Flu Models Predict Pandemic, But Flu Chips Ready 216
An anonymous reader writes "Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week, but flu chips capable of detecting the virus within four hours are already rolling off the assembly line. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has designated swine flu as the '2009 H1N1 flu virus,' is modeling the spread of the virus using modeling software designed by the Department of Defense back when avian flu was a perceived threat. Now those programs are being run on cluster supercomputers and predict that officials are not implementing enough social distancing--such as closing all schools--to prevent a pandemic. Companies that designed flu-detecting chips for avian flu, are quickly retrofitting them to detect swine flu, with the first flu chips being delivered to labs today." Relatedly, at least one bio-surveillance firm is claiming they detected and warned the CDC and the WHO about the swine flu problem in Mexico over two weeks before the alert was issued.
Hungry for breakfast . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hungry for breakfast . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
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Pans.
You cook bacon and eggs in pans, dipshit.
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Waffles > pancakes
Pie > Cake
Make Money Fast! (Score:2, Insightful)
"Veratect, based in Kirkland, Wash..."
"The company...has tried unsuccessfully to sell its service to the CDC"
"Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., who talked with the CDC, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies..said the federal government had made a mistake in not purchasing the company's program"
I think there's a "Dicks for Sale" joke in there somewhere.
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I'd buy it, as long as it is sold in a box.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhwbxEfy7fg [youtube.com]
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Rats! Foiled again!
How DID you find out about my devious LIBERAL(conservative?) plan?!
Seriously it isn't a bandwagon they are jumping on. They would have made the jump no-matter if the others were doing it or not.
Mass Media goes for RATINGS and what will get people to watch nothing more nothing less in most cases. Yes there are some biases but by and large they are only in it for the money and power.
The political side or effect of the message is irrelevant unless they think that can give them more money
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point of closing schools if the virus isn't virulent enough to burn itself out? If it's about as severe and durable as the garden-variety flu strains that circulate everywhere anyway, then it will continue to circulate in Mexico indefinitely, and wherever else it establishes itself. We can't exterminate it any more than we can exterminate other moderate strains of flu.
So when we reopen the schools, borders, or whatever else people are screaming for, the swine flu will be there waiting... waiting to make us cough and hack and stay home from work... waiting to kill children, the weak, the elderly... waiting... just like the regular garden-variety flu that we get every year.
(I'm not a biologist, I'm just baiting a real biologist to correct or clarify anything I got wrong. Please and TIA.)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
While we delay the spread, we can learn more about the disease and maybe produce a vaccine.
Here's some points.. (Score:2, Interesting)
The main point is to delay and ultimately prevent the spread if it has a high fatality rate. 100 cases and 1 death don't give us a 1% fatality rate... we have to make sure those 100 people recover.
While we delay the spread, we can learn more about the disease and maybe produce a vaccine.
Exactly.
(A) many more people are expected to get this flu than the regular seasonal flu because humans have no immunity to this flu. In 1918 they figure half the human population eventually got it. So whatever the mortalit
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To get 2%, you took 4% (mortality in confirmed cases) or 6% (mortality in suspected cases) and divided by two or three to get 2%. I don't think that's reasonable, because it assumes that people who died from swine flu when those numbers were being collected were only twice as likely to be tested for it as the average person who got it. You could just as reasonably assume that someone who died from swine flu was 100 times as likely to be tested for it. After all,
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Damn, how did I post that AC? For the record, it was me.
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No, I am Spartacus.
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that death toll was just because of pneumonia, secondary infections. not a concern today. really, this whole thing stinks of someone's agenda. and note that after Baxter at least twice makes bad mistakes (one with a body count of over a hundred), they nevertheless get the vaccine contracts and also get samples of this new virus....i'd say it looks like they have a nice profit improvement process going.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
100 cases and 1 death don't give us a 1% fatality rate... we have to make sure those 100 people recover.
100 cases and 1 death don't give us a 1% fatality rate, because we have to take into account the people who got sick and didn't seek medical attention.
