I’m taking a break from my self-imposed Blog Silence to broach a subject that is slowly making me crazy: The influenza epidemic and the absolutely stupid conspiracy theories behind it.
I swear to god, if I hear another discussion about autism, microchips and/or programmed genocide, I’m going to blow a gasket.
This post Is inspired by an email I wrote to a friend of mine where I shared my views on what I considered ‘the truth’ in this whole thing.
Being a microbiologist by training and having worked as an inspector in the Pharma industry for a few years, I think I have an informed opinion on such things. I won’t be so bold as to say that I hold the ‘truth” but I know enough to motivate my decision to get vaccinated along with my whole family.
The Influenza Virus
The thing about the H1N1 flu virus pandemic this year is that it could become similar to what happened around 1918, after WWI (Spanish Flu) where the flu spread explosively over the whole planet and killed millions of people.
Influenza is a common virus propagated through human fluids that goes around every year. We catch it more than once in our lives (like the common cold ) because the viruses mutate year in, year out. Usually, once we get an infectious disease, our immune system beats it and keeps chunks of the pathogens (the viruses and bacterias making us sick) around to check them against future infections. If we get infected again, the body matches the old bits with the new ones and launches a massive counter-offensive that completely kills the infection in a few hours (instead of days/weeks).
Now Influenza is a very, very clever virus. It changes it’s surface bits about once a year, the bits our bodies keep around to prevent re-infection. It does that by touching different viruses in infected cells and trading some of it’s DNA (the blueprints for all the virus bits) with the other viruses.
This often leads to an ‘upgrade’ of the Virus that makes the human body unable to recognize it, leading to the full blown, 7 day illness instead of the 24 hour fever/runny nose you often get without realizing what’s wrong.
Another thing about influenza is that, unlike the common cold, it does kill people every year. Several hundred thousands people (from all over the planet) die of the flu every year. However, victims are often young children, sick people and the elderly, especially in developing countries.
That’s why I don’t get a flu shot every year, I’m neither of those so the risk isn’t worth getting the shot. I’m a strong believer of the power of the Human Immune system, it’s a beautiful piece of machinery so I don’t get vaccines if I don’t feel a threat (My kids weren’t vaccinated for Chicken Pox for example). However, my son and wife are prone to pulmonary complications from influenza so they get the shot every year.
But here’s the twist Influenza also exists in animals. Thankfully you can’t catch pig flu, or bird flu because the viruses can’t find the proper machinery in our cells to replicate. What does happen however, is that influenza viruses from animals can co-mingle with human influenza and exchange their ‘bits’, sometimes more than ‘bits’.
In the last year, a new mutation of Swine influenza rose, bearing lots of new “upgrades” that no human immune system has dealt with in 80 years (meaning we had no immunity). And that upgrade came with a ‘potential lethality’ feature.
And what happened was that the normal H1N1 virus got in contact with the Swine virus and took some features and that created a new brand of flu: Influenza A(H1N1).
A new brand of flu that can and will kill people outside of the categories I said above. The reports I’ve read about mention healthy teenagers and adults.
In the post WWI pandemic, millions of people died. Probably mostly because bad hygiene and post war conditions made them more fragile.
But A(H1N1) is a new virus we have no immunity against, a virus that will likely kill people that are otherwise healthy and it is present in the population, mixed with the seasonal version of the virus.
We may not catch it, and if we do, we likely won’t die from it. But there is an extra risk that the virus will have a lethality that seasonal flu doesn’t.
At least that’s what I was thought in school and what I researched to build my opinion on Vaccination.
The Influenza Vaccine
I’m not very versed in vaccine manufacturing, my class notes on them are long forgotten but here’s a quick bit from Wikipedia:
Influenza vaccines can be produced in several ways; the most common method is to grow the virus in fertilized hen eggs. After purification, the virus is inactivated (for example, by treatment with detergent) to produce an inactivated-virus vaccine.
