Wagging the dog?

[DaVinci 0]

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I'll tell you what. Don't make claims about what I would do under hypothetical situations and I'll do the same for you, deal?

If you will notice I said "maybe you".

That inferes maybe you would, but it also allows maybe you would not. I do not see that as saying you would do anything at all even.

The fact still stands that SOMEONE will claim one way or another that the Government failed no matter what happens.

You are saying that Bush is wagging the dog. I bet others think he is not doing enough. Standard day, same bullshit as normal in politics.

That was my point. Sorry you took offense.

[ViperPilot 0]

Ah, true enough.

[ReBirth 0]

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Well, it has a 50% mortality rate.

What does? The disease we're talking about doesn't even exist yet. You're referring to a disease people are currently catching from chickens. And it has a 50% mortality rate based on the reported infections. I guess it's impossible to think that people got it, thought they had a normal cold or the flu, and never got diagnosed with the H5 whatever strain. Especially in places like Thailand.

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It could be like the black plague that wiped out millions in Europe.

It could be. But first, we wouldn't know it was that bad until it were too late to do anything about it. And second, as I said in the beginning, every expert I've seen on the subject has said these policies would have almost zero effect on its spread.

What should we try to stop? The point is nothing exists to stop. You've obviously bought into the scare tactic.

Whatever will we do about Lime disease, West Nile Virus, and SARS, oh my?

[kallend 2,148]

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The biggest thing that worries me about it is Bush stating that he has plans to restrict travel and enforce quarantines with military troops if necessary.

Well, it has a 50% mortality rate. I'd say that calls for some damned drastic measures if it gets loose. It could be like the black plague that wiped out millions in Europe.

And you're suggesting that he just not even bother trying to stop it, because it's hopeless?

"It" doesn't exist yet.

Bush is not among those who have any idea how to stop it, if it happens. All he knows it that it will take a lot of $$ and he's asked for it.

Better $7B for this than $200B+ for a war W started under false pretenses, IMO.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Lindsey 0]

What should we try to stop? The point is nothing exists to stop. You've obviously bought into the scare tactic.

Well....given that in order for the flu to spread, there must be contact between people, limiting that contact (in the event that this strain does mutate so that people can give it to each other) theoretically should cut down on its spread.

This is not a strain of flu that one would get and not know they had gotten. This strain won't be mistaken for a common cold. It is important to do something about it now so that we're not in the position of saying...."we didn't know it was going to be that bad until it was too late to do anything about it...." That's the point.

I guess you probably feel the same way about diseases like Marburg and Ebola.....while you're throwing things (Lyme, West Nile, SARS) around that might make us want to be prepared. Were those threatening us, I'd also want to be prepared. It's foolish to believe that infectious disease gives us no cause for concern.

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[ReBirth 0]

Once again...I didn't say we shouldn't prepare. But how exactly are you going to restrict travel in the US to a sufficient degree to stop the spread of a disease?

Hell, we can't stop tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from crossing into texas from mexico on a DAILY BASIS. It's a ridiculous notion.

[kelpdiver 2]

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21 million people died worldwide in the flu pandemic of 1918-1919. 549,000 of those were in the US.

The CDC estimates that 20,000 people die each year of influenza....just your regular ol' flu that most of us have at least some level of immunity against.

1918 is definitely the basis of the fear, but that was a very different world. It's worse now in that people travel much more, but it's much better in terms of medical care. SARS suggests that it can be shut down quickly, though still with painful economic costs. OTOH, if a nasty variant of the flu pops up in multiple continents rather than having a single source country like China, maybe it spreads too fast before getting noticed.

the 20k/year still represents a very low mortality rate - did the flu really kill them, or were most ripe for any sort of infectuous disease? Along those lines, few people die directly of AIDS. HIV just makes the person very vunerable.

[Lindsey 0]

I would hope that if people begin to get this illness that the suggestion that we not mingle so much would be effective to curb people's travel. I would take such suggestions seriously.....because I've been educated about the seriousness of the illness.

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[Lindsey 0]

It's worse now in that people travel much more, but it's much better in terms of medical care.

Maybe somewhat better....but there aren't medications to knock out this virus once you get it. You pretty much have to let influenza run its course. Heck....our ICU is full right now. Then, since it's healthy people that are likely to be at risk with this strain, what are we gonna do when all the doctors get sick? I think we're a lot better off being alert and prepared to NOT get sick as best we can, because it really *could* be devastating.

