Swine Flu

[minnie]

So, I know this is very off topic but I'm a bit peeved off about this. We live in a building which has three flats that share a communal entrance and hallway. We are the ground floor flat. Yesterday I was weeding the front garden area when the girl who lives on the top floor had her sister bring her round a bag of food. The sister buzzed the flat and my neighbour came down coughing like hell and looking even worse. She coughed all over the hall, opened the front door, got the food and went back upstairs.

I thought, hmmmm thats a bit wierd, obviously feeling rough as hell to not even say hi. So I carry on with what I am doing, then go in and clean the hall (where she had massively coughed) and then receive a text from her informing me she has swine flu!!!! WTF, she has known since mid week last week and she only tells me now. I had my dad to stay last week, a load of friends on Friday, our engagement party on Friday and saw my VERY pregnant friend on Friday afternoon whose baby is due any day. So, as well as feeling majorly pissed off, I could have it and could have passed it onto alot of people. I know there is nothing she could do to prevent it but she could have told me earlier.

So far, I have a sore throat, am very very tired but temp is norm and still have an appetite. I reckon there is a good chance I'll have it in the next week.

Has anyone else on here had it? Am stressing out!

[omaklackey]

Hubby being in the field of medicine we have long conversations about every new epidemic that people freak out about. Mayo clinic has a self assesement if you are concerned. www.mayoclinic.com/health/flu-symptoms/FU00013 Many of these 'epidemics' are created by the media to scare people. They was only 1 reported case of a death related to swine flu in the states. I am sorry that your pregant friend might have been exposed but if she were to catch it before baby comes, the baby would be immune to it so that's a good thing anyways. Try not to stress and think healthy thoughts and maybe you'll pass through without catching it!

[JC]

Believe it or not, getting this from walking through a hallway that someone coughed through is very difficult. You have to be in close contact with the person and usually it's passed through touch/close contact. Viruses don't live well outside the body so even if it was on a surface, a virus needs a host to survive. You would have to touch something imediately after she did and she had to have really soiled the surface for you to get it like that. Just keep your hands washed and don't make out with her and I'm sure you'll be fine

[JC]

I wrote up a swine flu summary explaining the history of the virus and what exactly H1N1 meant. I'll post it here if anyone is nerdy like me and curious about it.

I was having a nerdy moment and recalling from last semesters biology class decided to write a note about what exactly H1N1 Influenza means since it's all a bunch of scientific terminology. I hope I don't bore you! Read on if you're curious!

There are 3 types of influenza virus: types B and C, which only infect humans and have never caused an epidemic, and then there's our friend the type A which infects a wide range of animals, including (obviously) birds, pigs, horses, and humans. Influenza A strains have caused three major flu epidemics in history. The worst was the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 which killed about 40 million people. Birds were the source of that one!

When the virus mutates, as it's passed from one host species to another (i.e. bird to pig, etc.), it causes a likely scenario for a pandemic. When an animal is infected with more than one strain of flu virus, the different strains can undergo genetic recombination if the RNA molecules making up their genomes mix and match during viral assembly in the host. In more simple terms if there are different strains of the virus in a host, they have a big party and start combining to make one big bad virus. Along with mutation, this can lead to what causes these viruses to infect human cells. Since it's an animal virus, we haven't been exposed to that particular strain before so that means we lack immunity and the recombined virus (big bad virus) has the potential to be highly infections. Once it reaches humans, it begins to circulate among us because it can acquire the ability to spread from person to person which then leads to a major human outbreak. And since we all can't resist touching each other and people still don't listen when we say to wash your damn hands, we spread this big bad virus easily.
So what is exactly all this H1N1 coding anyway? Different strains of influenza A are given standardized names; for example the strain that caused the 1918 flu was also called H1N1. The name identifies which forms of two viral surface proteins are present: hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). There are 16 different types of hemagglutinin (H) which is the protein that allows the virus attach to the host. There are 9 types of neuraminidase (N) which is an enzyme that helps release new particles from infected cells. Water birds, those little bastards, have been found to carry viruses with all possible combinations of H and N. The famous Avian bird flu from 1997 in Hong Kong was an H5N1. Since then, this crazy bird flu has resurfaced in 2002 in southeast Asia.
As a general note, emerging viruses are generally NOT NEW; rather they are existing viruses that mutate, disseminate more widely in the current host species, or spread to new host species. Changes in host behavior or environmental changes can increase the viral traffic responsible for emerging disease. And this was the case with our recent swine flu. The source pigs were actually imported to Mexico from New Jersey. The reason they didn't infect humans in New Jersey is because of the differences in sanitation. The environmental change from being in sanitary conditions in New Jersey to unsanitary conditions in Mexico caused the virus to pass to humans. The rest my friends..... is history.
Hope you learned something. Wash your damn hands and keep your mouth off my drink!

[minnie]

Wow, interesting stuff! Poor piggys being kept in nasty conditions!

So far so good. I think I need to make it to Saturday to be sure I don't have it from this possible source. I am now going round with a hand sanitizer gel in a effort to keep myself free from germs.

Its really getting going here in terms of the number of people contracting it. Still, doesn't sound too bad. There seem only to be problems when you have an underlying serious illness.

Stay healthy y'all!!!

[JC]

There's a few cases at my university but only in the dorms. Glad I don't live there!

[rach]

More people die every year in every country from the regular flu.

I think it's been hyped up way too much in the media!

[JC]

Yeah I agree about the hype. The media always tries to scare us with something new.