So in essence, the vaccine is filled with the many virus bits that our bodies look for in an infection. When the body meets those bits it reacts like it was being attacked by the flu (hence possible pain and fever after the shot). Once the body calms down, it keeps the bits around for the next contact with the virus. When the live virus finally invades your body, it finds itself thoroughly screwed as it meets a full blown immune reaction that kills it before it can establish a proper beach head.
It’s true that vaccines have variable degrees of effectiveness, but all of them are better than ‘no protection’ in my opinion.
I really don’t think the vaccine is being distributed worldwide to save money on absenteeism or to make the pharmas rich. I think countries fears the possible death toll and (especially) they fear being blamed for it.
So that’s why I’m getting the vaccine and why my family will too.
I usually don’t, but this year, I do.
In fact, being a ‘health care worker’ I’m going to get it right after posting this
If you have questions, feel free to ask me. I’m not a physician or an epidemiologist, but I may know more than that freak on TV talking about Aliens and Conspiracies.
I’ll be back to RPGs soon.
Thanks ChattyDM that was very interesting. It does confirm a lot of things I heard.
Great post! Thanks for saying this. As a parent, I’ve gottena bizarre amount of anti-immunization pressure from various directions over the years, and I think a lot of other parents are exposed to that too. As far as I’m concerned, immunization is one of most unambiguously awesome things that medical science has done for humanity. Yay immunizations!
Nice to hear a voice of reason. The problem over where I live is that our county does not have much of the vaccine at all. I’m planning on getting to a clinic early Halloween morning to get in line for my daughter. Wish me luck!
@sicnaxyz: I felt I needed to do my part in fighting the weirdos and outright lies. Thanks for having read it.
@Tony: I agree and it’s probably because it is so prevalent in our cultures that it has become an easy target for myths and misinformation.
@Jester: I hope you strike it lucky… such disparities should just not happen.
Thanks! That’s a really helpful overview and helps to solidify the decision that I will be making for myself and for my office.
The one part of your otherwise thorough and clear explanation that is vague is the “lethality feature”. Can you expound upon that? I heard on the radio this morning that it may have to do with secondary bacterial infections that the virus can make flare up. They say that if you are working your way through the sickness and then it suddenly gets worse, that is when you should seek medical help.
.-= walkerp´s last blog ..episode 5.5 – special Draconis episode 1 – an interview with the organizers =-.
Thanks. Very well written. Much appreciated!!
I was purposely vague about lethality because I don’t understand it. All I know is that healthy people. Adult males, teenagers, etc have died of it which is hard to explain.
Concomitant infection (What you describe) is certainly a possibility… but with symptoms that drop on you as fast as flu does (24 hours)… gauging when to get medical help can be a challenge.
Thanks Chatty for posting this. It’s really nice to have a sane voice among the crowd of misinformation. I’ve never gotten the flu shot because I have Sjogren’s Syndrome and anything that boosts my immune system lands me flat (and on serious pain meds) on my back for the next two weeks with a bad flare.
But you’ve definitely caused me to rethink about not having my son vaccinated.
.-= Cheri Arbuckle´s last blog ..Goolies and Ghosties and Things That Go Bump in the Night =-.
Nice. If we had any actual news outlets left in this country, this wouldake a nice evening news piece to educate ma and pa six-pack. We need a vacination against credulous “news” on all the infotainment channels.
@Cheri: Thank you for the kudos. I had never heard of that syndrome. Ouch indeed. I’m happy that my point of view helped you forge an opinion.
@Bruce: At 1000 words, my piece would likely not have survived the cutting floor or would have become “Mutant Virus will KILL your kids!”. But yeah, I’ve long thought of doing science vulgarization… maybe I should look into this more seriously.
