now a form of competitive entertainment rather than public information and it seems the only way to get us to watch is to put on a freak show!
Guest 651- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 5,673
Here, here, it is all ridiculous when they come out with suggestions like set up a network of 'flu buddies' and companies reviewing their disaster recovery plans !!!
A couple of years ago we were all going to go down with bird flu.... 1000s due every year of normal flu...
Been nice knowing you :)
Guest 650- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 542
A consideration is that infection with a 'flu can lead on to all kinds of nasties. That includes ME/CFS, with which some 250,000 people in this country are currently disabled, 25% permanently bed-bound.
Publicity is a fickle beast, and it's not what's important, or "news", but the angle of the story, what a good publicist can get into the media, and also, may I suggest, the simplicity of the story so that most people can easily understand it, marvel at it, and even identify with it.
That brings me back to ME/CFS. The thousands of people with it, who can merely live quietly on the sidelines of life, watching others live theirs, and for whom there is no cure, are hardly newsworthy. Yet I'd suggest it's tantamount to a national scandal that so little research is being done, because even now it still can be seen as all in the mind, and that the only "cures" offered for this severe and debilitating physical illness are strategies which can often exacerbate the illness, or management.
I'd agree; we seem over the top at the moment on the reporting of the swine 'flu. Nevertheless, 'flu, of whatever strain, should never be underestimated, and people do die. Maybe if this swine 'flu does sweep the country, we won't have the death rates, as currently in Mexico. But through it and others more people will be condemned to a living death. We won't hear much about them, though. They're not newsworthy.
Guest 657- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,037
If they don't report about it and prepare they will be slated for not doing just that and if they do, its frightening people or scaremongering.
I agree with Paul thousands die every year from normal flu.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
I have a friend in Canterbury who is married to a Mexican girl and is always backwards and forwards there. I thought this morning at 5am when I looked in it might have been him. Fortunately though he was at our breakfast meeting hail and hearty and has not been over there recently. He and his wife have concerns about her family though.
Guest 656- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 2,262
Briony called me last night after a long busy day going about her duties as a medical student with a catalogue of woe about swine flu. Firstly she received an email early morning at UCL warning her to avoid travelling on the underground which she was about to do as she had to get to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead where on arrival she then discovered that two of the people reported just recently with swine flu were being treated there. On her way back on the tube she read the London free paper which was headlined on the front page 'Thousands of people in London will die from Swine Flu' So there you have it.... an ordinary day but with a constant reminder of this current strain of flu.
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Well its nice to read that the press are doing they bit to calm the nation and not to cause panic...
THOUSANDS OF LONDONERS TO DIE FROM PIG FLU...
Very cheerful
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 650- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 542
Well, this raises an interesting question, in that what does one do, if one has symptoms of this 'flu, and has to be at work? We're advised to stay at home, but some firms have Draconian sickness policies, and you can end up dismissed.
This is compounded through policies that not only have a quota for the number of days you are permitted to be sick, but also count every day until return to work as a sick day. So, for example, if you were unfortunate enough to be unable to get to work on a Friday through illness, they'd count the Friday AND the Saturday and Sunday as sick days, and the Monday too, if it was a bank holiday, like this week. Three, or even four days notched up on your sickness record, yet it was only one day when you could have been at work and weren't.
So, will people who are infectious and shwoing initial symptoms still travel, and still go to work, spreading their germs around, for fear of losing their jobs? Or are firms reconsidering their policies, if this 'flu is as serious as is being suggested?
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
is this simular to the black death then.
