Mocksoup Graves

Super high in antioxidants. Not sure how the everclear would help much of anything,though.

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Beebo Brink

everclear will kill anything.

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Jesse Barnett

including brain cells and inhibitions

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jeaniesing

I think H1N1 does deserve national emergency status.... looked at from a microcosm point of view, my son and I fell to it last weekend.... when I called the school where I teach, Monday, they had 30 kids absent compared to our usualy 5-10.... by Friday it was 37% of the student body (school closings are mandated at 40%)

A school can operate without its students... doesn't do a whole lotta good if you have no one to teach, but it can operate.... what if your business had 30-50% out... or the business down the road... or the government...? This particular flu's ability to spread and then keep its HEALTHY victims down for 5-10 days... well... without some extra control methods whoe cities/states/industries could grind to a forced halt

one of the TX hospitals developed a system for drive-through diagnoses where the car acts as a semi quarantine area as it proceeds through tents... prior to the state of emergency most hospitals could not put the system into action because of regulations about silly things like "distance from emergency room doors".... since emergency has been declared, scared moms (like me) who have sick kids can escape taking their babies into rooms full of potentially sicker folks just to be sure...

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Seasoned

Even large corporate businesses have "special" procedures for the H1N1. Not sure what it is but if you have flu like symptoms or are diagnosed with H1N1 you must tell your manager, who then notifies HR... What happens from there who knows

Jesse Barnett

On a serious note.

To think that doctors are not scared of the H1N1 virus is bullshit, they are sacred shitless. It has been decades since a serious flu and people have short memories, doctors and researchers do not. And everyone is aware that changes in travel make the matter much worse.

The last "bad" flu we had was the Hong Kong flu of 1968-1969 which was a category 2 pandemic and killed 1 million people worldwide. It struck our household when I was a child. I only really remember a couple of things from then, I have never, ever been so sick in my life and the "smell" will haunt me for the rest of my life. Four children and two adults sick and the last thing Dad did before he succumbed to it was put 5 gallon buckets beside our beds for the vomiting. It's not just a "flu" anymore when it is so bad that even a Mom or a Dad can not get out of thier own sick beds to care for their children. Evidently one of them did make a phone call though when it got that bad because I remember 3 aunts arriving in makeshift surgical masks to empty the buckets, clean us up and care for all of us. Imagine how sick a grown man has to be to allow 3 of his sisters to bathe him? This is another trait shared by the pandemic flus. Normal flus kill the old and young, those with weakened immune systems. The really bad flus kill the healthy, it is the immune response to the virus that actually kills in these cases and hence it is healthy adults that die and suffer the worst, while those with compromised immune systems are spared.

Viruses evolve over time. The 1918 Spanish Influenza hit with a mild splash but by the next year killed 50-100 million people worldwide and 1/3 of the population of the earth was infected. Doctors have been keeping an eye out for flus since then and the H1N1 virus shares specific genetic traits which make it POTENTIALLY as deadly. It remains to be seen whether it will make the final mutation necessary to once again wipe 3% of the world's population off of the face of the earth. Even if it does not, this is not scare mongering, it is an acknowledgment of how serious a threat this COULD end up being. To not make preparations would be criminal.

Beebo Brink

My partner and I have been debating whether or not to pass out Halloween candy this year because of the flu in our area.

1) Will anyone be taking their kids out in this season? Practically speaking, I don't want to end up with hundreds of snack items (we pass out fruit-based treats) if no one shows up.

2) Do we want to create a magnet for flocks of kids to gather and pass germs to each other?

3) Do WE want to be exposed to their germs?

We're still waffling on the answer.

Cindy Claveau

As much as I love having little ones come to the door, the trend even before this flu scare has been for more parents to take their kids to relatives' homes or to organized school & church parties. People just don't feel as safe as they used to, flu or not.

So this year I'm shutting my doors and turning off my porch light. My nieces and nephews have already been sent some cash in halloween cards - who needs candy when you can score folding stuff?

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Cindy Claveau

Fixed

Arilynn

My nephew most likely has the H1N1 flu, although he hasn't been tested. All 5 of the boys he knows in the neighborhood have the same thing, as does his father and several other parents. His school sent notice that it may have to close temporarily as more than a third of students and nearly the same amount of staff are out (I'm not sure what the mandated limit is before the school shuts down). His step-mother's office shut down on Friday because too many people were out sick or came in to work sick. After getting pneumonia last year, I'm trying to stay away from all of them. I wish my doctor's office had the H1N1 vax available

MoxZ Mokeev

I'm still debating whether we'll take the vaccine if it becomes available. There are some very questionable ingredients in it, and for me that's not nearly as scary as it is for Robs who is still making a remarkable recovery from his brain injury. I've read the word nuero blah blah too many times and I'm seriously concerned about fucking up what's been fixing up nicely for him.