When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me that my body was full of “little soldiers” fighting off “big-bad-guys”, and that getting a vaccine was kind of like handing out a mugshot of the big-bad-guys to the little soldiers, so that they can recognize it and train properly against it… My mom has always been good at explaining complicated things to children…
Both my kids are in the first targetted age group (22 months and 5 years old). We will get vaccinated.
Thanks Chatty to share that with us.
However my feeling is that we have to keep an open mind to different realities. As fear is spreading out, it may be important to look at people that are not running like madman in the same direction than the others.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14869
But I do agree with you that people for whom the consequences of having the flu could be severe or potent may consider having the shot to prevent getting it.
my 2 cents
A reader on Twitter brought in a very valid concern. A concern I share.
Given how late my government (and possibly the rest of the planet) reacted and ordered the vaccine, I fear that rushed manufacturing of the vaccine may suffer from cut corners.
Not that I fear the vaccine will be manufactured badly. I’m not, this vaccine has been in production for decades and I trust the companies 100% that everything was done by the rule. You don’t fuck with vaccines knowing that you can kill people with a stupid mistake.
What I do worry is that there is a common practice in the field where a company will use raw materials and containers before all the results of Quality Control tests are in. This is called ‘at risk’ manufacturing. And if some test fail… pharma exec might be pressured to ‘accept by deviation’.
What this may cause is vaccines with lowered efficiencies.
But I have no proof of that. I’m not a Pharmaceutical auditor anymore.
But I still think that lowered efficiency is better than none.
Thanks for the article, Phil!
So… this “rushed out” vaccine won’t be the source of the zombie apocalypse of 2012? Its the only worry I have left…
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.
“I think country fears the possible death toll and (especially) they fear being blamed for it.
I have a feeling they are more concerned by the possibility of 10s of millions of people overwhelming the health care system, and the deaths that may result from that.
And if this doesn’t pan out as the “next 1918” better safe than sorry. The only thing I wonder about is, if there’s no demand for the vaccine, because the flu never went “pandemic,” what happens to the vaccine, and the $$ the vaccine company spent to produce it?
@Cruguer: I’m entirely willing to listen to what people have to say about the pandemic. But any report that shows the classic signs of being bullshit, like talks of conspiracies (like the virus being a bioweapon) in the first paragraph loses ALL relevance in my eyes.
Maybe there are interesting points in there but its wrapped in claims that are as mind bogglingly stupid as those who believe that Aids virus was engineered in a lab.
Can someone please present me with a well articulated opponent to vaccination that actually talks about science more than conspiracies?
I hope to god that the virus stays as lame as it usually is each year. I’m actually convinced that the Pandemic is this years ‘year 2000 bug’.
But given what I studied, I’m not taking a chance this year.
it bothers me that when ever these reports about the conspiracy theories come out, they are full of references and quotes and links to reports, but these reference materials are of the same panic-driving sources as the original. making common statements like “it is well known” without citing legitimate sources that are well known and documented. it’s the old method of using well written, articulate material as evidence of fact. even the biggest loonie in the world can write well sometimes.
One thing we should remember is that it is also up to us to practice healthier lifestyles. We can all be eating better, getting more rest, exercising, getting outside to get some fresh and most importantly, reducing the stress in our lives. We too often rely on modern medicine to stop the pain when we should be working ourselves to prevent it from coming in the first place. I recognize that if you get the flu, you get the flu. But there are a lot of people who make zero effort and just hope the doctor is going to come and make it all better for them.
.-= walkerp´s last blog ..episode 5.5 – special Draconis episode 1 – an interview with the organizers =-.
I understand that a person’s blog is pretty much their own soapbox, however, I also believe that if a blog is to center on a specific topic, i.e. roleplaying games, then the author should really refrain from posting personal opinions that do not relate to the blogs subject. I’m removing your blog from my new feed. Up until now, I’ve enjoyed it. However, I do not believe that I should be subjected to someone’s personal opinion on such a hotly debated current topic.
Thanks Chatty for the insight.