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[EricTheRed 0]

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I would hope that if people begin to get this illness that the suggestion that we not mingle so much would be effective to curb people's travel. I would take such suggestions seriously.....because I've been educated about the seriousness of the illness.

linz

That's not consistant w/ human nature though. Lets say Houston Texas has an outbreak. The gov'mt says " No one should travel to Houston. No one should leave Houston"

There will be a LOT of people that will stay away for sure, but there will also be a LOT of people in Houston that think they are not infected that will try to GET THE FUCK OUT before the city falls apart and I get sick too.

Stats say some of these people will be carriers, not showing symptoms yet.

(The flu is contagoius 3-5 days PRIOR to symptoms - this may or may not follow the same pattern)

The primary reason SARS did not cause a pandemic was too short a period from infection to symptoms, easier to quarantine the victims.

illegible usually

[Michele 1]

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What does? The disease we're talking about doesn't even exist yet. You're referring to a disease people are currently catching from chickens.

YOu're right...the vectors for human to human contagion have not been developed, and it could drastically change the virus which is currently at a 50% fatality ratio.

The danger will be when it does go human to human. The pig is a great incubator for the disease mutation - and there are generally a lot of pigs where there are chickens (i.e a farm). Add to that once the mutation occurs and the avian population is reinfected with the new bug - and those birds who have them are migratory, such as geese, sparrows, gulls, and whatnot - then the real issue of contamination is present.

It is a significant risk. H1N5 can be determined, and supportive pallitive care can be given - as long as the numbers of infected remain low. But once the transmutation goes to a human to human infection, the illness rate will be much higher; the treatment will not be any more effective than is currently available (tamaflu, and other symptom based treatments), and the deaths will be horrific.

There is evidence of flu killing millions of people; why is that so hard to see, and realize that we are at risk? Sure, we're at risk of Marburg and Ebola (both insanely nasty virii). We are at risk for many other illnesses as well.

I don't see it as a wag the dog scenario; rather, I see it as something which the CDC has been talking about for many years, and with the advent of the avian flu and potential on this particular virus to mutate and become a human-to-human spread, it's a real, tangible threat to the entire world.

It will take - at a minimum - at least 6 months to isolate the virus, and then create an injection which will create immunity. In those 6 months, in today's "global" community, there will be hundreds of millions infected; if the fatality ratio is 50%...man, that's not something I want to see.

Scare tactic? Avoidance tactic? Nah. I think that it's a timely issue, and something I've been interested in for several years - the potential that the Avian flu will become the next big flu pandemic. It's going to happen...it happened in my lifetime already (most people don't remember 67-68 and the Hong Kong flu, and yet it reached pandemic proportions).

I would hope that we are working as best and as fast as we can to create a plan that will protect people from a potentially deadly illness. I've also learned, and as recently as Katrina was reminded, that the government can only do so much...the rest is up to me.

And no, I don't own a cabin in the backwoods just yet...but I know someone who does.

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[ReBirth 0]

We'll see...I hope you're right (about the timeliness of the info, not your projection of doom). I just can't believe the hype anymore when we start hearing "hurry up and panic" plastered all over the media. I won't get into the myriad of reasons why I am suspicion of this kind of media blitz. There are many of them and all discussed somewhere amongst these threads. Let it suffice to say I don't trust where the info is coming from. For the past 5 years we have been bombarded by dire, earth ending, projections of doom by any source; from asteroids to microbes, anthrax to ebola, nukes in suitcases to mustard gas in crop dusters.

Pardon my suspicion that it might be another keyto the fear and consumption lifestyle to which we are accustomed.

[Michele 1]

No, I undersand your point...and I think that there are many things that are spoken of that are not necessarily going to happen (this week, at least...). But maybe I'm much older than you, but I can recall lots of doom, gloom and rampant destruction of the planet in the last 20 years, including the Y2K bug, earthquakes which will take California back into the ocean, and on and on.

At least, this one is based on a scientific issue, one that has been around for years...and one which has demonstrated itself to be one which can happen, and does with somewhat regular frequency.

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[DaVinci 0]

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But maybe I'm much older than you, but I can recall lots of doom, gloom and rampant destruction of the planet in the last 20 years, including the Y2K bug, earthquakes which will take California back into the ocean, and on and on.

Don't forget nuclear war drills. Ask a kid today if he thinks a nuclear war could happen.

