What is your projection for all of the effects of this flu?
Give me the numbers that you have obviously been working on.
Prove you aren't talking out of your ass, micca.
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Personally, I don't think people know enough about this particular virus to be able to make the kind of prediction micca claims he has gotten from his knowledge of the streets. Therefore, it isn't a great idea to shut off all economic activity in the world.
Where as your opinions are those of a well qualified expert in public health and infectous diseases and not the idiotic rambelings of a radio shack clerk. If we are to err wouldn't be better to err on the side of caution? I mean am I not talking to the same folks who can't sleep at night because a glacier recedes an inch a decade,who are pulling their hair out in terror because we have 2 less polar bears than last year, that we must banckrupt ourselves over cap and trade right now, who sign massive spending bills they don't bother reading because WE MUST DO SOMETHING, who send out watch lists for a secret kabal of right wing grandmothers and their returning veteran grandsons poising to launch a racist insurrection.
I told you guys last week it's toeing the line.
You should have learned that on the streets.
And :lol at your feeble attempt to gainsay public health experts.
Here's a good article about this subject:
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...,00.html?imw=Y
An excerpt:
Health officials argue that because the H1N1 swine flu virus is already present in so many countries, and readily capable of spreading from person to person, it's far too late to try to isolate one or two countries. Although uninfected countries may be able to delay the introduction of swine flu by imposing draconian limits on international travel, they would not likely be able to stave off the virus for good — and the economic losses resulting from the travel ban may far outweigh any benefits. One 2007 study by the Brookings Institution estimated, for example, that a 95% reduction in U.S. air travel would cost the economy $100 billion a year.
"Once the virus has spread beyond its initial focus, travel restrictions just aren't effective," says Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Washington. With 4,000 flights a day between the U.S. and Mexico, "it's not worth the social disruption it would cause."
That's not to say that very strict restrictions wouldn't have some effect on slowing the virus. In a 2006 study, Harvard epidemiologists John Brownstein and Kenneth Mandl examined the effect of the sharp reduction in air travel after the Sept. 11 attacks on that year's flu season. They found that the initial flight ban and general decline in air travel in the weeks after delayed the onset of the flu season but did little to reduce the overall number of infections and deaths that year.
The data matches computer models run by biostatisticians like Longini, who found that even the strictest limits on air travel would only slow the start of a flu pandemic, not stop its spread. But, again, while that strategy may benefit countries that have not yet been infected with swine flu, there's still no way to know when it would be safe to lift those restrictions. "There's no question that air travel spreads the flu," says Mandl, a physician and researcher at the informatics program at Children's Hospital Boston and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. "But the impact of limiting flights at this point is difficult compared to the downside of the economic impact."
As far as the U.S.-Mexico border is concerned, attempting to actually close it would be futile, since countless illegal migrants cross over to the U.S. daily. Trying to stop movement may just push travelers, and the spread of the swine flu, underground. It would create a diplomatic headache as well — the Mexican government has already expressed its concern over travel restrictions.
What works better are social-distancing actions on a local level — closing schools, having employees work at home and limiting public gatherings, where the flu can spread easily. Such methods worked during the deadly 1918 Spanish flu — cities that acted quickly to close schools and theaters early in the pandemic had peak death rates 50% lower than cities that acted more slowly. Today doctors could also prophylactically administer antiviral drugs to the close contacts of any swine flu patients, a strategy that has been shown to help prevent the spread of the flu. "Until you start to see really massive clusters, that can be a really effective method," says Longini.
Ultimately, however, in a world as truly interconnected as ours, we can no more cloister a single country than we could cut off a limb. The world has become increasingly one — as the rapid spread of the swine flu virus from country to country shows. "It is really all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic," says the WHO's Chan. Whatever happens next with the swine flu — whether it burns out or sharpens — we're in this together.
are we allowed to run over ppl coming over to my car coughing and sneezing?
according to Jack Sommerset we are allowed to run over mexicans on the road
The first verified cases in this outbreak seem to have been in California.