Gotta be done.....Swine Flu

What do you all think? Storm in a teacup, or cause to stock up on bottled water, dried food and enough toilet paper to see you through to the end?

Personally - I'm worried. I don't like the feeling of helplessness that I associate with not being able to protect my family. If it travels around - and it will - there's not much I can do to stop us catching it - how do you tell a toddler not to sneeze into the air?

And I hate having a runny nose....

Alec

Personally I'm not too worried, it seems to be pretty benign outside of Mexico in countries with decent health care.

hmm I am little concerned now you mention toilet paper, we have three rolls left and a grocery delivery due on Friday ... do you think we will be ok?

jx

ps sorry but I have had a glass of wine and not taking things seriously! oops!!! I will be more concerned if it becomes established in London as I am on the tube / trains 5 days a week. I think the media have scared us with SARS and bird flu so this is just one more scare at the moment I hope I am not wrong and I hope there are not the reported 120 million deaths

Is this the new name for Man Flu?

Fitting, I think....

That's OK, I know I am little ott about this sort of thing. I worry about big things happening like nuclear war, or a dirty bomb, or erm swine flu. We seriously keep a big bag of pasta, bottled water, dried food and a gas stove in the garage "just in case". I know, I know, none of that will do much good, but.....

*SIGH* - pity me....

I think that it is yet again media hysteria. so far the papers say there is less than 1500 cases and the media are already talking about a pandemic. It was only last year that they where talking about a possible pandemic of Bird Flu. Who knows whether or not swine flu will happen but if it does the NHS as usual will be caught with there trousers down. 2 cases have now been confirmed in ayrshire (scotland) which is not that far from me but I am still not worried about it.

The thing about the 'flu is that people die of it because a. they don't realise how sick they are and b. they often are suffering alone, or whole families have gone down and no one has been in touch with them, so they can't get to medical help. It's not actually the 'flu they die of either, but the pneumonia that it causes. One of the reasons that it has hit young fit people the hardest is that because they don't realise how sick they are, they carry on as normal (especially in Mexico where not going into work means you don't get paid), the normal day to day stress keeps them going and *bam* they collapse and, unfortunately, often die.

'Flu is easy to survive. You just have to know you've got it and put yourself to bed with the phone next to you!

And in this country, even without the tamiflu stockpile (which is more than sufficient) we have hospitals with people to look after you and saline drips and the like for anyone who does get too sick to cope alone. I had normal flu two years ago and I was VERY VERY unwell. My fever got so high i actually hallucinated at one point, but i stayed lying down, drank lots of water, had calpol regularly and slept a lot and i was fine. Unless this strain mutates horribly that's all that's really needed.

Ther was a doctor on the news and she sed that the mexicons have got it worse coz they don't wash and are staving and stuff.

I think its good for DH business!!
On a serious note, my sister is a district nurse and they have been preparing for a flu pandemic for YEARS, she has had to give all contact details including email addresses to be held on a central flu database. She has been advised where stockpiles of vacines will be, and what their plan of attack is.
As we live quite rurally I am not too worried, although having said that I do plan to go to the shops and stock the freezer (it had been running low anyway) and tin cupboard. We already grow lots of veg but the chickens may end up looking appertizing!!
My mother however (daily mail reader) is in abject Panic mode, one of our sisters is in London and she is freaking about her big time.

I think it's a storm in a teacup, as a pp said we have had similar scares with SARS and bird flu. If it is shown to spread quickly and we get lots of cases in the UK, then I will begin to worry, no point in wasting my time and my worry until then.

i dont really understand it that well but i am a bit scared.

LMAO @Marley...

Have to say i am not worried either, look back when we had mad cows disease etc etc..... I think generally the media make it worse, which then causes everyone to completely panic. Flu can kill at anytime whatever flu it is tbh and i try not to go near anyone if ill but sometimes it is a impossibilty

Bird flu wasn't a storm in a teacup! It was a very serious possibility, which some very clever people managed to control, and we should be grateful to them.

Swine flu may or may not be a disaster, but I'm not an epidemiologist and I doubt anyone else here is either - we're not qualified to say whether it *will* be dreadful or not. It *might* be, but probably not here.

Newspapers will either tell you it's an impending disaster or they'll tell you it's all hype, just like bird flu. In both instances they would be making uneducated, ill-informed and really rather reprehensible statements.

I wouldn't get blasee about it just yet, but I wouldn't panic either. As folk said - it's fairly mild here at least. You might get it, but you'll take good care of yourself and you'll be ok. It may well go through unprotected and/or uneducated populations like a hot knife through butter. Time will tell.

I'm very glad that there are proper scientists working very hard to understand 'swine flu' and protect us all from it, and I'm going to be reasonably cautious and yet totally calm.