[kallend 2,148]

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I would hope that if people begin to get this illness that the suggestion that we not mingle so much would be effective to curb people's travel. I would take such suggestions seriously.....because I've been educated about the seriousness of the illness.

linz

Yeah, sure. You only have to see who stays for "hurricane parties" and the like to see how much common sense is around. Unfortunately, unlike a hurricane, those who behave stupidly won't just kill themselves in a pandemic.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Erroll 80]

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.....including the Y2K bug....

Good example. Before Y2K I heard and read many similar stories about scaremongering, making a quick bug, nothing will happen etc. After Y2k (when nothing did happen) the same people were saying "See, I told you so!". Nothing happened only because we (the IT industry) took the early warnings seriously. Huge amounts of money and manhours were spent to ensure that nothing happened.

[AlexCrowley 0]

yup, but geeks staying up late fixing stuff isnt glamorous. since no one actually understands what we do beyond 'work with computers' the reality didn't matter. A great deal of the anger and finger pointing was simply a smokescreen to hide the media and publics embarassment for how much they panicked about it. Geeks, on the whole, never panicked because they knew the reality of the risk over the 'sky is falling' crap that was playing in the mainstream at the time.

The same with this flu. The probability of a pandemic is pretty high based on history - the experts have been saying for years that we're now 'late' for a nasty case of some virus killing a great many of us. Since the reality of the situation is pretty bleak and inescapable in the event of a global pandemic I figure I wont worry about it right now and save some of my raw adrenal panic for when it's necessary

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[pirana 0]

That's a good point about there being so many gloom & doom stories (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, diseases, etc.). Struck me as I was reading it that the fact that those things WILL happen eventually, but are impossible to pin down, is what makes them scary, and at the same time leads to complacency.

We've had 3 of the 4 very recently. And we'll have them again. But those 3 are geological & meteorological in nature, and are a part of the Earth's physycal systems. Tough to predict and impossible to stop.

With this flu thing though, we know how they evolve, we know how to dramatically reduce risk, we know the consequences of ignoring the risk, we know what has to be done if/when the outbreak occurs.

So how does the President become a bad guy for asking Congress to pony up the cash and get busy on reducing the risk and planning for recovery? Well, as you might have guessed, I have an opinion:

It's the Rush effect of finding words of praise for your party no matter what they do, and for finding words of denigration for the other party no matter what they do. I'm not a fan of this administration, but feel for them a bit in that 50% of the populace is going to find fault with everything he does just because of who he is.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[ReBirth 0]

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50% of the populace is going to find fault with everything he does just because of who he is.

Or just maybe some of us are suspicious of everything he does just because of his track record. I don't see how judging someone based on their littany of errors constitutes partisanship.

[Lindsey 0]

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50% of the populace is going to find fault with everything he does just because of who he is.

Or just maybe some of us are suspicious of everything he does just because of his track record. I don't see how judging someone based on their littany of errors constitutes partisanship.

I'm also suspicious of what GWB does because I think he's basically a bad person. BUT it's important to not discard EVERYTHING he does as president just because you don't like him, imho. His actions have some far-reaching effects, and I won't blindly condemn eveything he does just because I don't like him.

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[brierebecca 0]

I work for the Department of Health, in their General Counsel's office. I'm not allowed to say a lot about it, but trust me, its a big deal and needs adequate attention.

Brie

"Ive seen you hump air, hump the floor of the plane, and hump legs. You now have a new nickname: "Black Humper of Death"--yardhippie

[billvon 3,118]

>BUT it's important to not discard EVERYTHING he does as
>president just because you don't like him, imho.

I agree. Preparation for an H5N1 variant is pretty important, IMO. It's not wasted effort.

People here seem to place value on learning from mistakes. I think this is a case of Bush learning from his Katrina mistakes, and putting more effort into preparation for disasters. Good for him.

[kelpdiver 2]

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50% of the populace is going to find fault with everything he does just because of who he is.

Or just maybe some of us are suspicious of everything he does just because of his track record. I don't see how judging someone based on their littany of errors constitutes partisanship.

don't know how it is in the northwest, but here in SF, it is totally partisan. Doesn't matter if Shrub suddenly found Allah and changed his ways, he'd still be wrong here.

The crowd here may be right more often than wrong given the track record, but there really isn't any openness to the idea.

[JohnRich 4]

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every expert I've seen on the subject has said these policies would have almost zero effect on its spread.

So if there was an outbreak in, say, France, you would consider it a waste of time to cancel international aircraft flights from France from entering America? And President Bush would be an idiot for issuing such an order?

[Lindsey 0]

I agree.

Whew. Thank God for that! I thought I was standing out here all alone for a minute....

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail