Gawker 
Enter your username and password.
New York, 10:48 PM
Wed Dec 2
51 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip Your Editors:
Tipline: 646-214-8138
Editor-in-Chief:
Gabriel Snyder |
West Coast Editor:
Richard Rushfield |
Contributing Editors:
Valleywag:
Ryan Tate |
Media:
Hamilton Nolan |
Politics:
Alex Pareene |
Investigations:
John Cook |
Entertainment:
Brian Moylan |
Nights:
Adrian Chen |
Azaria Jagger |
Ravi Somaiya |
Weekends:
Foster Kamer |
Video Editor:
Richard Blakeley |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
04/27/09
04/27/09
Media: OMG WOLF!!!
Public:Oh, you. Always with the "wolf".
05/08/09
04/27/09
Famous 1918 flu!
04/27/09
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
Momo, is that you?!
04/27/09
04/27/09
That sounds a lot dirtier than I thought it would.
04/27/09
Well, yeah, except those aren't comparable time periods. You may as well say polio has killed more people than swine flu. That's technically true, but kind of meaningless. Quick, everybody get to work on a polio vaccine!
We're talking about 103 deaths basically in the last week. I'm pretty sure that's more people than have died in the drug wars in that same time period. Whether it's more than have died of any single cause during that time I'm not sure (probably not), but it's still a lot, and it's expected to grow.
I did find all of your research pretty interesting and I do agree that the fear is kind of overblown, but I sense just in the past day or two that we're going from one extreme to the other here. Or maybe it's just that individual people are alternately either paralyzed with fear (the sheep herd/mob mentality) or in total denial (the contrarian mentality). I think "cautious concern" is probably a more reasonable response than either of these extremes.
04/27/09
04/27/09
Still, the death rate in Mexico is around 7% and the Spanish flu was under 3. That is a fact that does make me a bit nervous.
04/27/09
That said, I've mostly been mocking this. Great way to get salespeople not to shake your hand.
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
I don't know if I have that. I can't hear anything. I just see a man jumping up and down, pointing at my cup. What's that all about?
04/27/09
04/27/09
Add that to the history of stupid vaccines.
04/27/09
lol
The poor and elderly will be dying. Nice to see the compassion of the young, entitled and enabled, as it is clear the new age of "tolerance" is well afoot.
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
1) Antibiotics were not available in 1918. Most deaths from flu are actually from secondary bacterial infection - i.e. pneumonia;
2) Better hygiene in medicine and in general population - doctors started washing their hands between patients; 3) Existence of anti viral drugs, such as Tamiflu, lessen severity of symptoms and length of infection, reducing likelihood of secondary infection and an hyper immune response;
4) A lot of us have been vaccinated for various flu strains - this acts as an anti viral agent for other strains of flu,
5) overall better health/nutrition in non third world countries.
Basically, only the poors will die.
04/27/09
True, but: Commercial livestock practices today are probably contributing to a lot of these drug-resistant bugs as we keep pumping livestock full of more and more antibiotics in order to let them grow quicker on feedlots.
Too many antibiotics will result in these new drug-resistant bacteria making the leap to humans. This one may not kill us, but still...
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
Der. Oh shit. Good catch. Must have been thinking of e. coli.
04/27/09
04/27/09
Watchful waiting can substitute for panic or denial.