Anyway, where do you get those numbers? I thought the latest word was that it might not be any more fatal or infectious than normal. And since nobody has told me what the original fear of high mortality was based on (unless it was the 12 dead out of 312 confirmed cases in Mexico, a terrible statistic to base a mortality estimate on) I'm not inclined to buy into it.
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I also am skeptical of the current claims about the infectious rate and the death rate. I was watching on t.v. (take with a grain of salt) a scientist here in Ontario who pointed out that given what we know about the virus' virulence there may have been one- or two hundred thousand cases of this flu by now in Mexico, that have simply gone unreported because people haven't gotten sick enough to go to the hospital. If that's the case, and if we can believe the current figure on deaths out of Mexico, then this
The first wave (Score:3, Insightful)
In the 1918 pandemic [wikipedia.org] the world was swept by a mild version [cdc.gov] that killed very few and infected many. And then in six months in the biomass of humanity the mutagenic properties of influenza found a superflu that killed, by some reports, 100 million or about 10% of all living people at that time. At that, some think we were lucky. It could have been much worse [wikipedia.org].
But don't panic.
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So wouldn't it be great if the spread was halted long enough for a vaccine for this new strain to be developed?
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In the same way that Windows 3.11, Windows XP/Vista, BEos, VXWorks, and Linux are all just new strains of operating systems. Aren't they all just about the same?
IANAMB, but wikipedia is your friend:
genetic/antigenic drift (ie: POSIX compatible versions of each other):
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How is this a troll?!
These were no fully rhetorical questions. And if that stuff is so OMGWTFBBQ deadly, then how come that we're (including Mexicans, etc.) not all dead already?
The whole thing is just a giant FUD and media spectacle, that is wayyy out of the appropriate reaction zone. I bet there are many diseases that are worse and are killing more people spreading every single year.
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Ok, you're right. The antibiotics are for the bacteria that have an easy game, spreading in the weakened immune system.
Well, I survived flues many times. So this flu does not scare me any more than any other one.
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Who says this? Your doctor? Well, hit him in the face, and tell him you recommend antibiotics against it, reasoning in the same way he does. ^^
(Oh, and remember not to ask him anything again after this. ^^)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)
The point is to delay the spread so that infections don't happen all at once and overwhelm the health system. See this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/health/30contain.html
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That is an excellent answer and the first sane article I've read about the issue.
Still, I'm not convinced it's worth it. What's the maximum N for which we should keep N thousand students out of school for a month to save a life? We're leaving it up to somebody to answer that question for us. Who is it?
A fool's errand (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, continue doing more or less what we have always done, improving wherever and whenever possible, without panic, fear-mongering, or hyping up the threats.
The current "pandemic" is largely an exercise in ignorance, incompetence, self-delusion, opportunism, corruption, and an unhealthy dose of general idiocy.
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It is better to make sure everyone is well nourished, reasonably fit, and has easy and cheap access to front line medical care;
This may be possible in Mexico. But in the US? No way! Never going to happen. ^^
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Easy for you to say. Regardless the "protection" I have in place via the Family and Medical Leave Act [dol.gov], my boss will make sure I am unemployed if I don't work like a rented mule.
Do NOT give me the "Then get another job" speech. I don't have the income to support the family I have without a job more than a month. I refuse to gamble with the well being of my family. Right or wrong, that is the situation, and I am not even close to the only person in this position.
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Good think you're not unionized then.
How's that free, unfettered market working out for you now, eh? You'll get no sympathies from anyone, mule.
CDC (Score:2)
In this case, it's the Center for Disease Control, at least for Americans.
And in my opinion, just as important as slowing the infection to avoid overwhelming our hospitals, is also making sure the whole country isn't ill at once. It'd be a virtual petri dish, since you'd have a bunch of people spreading to the virus one another while their immune system is down, increasing the likelihood that it could mutate into something bad.
