Pig aids hits the UK
This outbreak started in Mexico where, at the time of writing this around 2000 people are suspect to be infected and so far there have been 149 deaths.
We're used to hearing these things, remember SARS? They said we were all going to die from that, turns out you had an 80% chance of survival, the cure was to get plenty of rest, drink plenty of water and eat chicken soup. Bird flu never happened. In Thailand, Indonesia, China and a few other countries the virus did spread to human but it didn't turn in to a pandemic, not say bird flu doesn't still have the potential too.
So, when I heard about swine flu first off I thought, "same old media hype" but after following the news over the last 24 hours it's got my attention a bit. To start off with, H1N1 differs to bird flu H5N1 slightly, the main difference being that it can be passed from human to human through contact, which makes crowded areas a risk.
Secondly and more importantly, bird flu never made it to the UK (apart from one dead swan) but pig aids has, it's also affected over 100 people in the US. I'm not sure what the gestation period is for H1N1 but if it's anything like other strains of influenza then it's you could potentially be un-symptomatic and traveling from Mexico and the US to anywhere in the world ...including the UK.
So, we could now have many more infectious travelers wandering around the streets of the UK, of course most people fly in the the UK through one of London's airports and interact with the staff there. London is also the busiest and most crowded city in the UK which relies heavily on packing people in to public transport - the perfect place for infection to spread.
So being in London has added to the reasons why I am taking pig aids a little bit more seriously than previous scares. Also, I mean clearly I'm no expert, have a GCSE in basket weaving and that's about it but these strains of influenza are pretty serious with a high fatality rate. The symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, conjunctivitis, and, in severe cases, breathing problems and pneumonia which could be fatal.
These are usually the symptoms but because a virus needs to mutate from it's animal strain to get a grip on a human, it means that the symptoms of the mutated virus can vary. With bird flu the mortality rate in humans, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) is 60%. The biggest factor which affects your survival rate is how strong your immune system is, so the very old and the very young are at high risk.
So it doesn't sound good but, this was headline news yesterday and it hasn't exploded over night. Of those affected in Mexico only around 10% have died (so far), the US cases have so far resulted in no deaths and the two people in the UK who were affected are doing OK in hospital. So it looks like, as the virus is spreading it is getting weaker - which is quite common for a virus.
So in the next few days, as long us the death toll doesn't rise too much then it's probably not going to become a pandemic. On the other hand I could be wrong and the potentially hundreds of infected people could be walking around and spreading the outbreak further.
If things go the other way, I think with in a week or two we could see the government banning public gathering and events and possibly suspending public transport in affected areas.
In the last hour WHO have raised their alert level to 4, the maximum is 6 and at that point we'd all be collapsing all over the place right now. In the UK, we are supposed to be one of the best prepared countries for a pandemic, we have a massive stockpile of anti-viral drugs including everyone's favourite Tamiflu. If you're old and that and you've had your regular seasonal flu jab, that won't save you - different strains, different vaccinations.
The advice people are giving is wash your hands lots, don't touch your eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands and quite surprisingly the UK government are also saying to avoid travel to Mexico and the US and to avoid public crowded places. My advice would be to get a little pocket-sized pot of alcohol hand sanitizer and use it when you've been outdoors and avoid public transport, there's nothing worse than being stuck in a train with coughing and sneezing people.
Also, like with others flus keep your vitamin C levels high, eat loads of oranges and drink orange juice, makes sure your immune system is strong and ready to fight the filthy pig aids germs.
A couple of things I'm not sure about, how contagious is H1N1 when it's airborne? Do the face masks you see everyone wearing in the news actually do anything? If you know, let me know by adding a comment below.
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