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Richie Waves

We've been told to stay away from the doctors unless we have other conditions that could be exasperated by the virus...

My dad had a triple bypass two years ago and he got but never bothered to go to the Doctors.. he just lay around annoying my mum for two weeks..

I've had nights where I seriously feel the chills and a headache and do be full sure I'm going to wake up in a crunched up heap of Fluvine Bones and yet the next day am fine..


I'm not at all worried about this and I think declaring a national emergency is ridiculous and irresponsible.

you have to be very careful what you say when half of your country are republicans! the poor fools must be duct taping their windows up by now

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Arilynn

I think declaring this a national emergency was a purely procedural move to give health departments more authority and flexibility to deal with potential problems to provide hospitals with additional options without sacrificing their reimbursement.

Gigs

And you wonder why the more paranoid republicans (and democrats) get scared any time a bill comes up that gives broad sweeping power during a "national emergency"?

If we are going to go around and declare "procedural emergencies" all the time, the whole thing kind of loses its meaning, and people are right to be a little paranoid about emergency powers.

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"It is the paramount duty of governments and of politicians to secure the wellbeing of the community under the case in the present, and not to run risks overmuch for the future" - JM Keynes

Arilynn

All governmental declarations of emergency are essentially procedural. They are done to trigger extraordinary powers. For the H1N1 situation, a few hospitals had already created tents to evaluate potential flu suffers as they lacked proper space to do so inside without exposing more vulnerable patients to the disease. Unfortunately, this threatened their reimbursement, given the restrictions on off-site treatment. The declaration of emergency helps address this, among other things.

And while the declaration was procedural, the emergency is not. Health care systems are being stretched thin, and they needed assistance as the flu season is just beginning.

As for people's paranoia, from what I have seen people will become raving paranoids over nothing, such as being born in Hawaii and having a Kenyan father. I don't think government should tie the hands of health departments and hospitals to assuage the fears of people with more delusions than sense.

Gigs

What does that even mean? Is there a real emergency or was it procedural? Make up your mind.

Arilynn

Read it again. I disagreed with Richie that the declaration was irresponsible and ridiculous. There are real reasons for doing so, based on what some hospitals are dealing with now and what may happen in the future. But a declaration of emergency doesn't and shouldn't have to mean that the nation is facing imminent doom, which seems to be some people's expectation. It is a procedural move to give extra authority and flexibility to authorities all down the chain of command. The conditions for a national health emergency exist; the emergency facing hospitals is real. The declaration was procedural.

Asher Bertrand

Declaring it an emergency is a procedural step that allows health care providers to do things they couldn't do in other times. The disease itself is becoming widespread enough that the declaring it an emergency became an option. What are you confused about?

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Gigs

So the emergency is that people are freaking out over nothing?

So far there's been about 1000 deaths from swine flu. Other seasonal flu strains have killed 17,000 people so far this year, a typical number.

What's next, a color coded flu alert chart?

Jesse Barnett

Jesus H Christ!

Declaring it an emergency has nothing to do with the public or it's fucking reaction.

The virus is not overly deadly at this point and there is no need to panic. There is never a need to panic.

An emergency was declared to free up and mobilize, local, state and national assets to address what is a much larger then normal strain on the public health system. A strain that is growing exponentially the last couple of weeks.

Gigs

So everyone admits that there isn't actually an emergency?

Asher Bertrand

Who's panicking? Who's hysterical here? There's only one person on this thread who sounds like he's on the verge of a freak out.

Gigs

If there is extra strain on the health system, it's not because of actual flu patients, it's because of normal people freaking out and going to the hospital when they would have stayed home other years.

This declaration doesn't help that, it only makes it worse.

Arilynn

No. Prior to the declaration of an emergency, hospitals were already facing problems with reimbursement and authorization for off-site care for the many H1N1 sufferers seeking treatment. This and other issues warranted the declaration of an emergency, which gave hospitals and public health officials more leeway.

Or are you defining "emergency" in a different manner?

Asher Bertrand

If there's a strain, it's because fewer people have immunity to the new strain of virus. Your generally healthy person is more likely to fall ill to H1N1 than to other flu strains to which he or she already has some immunity. More people are expected to become sick. Percentage wise, this new flu will cause serious problems with about the same percentage of ill people as any other flu, or even slightly less. But with more people getting sick in the first place, that means a good chance that, by raw numbers, more people will have serious complications than in other years. Preparing for that likelihood is a bad thing because ... ?