The Spanish Flu did the same thing. It was a mild flu that spread amongst a bunch
To build natural immunity in the population (Score:2)
If you can delay or slow the spread, you build natural immunity in the population the longer it is present.
Getting a vaccine any time soon is secondary pipe dream. We will develop large scale immunity faster than they will get vaccine deployed.
Resistance is futile (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't the dangerousness, it that no one has any resistance and everyone gets it at the same time. I work at a university and we are following our generic "epidemic" plan - no cases yet, but we would follow the same plan whether it was regular flu or the food service served bad fish for dinner, when 500+ people got sick at the same time in the same place it's a problem..
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You are correct. However, people don't get fired if they do something.
Scenario 1: A school closes down, then weeks later they get the swine flu. Well, the school can say they did what they could.
Scenario 2: A school doesn't close down and they get the swine flu. Complaints will flow in from angry parents about why the didn't *do* something. Heads could roll, etc.
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Dubious, this is projected to be the first pandemic in 50 years. They can't be too cautious.
This is H1N1 (Score:4, Interesting)
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H1N1 is the most common type of human influenza. It causes a large proportional of seasonal flu illnesses. It happens to include both Spanish Flu and this new strain, as well as milder forms.
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It may only be dumb luck that is separating us from a killer of 10s of millions.
Or it may be math. The prestrain has to infect a huge quantity of people so that it can get reproduction events up to a high enough number that an improbable critical evil mutation becomes likely. Because if you roll the dice enough times...
BTW, there are 6 times as many humans as there were then so it has to 12% as infectious or at infectious parity the evil mutation is 36 times more likely. We move around about 100 times as much so... yeah, we've got about six weeks.
Somewhere in here Reverend Malthus
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While that may have helped with the secondary bacterial infections like pneumonia, antibiotics have no effect on the flu virus which also led to many of the deaths.
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Friend of mine told me the spanish flu came in 3 waves
wave 1 was weak and contagious.
wave 2 was strong and contagious.
wave 3 was virulent and contained itself by killing the host before it could spread.
Apparently, there were a lot of survivors of wave 3 among those who had gotten sick in wave 1 or 2.
I always thought that these contagions got weaker as they spread (or less likely to kill the host at least).
anyone have some good links about this particular subject? I googled but didn't find much.
I'm not worried. (Score:3, Funny)
I've already read World War Z [wikipedia.org], so I'm not worried -- I'm prepared.
You don't have to reload a blade.
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You don't have to reload a blade.
Yes, but after only a few uses of a blade, it will start to chip and break, and if you don't clean the blood off of it right away, it will make some serious pits in the metal.
A blade is a good thing to have, but should never be used as a primary weapon. Depending on the type of zombies you're facing, you may not even want them within your blade's reach (think of Boomers from Left 4 Dead, or other zombies where bodily fluid contact is a very bad thing).
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Good thing. Zack may already be on its way...
http://boingboing.net/2009/04/08/gentleman-in-new-orl.html [boingboing.net]
Fear Mongering for Sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Swine flu may have been caught early enough to prevent a serious U.S. epidemic, according to computer models developed by Virginia Tech's Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory (NDSSL).
So why is this Slashdot story claiming:
"Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week"
So is the author just panicking unnecessarily or is this another case of using fear tactics to push an agenda, in this case boosting sales of a flu detection chip?
Re:Fear Mongering for Sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better, the blog author's "source" is the article on EETimes written by ...the blog author.
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I designed a parallel PCR detection system for that is definitive, more sensitive, faster, and a hell of a lot cheaper. I'll bet a lot of other people have, too. If higher resolution is needed, then you could simply couple it with a pyrosequencer. There are many ways to skin this cat.
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I am beginning to think the entire swine flu thing is fear mongering. This flu sounds a lot like what went through my dialysis center in Feb. (I live in Idaho.) My guess is this flu has already spread through the US, it just isn't nearly the issue here because we have better medical care.
It sucked pretty bad and a lot of people got really sick. However, most of the people there are already old and have serious kidney problems, so take that into account. I think it caused serious long term complications fo
Revelance to summary. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Revelance to summary. (Score:5, Informative)
First link seems like astroturfing. A better link would of been [NDSSL @ Virgina Tech], where the research is being done.
Have.
Fucking HAVE.
No big deal... (Score:4, Informative)
I really don't understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I really don't understand (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I really don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but the problem with that is that the actual mortality rate from the epicenter of this "epidemic" is going down as better information comes out. It seems like we got an anti-sars. We got a flood of bad information but openly presented.
Rolan P. is the Undead!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the boogey man du jour. Got to sell those newspapers and that ad space!
TFA is a prime example of this.
The summary first links to a blog[ad space] that links to the real article[more ad space]. The real article is also written by the author of said blog.
I will give credit for the real article being an interesting read, but why not go straight to the real article in the first place?
To top that off, the second link(also a blog) in the 'fine' article is an astroturf piece for some data mining company that's whining that WHO, CDC, and one other organization are not buying his company's services and software, and pushing an international tracking system that his company 'deserves' to be part of.[his word]
The whole point of this story was to increase adviews on two websites by the same guy, and push an astroturf on another blog.
We used to blast Roland P. for this until he finally stopped. Then shortly died...Hmmm....
There are a small handful of web sites I whitelist in Adblock+, but this crap is one of the main reasons I don't feel bad about using it in the first place.
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Flu season kills more than this strain will.
How the hell do you know that? The spread of this flu has just begun.
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Then why do we have 36,000 people a year dying from it? That's a hundred people a day (on average).
For a lot of reasons. One, the vaccine is not perfect, some years they get the strain wrong and you got a shot for nothing. Two, a lot of people don't get the flu shot, be it shortages of vaccines, cost, or the general pain of getting a shot. Three, a lot of flu deaths occur whenever the elderly are infected with the flu, and any moderately severe sickness can cause the same effects, its just that flu mutates so often and is so common that its the most typical sickness that would cause death. Four, the fl
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Who do you think those numbers are for? They aren't intended for the layman. They are for other health agencies and governments. It's like the richter scale or the meteor destruction scale - yes, the bigger numbers are scarier, and the news media loves reporting them, but most people have no fucking clue what they mean.
It's not like the Security alert colors - there are actual criteria used in determining the pandemic level. and they were designed to let health officials make plans and then translate tha
Three steps to profit (Score:4, Funny)
2. Wait for a disaster
3. Shout from the roof top, "I warned! I warned!!".
4. ...
5. Profit!
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Flu Chips? (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks for the hype, moron (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not saying the disease isn't serious, but will someone please beat some sense into the fearmonger who cut/pasted this shitty summary together? It makes my eyes hurt just to read it, and stinks of someone trying to drive up their blog's hit count.
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This is off the top of my head, but, If you create a chip that matches X and it changes to Y (more deadly) it misses. Also, If you are too non-specific in the match, it falses on almost everything.
I think that it is a boondoggle to give money to the bio-chip companies who in turn make big political donations, I would guess.
soooo hot (Score:4, Funny)
2009 H1N1 flu virus
Colloquially known as the heinie virus of 2009.
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I thought it was "The Flu Formerly Known As Swine".
Source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Source, please? Otherwise it's just more overblown panic-inducing hype. Neither the linked article, or the article it links to say this. In fact, the second article says "So far, we haven't even identified the incubation period or how long people are infectious," and if that's the case I don't see how any computer model could be accurate.
Haven't you heard? (Score:2)
It's not a PROVEN epidemic until people have died or are veggetized. WHO cares about Veratect's anecdotal rumor of an epidemic? WHO's not on first!
Headline... (Score:5, Funny)
Cluster Computer Predicts Cluster Fuck For Clustered People.
Film at 11.
