A super-flu could kill up to 1.9 million Americans, according to a draft of the government's plan to fight a worldwide epidemic. Officials are rewriting that plan to designate not just who cares for the sick but who will keep the country running amid the chaos, said an influenza specialist who is advising the government on those decisions.
Coincidentally, I watched "28 Days Later" on DVD last night. I found the movie stunning in the theater and would have found it considerably more so if it had featured the should-have-been alternate ending featured on the disc.
5 comments:
Fuck that noise. I'm 38. So if this fucker even gets to the U.S. shores I am heading off to the In-Laws backwoods farm for quarentine.
The flu is not like the plague, though. Remoteness (lack of physical contact with people) is actually very effective, but hard to put into practice.
Surgical face masks are worthless, except insofar as they keep you from touching your face/eyes/etc.
The best, most effective thing you can do to avoid catching any form of influenza or similar viral diseases is twofold:
1) Don't touch your face. You know those people who never seem to get sick no matter what? Studies show that these are also people who rarely touch their faces.
2) Wash your hands often, particularly after touching people or things people touch (money, furniture, keyboards, etc.)
If you do these two things, you've reduced your chances of catching something tremendously -- more than anything else you could possible do (including vaccinations).
Yes, it is possible to get the flu through droplets in the air -- but it's very unlikely unless somebody sneezes in your face, because the size of droplets that remain suspended long enough for you to breath them don't contain that much virus. Depending on the exact disease, of course -- some diseases require a higher dose than others.
Doctors don't wear surgical masks to protect doctors. They wear them to protect the patients in case of an errant sneeze, or if they spit when they talk, etc.
There are masks that can actually filter out germs, but those are pretty expensive and resemble painting respirators (again, depending on the germ -- but virii are really, really tiny).
Oh, I should add -- it's all about mucous membranes. The flu can infect you if you get a sufficient quantity of virus on a mucous membrane. It won't infect you just being on unbroken skin. So, even just breaking the habits of rubbing eyes, biting fingernails, and picking noses can go a very long way.
For those who wonder how I speak so confidently on this, here's my personal anecdote, with full acknowledgment that such anecdotes are scientifically meaningless. And also that I have time to kill at the moment. :)
I used to get the flu all the time. If it was going around, I'd catch it. This got better as I got older, but I always dreaded flu season. Then, as part of a job I had in a biological lab, I had to learn nitty-gritty details about things like how virii get transmitted. During that time, I came across two well-corroborated findings: people touch their faces all the time without knowing it, and well over 95% of all transmissions of the flu are hand-to-mucous membrane, usually through rubbing the eyes.
So, I started paying close attention to my face-touching habits, and started washing my hands more. I;m not anal abaout either of those things, but I'm careful about timing -- if I want to rub my eyes or pick my nose, I'm sure to wash my hands first, and I wash my hands a couple times a day just on principle. I'm now going on my fifth year of being flu-free. Your mileage may vary.
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