Why are people afraid of the H1N1(swine flu)? Thousands and thousands of people die in a america from the regular flu but no one freaks out about that. Is it because we have decided that those are acceptable losses?

People are probably afraid because it's a pandemic.
Well, the chances of death for a person who gets H1N1 is about 1 in 3000, and that leaves the expected death toll for the US alone around 100,000, and the death toll for the whole world will probably remain in the hundreds of thousands. So, we're getting off lightly as pandemics go. But, it's important to know that just because there are not hundreds of millions of people dead doesn't mean there is no danger.

Comments

1 in 3000 of the people that get the flu bad enough to go to the doctor and be tested - with an unreliable test that has a BROAD percentage of false positives.
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by Lady Alathia of Vulcan on November 5th, 2009
I don't think the people who have died already (I don't know exactly how many, last I checked it was 1,100) care about the odds either. I think, however, if they could, they would back me up in saying that danger does exist.
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by Talimze on November 5th, 2009
Chewing on ballpoint pens is dangerous, too. 100 people die every year.
Doesn't mean we should cause widespread panic and hold ballpoint pen burnings.
Also - I'd wonder if many of the people who have died of "swine flu" have had their cause of death somewhat STRETCHED to add the flu, when it was never really confirmed.
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by Lady Alathia of Vulcan on November 5th, 2009
I'm not advocating widespread panic, I just think that the danger should be recognized. As soon as we start pretending that nothing could possibly go wrong, that's when we've spelled our own doom, and we'll deserve it.
And if you want to play conspiracy theory, that's fine. I'm not going to waste my time with it though.
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by Talimze on November 5th, 2009
Well, when the panic is causing pregnant women and children to get injected with potentially dangerous chemicals that have not been tested for safety or even effectiveness, there's a problem.
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by Lady Alathia of Vulcan on November 5th, 2009
Nothing I said has anything to do with panic. At the very least, I think people should find the mean between "we're all going to die" and "we'll all be fine."
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by Talimze on November 5th, 2009
100,000? is that assuming everyone in the US will get the swine flu? is it that contagious. yet no one in the us has died from it yet... is that cause no one has contracted the disease in the US?
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by The Un-named on November 5th, 2009
That's assuming that 1 in 3 people in the US get the disease, and yes, it is that contagious. Over 300 people in the US have died from it already.
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by Talimze on November 5th, 2009
hmm everything i looked up said no one has conclusively did from it in the US. maybe i am reading old stats. if we can't stop the common flu what makes a more likely to stop this one?
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by The Un-named on November 5th, 2009
We can't really stop it, but we can try to keep deaths to a minimum by keeping people educated about it. However, many people refuse to be educated, and are stuck on one of the two extremes.
If anything we should take this as a chance to practice. After all, if H5N1 reaches the phase that H1N1 has, it's likely that 600 million people will die from it worldwide. Best to get in that practice now while things are still easy. Just in case.
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by Talimze on November 5th, 2009
Many people born before 1968 are already immune from H1N1. You're right, Talimze, that the H5N1 is potentially much more dangerous if it makes the mutation "jump" to human/human transmission. Like 1918.
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by Anonymous on November 5th, 2009