Swine Flu?

Swine Flu, you’ve heard about it on every single news report in every country in the world. Social Media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs are going mad with over 10000 “tweets” about the disease every hour. We’re told by the World Health Organisation that there is no cure for Swine Flu and an outbreak is imminent. According to the news, people are dying left, right and centre. For many it’s only a matter of time before a rag-tag bunch of survivors are left killing swine infested zombies.

Sci-fi humour aside, I’m skeptical on this whole swine flu “epidemic” and I feel a bit of investigation is required.

First of all, I want to take a look at the issue of the World Health Organisation’s different pandemic levels. We’re currently at level five, one level away from a full on pandemic. While this seems fairly fear inducing I think people need to have these levels explained. Phases one to three mean that there is mostly animal infection with minimal human cases. Phase four means that there is significant human outbreak on a “community level”. When you put it into perspective it doesn’t seem so scary right?

Unfortunately we are no longer on phase four but rather on the paranoia inducing phase 5. Phase 5 is characterised by “human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region”. Technically Mexico and America are in the same WHO region so by default we’re in phase 6. Right now you’re coming to your sense but there’s some paranoid niggling in the back of your mind and that is “what about the cases in Hong Kong, Israel, the United Kingdom and even back home in South Africa?” On a local level, the unfortunate lady that went to Mexico is very much still alive. The media will lead you to believe that Swine Flu will eat your insides and make you cough up your intestines but this is patently untrue. Swine flu makes you sick like normal flu and does not kill you within minutes of contracting the disease. Even in Mexico, the centre of the pandemic, there have only been 16 deaths from swine flu. Now there have been over 450 cases of swine flu but only 16 dead? Unfortunately the news you watch every night tends to make out like there are 450 people dead from swine flu in Mexico when in reality this is not the case. Watching the news will make anyone go crazy.

Two years ago when bird flu was announced the hype was that when these sick, zombie birds returned to Europe in their normal migratory patterns the whole of Europe would be wiped out by a sickness that we would never see before. Here’s the reality: Europe is still very much where it was last time I looked and the people of Europe are still very much alive despite the attempts of flu infested birds.

If we’re talking statistics the very same World Health Organisation that is spouting different pandemic levels released a study about the amount of people that died from AIDS in the world is close on 2 million in 2007. Considering that these are deaths from AIDS rather than AIDS related complications, the numbers are lower than the total deaths and are potentially staggering. Surely 16 people dying is hardly an epidemic?

If we’re playing the numbers game lets look at deaths from car accidents. In a study done in the US from 1999 to 2003 there were on average 36,676 deaths per year from car accidents meaning 1 in 7700 people died while in the car. Now correct me if I’m wrong but do we consider either AIDS or driving to be pandemics? They certainly kill more people than Swine Flu has.

According to many news reports swine flu is so scary because there is no cure and we’re all going to die once it spreads. The news is correct here but has conveniently bent the truth to up their ratings. While there is no direct cure for the swine flu H1N1 virus it is affected by current medicine such as Tamiflu. The reality is that we know so little about this virus that Tamiflu seems to be a reasonable solution to the worldwide 4000 odd cases of swine flu.

So all in all people need to calm down; don’t speak to Mexican’s and just act as you normally would. Remember, people freaking out and watching the news leads to more advertisers and more money in the recession. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be disturbed by this potential epidemic but don’t buy into the hype.

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