My Plan (Score:5, Funny)
Just use the Kermack-McKendrick model (Score:2)
(Yeah, like anybody studies differential equations anymore...lazy young whippersnappers with your supercomputers...I just hope the mortality curve on this pandemic follows the 1918 model, har, har, har...and get off my lawn...)
Not a Pandemic (Score:2)
I'm sorry you were saying?
Is a pandemic really something to be worried about (Score:3, Insightful)
People seem to panic when they hear the word pandemic. What people are not realizing is the true definition of a pandemic. It is simply a disease or sickness that is prevalent around the globe. The swine flu can go panemic, and may not kill very many people.
It seems that most people (with the exception of the 1 child in Texas that was visiting from Mexico) show relatively mild symptoms, and recover fairly quickly from this. You need to ask yourself why numerous people in Mexico die from this, and virtual no one else outside of Mexico are affected other than a few mild symptoms? (My city has around 20 cases, all have recovered at home, or are recovering, nobody hospitalized). There are a few possibilities, 1. Mexico is a third world nation and doesn't have the level of health care that US, Canada, Europe, etc have, 2. The virus may have mutated to a more mild version, 3. Mexicans have a genetic weakness to this influenza.
The media and the WHO seem to be panicing over this, but if this is a more mild form and spreads easily, why not test our defences against a true pandemic such as H5N1 that kills virtually 100% of people who contract it? This is a great way to see if we're ready to battle a pandemic.
I for one am not scared... then again the first wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu was mild, 2nd and 3rd waves killed 100 million world wide...
Re:Is a pandemic really something to be worried ab (Score:2)
Also the pollution in and around Mexico city. Various reports on respiratory problems in Mexico city say things like 8-20% higher cases of asthma and respiratory related deaths. That might have something to do with why this flu killed so many people there and in the mountains to the east.
Re:why just schools? (Score:5, Funny)
Children are good carriers. Kill the children, it's the only way for humanity to survive.
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How long after we kill the children would one have to wait to use the old "repopulating the Earth" line to get women in bed? I ask merely out of curiosity.
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About a good minute or so with plenty of soap and running water, no more than three and that's if you're up to the elbows.
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Kill the children, it's the only way for humanity to survive.
Nah. Older people who drive cars use far more resources, produce far more toxic byproducts, and have a much greater effect on the climate change that tends to be a driving factor for these pandemics. Humanity is much more likely to survive if we kill them (er, us) instead. Besides, older people have less to lose.
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Re:why just schools? (Score:5, Interesting)
And a percentage drop in population corresponds to a very real percentage drop in total GDP. Fewer consumers, fewer producers, and slowed growth and achievement.
I've read on Reddit and some other sites some extreme comments, one was along the lines of, "Would it really be that bad if two billion people died?" Yes. Complete meltdown of the social order. That doesn't mean, yay "The caste system in India will be abolished." Yes, there are still prejudices in India against people of the lower caste. No, it means "Fallout (the game) style anarchy, city states and guns for hire... yay?"
Here's the thing, there are entirely reasonable responses, and irrational responses to this crisis. Reasonable responses are like the closing of a school when several students are confirmed to have the virus, or expensive testing of hospital staff for the virus, or even, if a major outbreak occurs, closing down public venues.
Why is this reasonable? Because the moral and economic cost of a widespread pandemic that kills millions or billions of people far outweighs the paltry economic cost of closing down... a school, or a mall. And if it becomes a pandemic, and thousands or hundreds of thousands are known to be infected in a major city, it's for the good of the rest of the nation and the world at large to limit the spread of the disease and close borders and limit travel. Because to do otherwise is insanity. This isn't like throwing billions of dollars at "terrorism" and fighting an ideology, a battle that can't be won. Fighting disease is something we can, and have defeated in the past. Come on, we've damn near wiped out polio, and we actually defeated smallpox.
This is money absolutely well spent. If even 1% of people get this, and 1% of those people die, that's nearly a million deaths. If either of those figures grows by an order of magnitude, it's death on the scale of the Holocaust. And you wouldn't argue that the industrial engine of the Nazi regime is more valuable than their lives, would you?
