Piggy Flu

It just sounds nicer to call it "Piggy Flu" than "Swine Flu" or H1N1.



Hearing about piggy flu is pretty much unavoidable. It's been one of the main topics of discussion on the message boards I frequent, all over Google News homepage, and what seems like every other story on MSNBC and CNN. Thankfully it hasn't crossed over to ESPN yet, but I'm sure it very well could. The online discussions mostly center around whether or not we should be worried about piggy flu.

The first piggy flu-related post was on Monday, asking if we should be worried about it now that there has been a confirmed case in Ohio. At the time, I said no, I'm not worried about it. Rational discussion followed.

On Wednesday - Oh Noes! WHO threat level went from a 4 to a 5! The sky is falling! This is where rational thought processes seemed to break down. Discussions turned from "should I be worried" to:

"What kind of facemasks should I buy?"

"What if they shut down the city? Will I be stuck at work?"

"It's a liberal conspiracy! They want to make sure what's-her-face gets confirmed as whatever-position-it-is so they're causing a health panic!"

and my personal favorite - "It is man-made (bio engineered), and is a conspiracy to bring the world to its knees. This flu is like part II of the Black Plaque: no cure and lots of deaths to come."

So because this is MY blog, I'm going to share MY thoughts just because I can. First of all, the only thing that a level 5 alert means is that "human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region, signaling that a pandemic is imminent".

Not that we shouldn't be paying attention to what's going on, but it's not like hundreds of people are suddenly being stricken dead. The "regular" flu also reaches pandemic proportions and kills hundreds of thousands of people, but you don't see people freaking out about that all the time.

I'm not saying to stick your head in the sand and pretend it's not happening, but am I about to go buy hospital masks for me and my family to wear? Not likely. Just use common sense - wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, and I guess stay out of Mexico. I'm not worried about it AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME. Things could happen that would change my mind and cause me to rethink the situation, but to this point nothing has. That doesn't mean that I won't adjust my thinking accordingly when new information is released.

The other argument that's come up is that the health officials have "cried wolf" at other times (i.e. SARS, bird flu, etc) and that this is just another overreaction. I don't necessarily agree with this. I don't think these outbreaks were necessarily "crying wolf," same with the flu pandemic of 1956-57. I think these were (are?) legitimate threats, but the proper steps were taken and a crisis was avoided. Of course, it's nearly impossible to prove a non-event, but the data suggest that the inoculation program developed in the 1956 pandemic staved off the massive spreading and lethality of that flu strain. Same with bird flu, the precautions that were taken (e.g. quarantines, killing infected animals, travel restrictions, etc.) may have likely quashed the whole thing before it got out of hand. We also know that the bird flu strain didn't transmit easily from person to person, so we may have gotten lucky that no mutation occurred before we were able to put safety measures into place. Yes, there may have been some serious overreaction in all of those cases, but I wouldn't call it "crying wolf."