Ok, apparently there is Swine Flu in my state (Virginia), 2 cases. EVERYONE is panicing! Everyone except me it seems. Someone please tell me the difference in Swine Flu vs normal Flu...because all that I see, they are the same.
Jeffery's school sent home a letter from the VDH (Virginia Department of Health) saying to take extra precautions, wash your hands, cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough, dont send your child to school when they are sick, and if you have the symptoms then get treated. COMMON SENSE tells me all of that, I didn't need a piece of paper to tell me that!
Honestly, how many cases of Swine Flu has there been? 365 so far worldwide. How many deaths? 68 in Mexico. What we don't know about the deaths is.....Did any of them have underlying conditions that made the Swine Flu worse on them? Did they get treated immediatley? Did they get treated at all? We all know some parts of Mexico are poverty areas, how many of these deaths were there, where they couldn't get treated??
I come across a very interesting article on Web MD about the Swine Flu, and there is 1 particular area that interested me....This comes from http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20090501/putting-swine-flu-in-perspective
How much do you worry about seasonal flu? Maybe you should give
garden-variety flu a little more respect. In a typical U.S. flu season, an
average of 36,000 people die of flu or flu complications, and about 200,000
people are hospitalized. Swine flu hasn't come anywhere close to that.
Now really....should we really panic this much about Swine Flu when the regular flu kills that many people!?!??
From that same website, consider this....
Pandemics aren't all deadly." If the World Health Organization declares swine
flu a pandemic, that's all about the spread of the virus -- not the severity of
the illness. In the past, some pandemics have been mild, while others have been
severe, notes WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl, adding that "people should act with
common sense, not with panic."
Now, can we stop panicing??? I'm going about my normal routine, yes we wash our hands, but we do anyways. Don't get me wrong, I don't want myself or my kids to get Swine Flu, I don't want my kids to get ANY illness, but it's just like any other illness to me....it is treatable, and people are SURVIVING having the Swine Flu!
I'm not going to put my family in a bubble because some people are freaking out about a illness that is treatable. Please, lets have come common sense about this...act normal, yes, wash your hands, I would hope you would do that anyways because I dont want any of your germs, pandemic illness or not!
4 comments:
I didn't know you live in VA! I'm in MD! where in VA do you live?
I am in VA too. I didn't realize it had hit here yet. I agree with you about not freaking out. I work in a children's psych hospital so my biggest concern is what happens if we get a patient with it. I really don't want to end up quarentined or something!
I agree with you, although I will admit that I have been spraying a little more Lysol than usual in the last few days--lol! My mom wants my family to hole up in our house and not leave until this scare is over because we have a large Hispanic population in our city--many of them come from Mexico, Texas, etc. I'm like "Mom, we have to buy groceries, hubby has to work, we have to go buy cat litter!!! We can't stay in our house forever!" Her silence insinuated that I was a bad mom, but then she told me she had to go to Wal-mart later that day. Wal-mart--next to schools and daycares, Wal-mart has to be the germiest place on Earth! Anyway, I'll stop ranting now and GASP! make out my grocery list for tomorrow's shopping trip :)
renee
yeloechikee at hotmail dot com
yeah the whole thing reminds me of the whole "avian flu" the media was hyped up about a few years ago
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