I’m not aware of the incidences of death among healthy adults. At least in Australia, all the reported cases resulting in death were among people with other serious medical conditions.
At the height of the scare, when the vaccine wasn’t available, my wife was heavily pregnant and in one of the highest risk categories. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything we could do about it. Fortunately, nothing went wrong.
Now that the vaccine is available, the “pandemic” seems to have passed, so we’re not planning on getting immunised.
.-= Colmarr´s last blog ..Geek Pride =-.
Dear Michael.
I initially wrote a snarky, defensive response to your comment but I’ve realized afterwards that it served no purpose.
I’m very sorry that this post made you decide to unsubscribe to my feed. I understand your expectations for a RPG blog and I respect that.
I hope to snatch you back some other time, with my RPG content.
Thanks for making the effort of voicing your opinion and being honest about it.
Chatty, to warp John Guererro’s famous quote: “Never [be unreasonable] with [someone who was unreasonable first], because they will only bring you down to their level and beat you by experience.” 🙂
.-= Colmarr´s last blog ..Geek Pride =-.
@Colmarr: True, true. I’m climbing back to ground level 🙂
Things seem to indicate that this is just a Bad flu that no one has antibodies against. And if everything stays like that I’ll be happy and I won’t get the shot next year. 🙂
As Walkerp says: Clean living and less dependence on Medecine and drugs: that I’m all for.
Anyway, I got vaccinated this afternoon 🙂
I’m not in any of the high risk categories, so I’m not getting the new H1N1 vaccine anytime soon, with the shortages and all. It frightens me because, IIRC, many of the worst cases during the 1918 epidemic were healthy people in their 20s. All of my male immediate family is getting it with them being in various government and health care jobs (lucky them).
Thanks, Chatty, for taking the time to write this article. It’s good to know there are level-headed people who know what they’re talking about out there. 🙂
Thanks everyone for the kind words and response. It was much stronger than expected given that I stepped so much outside of my usual content (I think it’s my third non depression-themed Digression in 30 months of blogging).
It’s an ongoing challenge of try to write opinion/information pieces from a moderate’s point of view. Sensationalism and Conspiracies often make for more interesting stories and phrasing a moderate view often comes off as preachy, too technical or just plain boring.
When I finally get to the point where I’ll write for a living , I’ll most likely open a non-rpg blog where I’ll talk about the other spheres of my life.
Thanks again, you all rock
Yeah, even you.
@Eric Maziade
the 2012 zombiepocalyse is more likely to come from experimental cancer vaccines like cardesil or something similar. I can’t see a simple flu vaccine having the genetic altering material in it to cause ‘zombiefication’, where as cancer vaccines may.
Either that or it will be Falad, the Lich King over on DungeonMastering.com who will start it.
Informative post Chatty thanks
I just thought you might want to know that while you might lose a few readers because you dared state “personal opinions that do not relate to the blogs subject”, you gained at least one regular reader right here. Kudos for sharing your insight on this topic.
.-= silent stone´s last blog ..Hecatonchires: A NaNoWriMo Project =-.
@Scott: That or a gene therapy vaccine based on a retrovirus to cure all children of common but deadly food allergies. 🙂
@Silent Stone: Why thank you, I’m glad you liked it! Welcome to the blog!
My friend Math chimed in over email and told me that one of the possible reasons for the unexplained lethality of the virus is because the ‘bits’ it developed are very similar to proteins found in some people’s lungs. This causes the immune system to go berserk and attack both the virus…. and the lungs of a person. This can lead to severe pulmonary distress and possibly death. It’s called an autoimmune reaction.
Again, it’s a theory and so far, lethality has been very low. In that sense, the wackos are right and I hope it’s stays like that.
My paranoia against getting a shot was just started because (here in germany) we will get a diluted version of the vaccine mixed up with a “enhancer” to make it worthwile. Apparently this is the first time such an “enhancer” (sorry that I don’t know the exact name) has been used in a countrywide vaccination.
That alone would not have kicked my paranoia into overdrive, but then the news came out that the government and the federal armed forces both opted to get an undiluted vaccine without enhancers for themselves. Now tell me not to be suspicious.
Plus, the question I’m sure everybody here has on their minds: how would we represent this virus in a D&D game? 😉
.-= m.a.´s last blog ..Total sexy =-.
@M.A.: In English and French, the enhancer is called an Adjuvant, from my understanding it is an oil-based, sterile compound (all vaccines are sterile) that basically act as a Bull Horn, telling the immune system “YO! THERE’S SOMETHING INVADING YOU HERE!” So it’s supposed to boost the immune response.
I guess it would be fair to say that in order to produce more units faster, the powers that be decided that lowering the dose of Virus bits and adding an adjuvant was the best compromise.
You can wait for a non adjuvant version of the flu vaccine, if your Chancellor requests that some are purchased for civilians. They will likely come later.
Wait, you didn’t say the Umbrella Corporation was one of the vaccine manufacturers did you?
@HermitDave: Actually I think the vaccine is manufactured by Aperture Science. I haven’t stopped Teleporting since I got up this morning.
But they assured me that everything was safe and I could trust them.
I agree with Michael in that seeing a post on H1N1 on an RPG blog kind of threw me for a loop. However, your education and status in the field give you some say in the topic (as opposed to laymen who just want to bitch). Therefore, I recovered.
We actually went to get our seasonal shots yesterday – my guy because he’s asthmatic and me because I’m generally weak and immuno-compromised (hypoglycemia). I worked myself into a terror over getting a shot, but it turned out to not be so bad after all. I wish we could have gotten the H1N1 vaccine while we were there, but here in my home state of Arkansas, they only ordered enough for the kiddies.
Cookie Magazine (waiting room garbage) recently had an interview with Jenny McCarthy in which they painted her as just a concerned citizen. IIRC, they didn’t even mention how many children have died of illnesses they could have been vaccinated against because their dumbass parents saw Jenny on Oprah and decided not to get them vaccinated. Now we have even more people like her telling the same dumbasses not to get the H1N1 vaccine. It seems too early to tell how that will play out, but I was always taught that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Thanks Chatty, for an informative and worthwhile post. I was thrown off guard by your post, assuming it to be about a bizzarre game mechanic!
Nice to see some useful and literate prose about the subject!
I wanted to add my voice of thanks for your post Chatty. It’s the most well laid out piece that doesn’t sensationalize that I’ve been able to find. Everything I’m hearing from the government just seems to be go get it, it’s safe.
I almost changed my mind about getting it as a result of your post. And it made me feel better about my wife and son getting it. 🙂
Chatty, that would explain why all the crazy people are saying the vaccine is a lie…
@ chatty,
I know your very busy at the moment, but a write up on possible scientific vaccines that could create the zombipocalyse could be an interesting read?
GeneTherapy, Vaccines, Mutated Cancers, Pharma Youth Elixir gone wrong.
Several Possibilities! Anyway just an idea i wanted to share.
Thanks,
Scott
Generally, I’m all for allowing people to deal with the consequences of their own actions. If they want to expose their children the diseases like measles or rubella because they think that the diagnostic “epidemic” of autism is related to vaccination, fly at er.
The problem, of course, is the issue of herd immunity – if enough people in a population are immune, the disease never takes hold enough to spread widely. And if the disease does start to spread because of a mass of non-immunized people, the chances of even immunized people getting the disease spikes.
The area that I live in has a lot of “alternative” lifestyles, and one of the faddish alternatives is to not get your children immunized. We have 5-month old daughter, and my wife works in the childcare field. I’m also a volunteer firefighter, so my chances of exposure are much higher because I work with the public, and assist on medical calls.
So people not getting immunized puts me and my family at direct risk, risk that I can only partially mitigate by getting myself and my family vaccinated. We’re getting our H1N1 shots on Tuesday, since we’re a high-risk category, and we’ve been conscientious about getting Iris (our daughter) vaccinated, but I’m still quietly furious that this “debate” has been allowed to go on in our country.
I guess widespread stupidity is a risk you take with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but calling something a “debate” does not make it an actual debate, anymore than “intelligent design”, “alien abduction” or “D&D causes Satanism and suicide”. Thanks for posting an educated piece about something which is a very important public health issue.
.-= wickedmurph´s last blog ..4e Sandboxing =-.
I’m really touched by people who said they would reconsider their position on vaccination for them or their children. That was not my original intent but I bow to your kindness to have given serious consideration to my opinion.
And I respect all those who stay on their position. I don’t advocate that we force vaccination, as Cruguer says in the comment, I want people to get a fair exposition to the issues.
I really, really apologize if I caught so many readers off guard with such an off topic post. Given that we currently have only 1-5% of Musing readers commenting that feeling must have been felt by possibly hundreds of readers.
@Scott: I’ll maker the next post a Zombie Special!
@Wicked: I too agree that some established medical and scientific practices (not theories) are not subjects of ‘debate’. Vaccination is a no-brainer. Mass vaccination, a bit iffier and subject to beer debates. I’m glad you’re able to get the shots and get protected. Thanks for the kudos!
Thanks everyone. Once again, you proove what and incredible community you are.
Thank you for posting this. I admit I haven’t gotten the vaccine and I probably won’t. Most of what I hear about it now is about how the vaccine has run out in different areas. I had heard about this quite awhile ago though and got a link to a video from the US Center for Disease Control on the topic. After watching it and parsing it through my “what was all that in plain English” filter I felt like I had a handle on it. Your summary however does not require that step with the filter and I kind of wish I’d read your post months back instead of seeing the video. 🙂
Here’s the Youtube channel for the CDC:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CDCStreamingHealth
Pro’s:
– Lack of sensationalism
– Seems to be real info by educated people rather than rampant speculation by the ill-informed
Con’s:
– A bit more dry, long and technical than the average person would wish
– Info is from an arm of the US federal government so hardcore conspiracy theorists will want to include similar feeds from other reputable sources around the world
@ChattyDM
I think your comparison of H1N1 to the Y2K computer bug is apt. I have several friends who are programmers, and who worked on fixing Y2K issues for months.
The Y2K fear-mongering beforehand were indeed overblown, and some people did take advantage of that fear to profiteer, but at the same time, there was a real problem, and many people worked very hard to insure that it was so minor most people didn’t notice it after the fact.
I think the same is going on with H1N1. It has the potential to be quite deadly, and there is a lot of fear-mongering going on, but at the same time, if it doesn’t turn out to be a horrible tragedy, it will be largely in part to all the people who are getting vaccinated, and practicing better health and hygiene, and staying home when they’re sick, and so on.
With any luck, it will look like Y2K after the fact, but hopefully people won’t forget that it was proactive efforts that helped keep both safe for most of us.
For someone who works for one of the companies producing the H1N1 vaccine – it’s hilarious to me when I come across these conspiracy theory websites about it being a goverment weapon, H1N1 was designed to kill people to make other people rich, H1N1 is left over from the cold war, etc etc… my google news alerts for my employer are filled to the brim with such accusations… and I’m left reading the conspiracy sites and going “Really? I didn’t know I work for an alien race hoping to populate an emtpy world… cool! I guess I should read the memo’s more closely!” What really scares me is that these people are… serious. very serious, about their theories…
Yeah… drives me crazy too. You said “blow a gasket”… that about hits the nail on the head.
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..Portrait of a Villain: Mnemesyx, the Twice Fallen =-.
@Jonathan: Wow, we just need DNAPhil to comment here and the whole RPG Mutants Brotherhood will have shown up (with you, Bruce and me). 🙂
How’s that vaccine against stupidity coming up by the way? I’m sure Obama ordered a few cases 😛
AGhhh…
http://labvirus.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/video-doctors-speak-about-unsafe-vaccines/
Wow! after doing a little googling… i found that all the people interviewed in that video are chiropractors, holistic medicine providers, religious revivalists, and mothers (hey.. it’s listed as one of their credentials)… Clearly all of them are vaccine experts.. pfffftttt… (oh.. and wikipedia “NVIC”.. they are one of the main supporters of the conspiracies around the H1N1 alien mutant vaccine…)
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..[4E] Magic Halloween Candy =-.
It’s fascinating to see how the crackpots somehow feel the need to overload everything they say to teel thier stories.
In one Sentence: Frakenvirus and Codenamebirdflu666.
Huh excuse me mr, Conspiracy theory, if I was an evil overlord, I’d codename my Humanity killing virus ‘Chicago’ or ‘LNx-24’
Isin’t that what Microsoft did for Windows?
🙂
Thank you for writing this!
You leave off two important bits.
The first is the huge danger that H1N1 (which is incredibly contagious but not very dangerous) will combine with any of the less contagious but more deadly flu versions (such as the avian flu currently mostly in Asia).
The second is the concept of “herd immunity”.
More here about both of these:
http://davidvs.blogspot.com/2009/10/herd-immunity.html
The bottom line is that we’re currently seeing nearly everyone have mild flu symptoms for a few days: no big deal. But we need to prevent a deadly plague, and anti-vaccine paranoia is the opposite of prevention and endangers everyone.
@Davidvs: Thanks for your comment, however I must note that I very much don’t want to go to the other end of the spectrum and start saying that the virus will become a killer bug through DNA recombination with animal flu. It’s a risk and, given the history of the last 200 years, chances are the flu won’t be a super killer.
The chances that it becomes a plague are limited… but enough of a risk to warrant mass vaccination.
As for Herd immunity (immunizing 75% of a population to protect the remaining the 25% because the virus can’t penetrate) that’s all good, but unless we start vaccinating at gunpoint, that will likely not happen. We will reach that if the death toll rises, but so far the last numbers I saw was 5500 deaths, most of which are in North America. And such numbers are normal flu numbers (although I’d be curious to see the demographics of those death, how many healthy kids).
So yes to your arguments, no to pressing the “Panic Now” button.
I find watching this chart get updated each week to be… interesting.
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/updates/us/#iligraph
compare week 43 this year (200943) to previous years (chart goes back to only 2006 though).
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..Portrait of a Villain: Mnemesyx, the Twice Fallen =-.
Right, Chatty. We’re in agreement.
I have no wish to see vaccinations required, by either law or peer pressure.
And for H1N1 the concept of “herd immunity” probably does not apply. The vaccine failure rate is most likely higher than the percentage of immune people in the population required for herd immunity.
I merely meant to say that the decision of whether to vaccinate has real effects outside our own families (for example, pertussis is needlessly making a comeback because herd immunity has been broken), and that the crowd who reads science journals fears H1N1 not for what it is but for what it might become.
I have no idea why both these facts are underreported in the news. But I’ve seen that many people are understandably confused because of these omissions.
Agreed David. Broken Herd Immunity is definitively an issue for long standing, non-mutating life threatening diseases.
Pertussis is back? Really? I know it cropped up in places like India, but here? What is this, the 1400’s? 🙂
I just hope that everyone will stop freaking up, on both sides, after the next flu season. We should be good for another 20 years 🙂
Hey Chatty,
To be honest, I don’t think that personal postings like this should take RPG readers by surprise. For me, the Hobby is interesting exactly because we can put our personal experiences and preferences behind the worlds we create. I find it great from time to time to know about the person behind the Headsucking Zombies or that slime giant monster from your 3D adventures – it puts your RPG posts much more into perspective knowing what you do for a living.