P.S.: You got Godwined.
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uhm no. You did not Godwin the previous poster. You did it to yourself.
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And if it becomes a pandemic, and thousands or hundreds of thousands are known to be infected in a major city...
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Just hope that it doesn't feed on nuclear energy, like the Andromeda Strain does.
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You know, this has all happened before. What's the worst that can happen ?
Well this is what happened last time : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu [wikipedia.org]
In short : 1/20 of the people who were infected died of the infection. This is a number that is too simplified : just about every baby infected died, as did just about every infected person over 75. Least affected were people between 5 and 20 years old.
Worldwide, the pandemic killed about 1% of the population. This totaled about 100 million people. The numb
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Healthily.
You eat healthily.
You sing lovelily.
You act sillily.
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The CDC has 141 confirmed cases of Swine Flu. Of those, 1 death has been recorded, in an infant in Texas who already had serious medical complications.
With 20,000 to 30,000 dying yearly of flu complications in the U.S., 1 death is hardly a significant statistic, and certainly not indicative of a pandemic. The WHO is, again, overreacting and fearmongering. The CDC has the most reliable information on the topic for Americans - not sure what equivalent other countries have. I certainly hope you're not relying
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>And a percentage drop in population corresponds to a very real percentage drop in total GDP. Fewer consumers, fewer producers, and slowed growth and achievement.
But GDP per capita will raise and that's a good thing (for the survivors). Each individual will get more eventually.
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And a percentage drop in population corresponds to a very real percentage drop in total GDP. Fewer consumers, fewer producers, and slowed growth and achievement.
While that may be true, you forget the consequences. For centuries, economists have been arguing that a growing population is essential to a strong economy and culture. Well, that's as may be, but there's a limit to the number of people that the earth can support. Depending on behaviour, we are either fast approaching or have vastly exceeded this hard limit (where "hard limit" means not that the limit can't be moved, but that it exists and that when it's reached ecosystems (including people) start dying)
Re:why just schools? (Score:4, Insightful)
Expand to the stars, problem solved.
Lots of rocketships (Score:3, Insightful)
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Just to clarify, the earth has a finite limit on the number of humans it can support, but that number is based on a multitude of factors.
The most important of which is the geopolitical policies we have in place that influence the efficiency of our food distribution systems. Right now, we're pretty piss poor as the US has to much food, as do a lot of areas in europe. Most of africa has too little food, or devotes a much higher percentage of their GDP to food production because of the difficulty in farming in
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Fighting disease is something we can, and have defeated in the past. Come on, we've damn near wiped out polio, and we actually defeated smallpox.
Just a nitpick, but I really don't think you really can compare present disease with past disease like smallpox. We eradicated smallpox with vaccines, but that was before Wakefield's Epic Trolling and the fears that mercury/aluminum/formaldehyde/anything and everything in vaccines causes autism/cancer/AIDS/diabetes/criminal behavior (I shit you not, I once read something that claimed vaccines cause criminal behavior). If you were to try a widespread vaccination program today, like the one the WHO used to
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A few deaths are acceptable to keep the economy running. We're talking millions or billions of dollars of lost economic activity.
Are you quoting who? Dr. Strange Love?
Re:why just schools? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why just schools? (Score:4, Funny)
I think what you're trying to say here is that unless they declare martial law, closing schools and putting pressure on sporting event center owners is about all they can do to stem this. Unless you're President Madagascar (someone link to the image, thanks in advance)
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(someone link to the image, thanks in advance)
Um, on /. its not a good idea to ask for images... because most of the images on /. are Goatse, and I don't think you want Goatse, unless the President Madagascar is really the Goatse guy...
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My high-school son wants schools to close, too, and I don't think he's too worried about the pandemic.
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Civil and mechanical engineering are based entirely on models.
Some of the models reflect our best scientific understanding of the world. Some of them reflect ideas that have worked before and guessing (but this guessing is done very carefully).