For example, my RPG group during college was made completely out of computer science and engineering students, and that showed transparently by our obsession with traps which could be skipped by fooling their sensors, with programmable undead, and with realistic details for whatever machinery or physics/metaphysics rules that we made (any system with a “create element” spell had to be nerfed before the players started using anti-matter bombs). In my current group, there is an architect who keeps bugging me about non-sensical/boring designs of buildings, and helped me improve in this field by tenfold.
So, yeah, good job 🙂
@Michael:
You’ve got to be kidding! I’m sure everyone that gets bumped from your RSS reader cries themselves to sleep for the rest of their lives.
@Chatty:
You really should have gone snarky on that butthead. The whole, “I’m taking my (free) ball and going home!” mentality is laughable. You should not even want any of your readership to be composed of people like that. Obviously Michael must have bought into Jenny McCarthy’s “brilliant” discourse on vaccination and simply has hurt feelings now that someone with legitimate experience shows evidence to the contrary.
@Michael:
I will write something, not to defend ChattyDM but I’m simply hoping to make you realize something: Are you actually PAYING ChattyDM to write about RPGs? Then why are you complaining about him using his free-speech right? He started this blog to share his passion and he still does. Writing ONE article about something as important as A(H1N1) is not some kind of “Hey I met this neighbour the other day” topic. It’s GLOBAL. His post also convinced ME of getting the shot. If you deal with unexpectedness this way, your life must be miserable. Good luck!
Thanks Steph… However, let’s give Mike a break. I may not agree with his strategy for dealing with contrary content but his opinion remains valid from his point of view (the one about not wanting to read non RPG content from me).
Now if Micheal was upset by the subject itself, then it’s another ballgame and I can only say that I won’t mind him not being a reader anymore.
Anyway, chances are he’ll never come back.
I’d just like to thank you for the first reasoned piece of information on this topic that I’ve yet seen. Must admit I haven’t been giving it much mind, seeing how in the past decade, we’ve been bombarded with dire warnings about avian flu, SARS, west nile, and now swine flu. Seeing as the previous three haven’t really amounted to much (AFAIK), it’s very easy to dismiss this new series of warnings as more bluster, especially given the lack of anything approaching real information available.
“I really, really apologize if I caught so many readers off guard with such an off topic post. Given that we currently have only 1-5% of Musing readers commenting that feeling must have been felt by possibly hundreds of readers.”
Mate, i got to tell you that you are doing good, your opinion on the subject is more important to some that the opinion of experts on TV (both loonies and serious scientists arguing against them).
For three reasons; your background in science, your wide audience, and the impossibility of you having a vested interest.
Your background in science is a self explanatory reason.
Your wide audience is likely to hear you, because you are perceived as “one of us”
And the impossibility of you having a vested interest, that one could argue that both loonies and scientists on tv could have (loonies selling books, scientists getting paid by big pharma), many know that this argument is bogus, BUT not everyone does, and they could be swayed by it.
I live in a smallish country, and we were some of the first countries in the world to get this disease, I got it before it made the news (a friend came straight from the airport to my house telling me about this bizarre bio containment he was subjected to).
I got it around 48 hours later, i did not die, but oh boy! i wished i had at the time, I’ve never felt worse (and i’ve been in car crashes, snowboarding accidents, a fractured skull, etc…). The people that saw me, and had ANY doubts about getting vaccinated, got the shot right away.
Luckily our government acted swiftly, most people got vaccinated, and NOTHING HAPPENED. It is sad to hear of people dying on developed countries because of this “debate”
And dude it pisses me off, because everytime some loonie starts a fire on the developed countries, some of it spreads here sooner or later. We got lower autism, and developmental diseases rates than developed countries AND EVERYONE GETS VACCINATED. And we got lower rates because we have healthier diets, we do more exercise, not because we shed common sense.
So thanks Chatty! and lets hope the “debate” ends and people realize that no one is out there actively trying to hurt them