Tuesday night, i got scared about swine flu again.
When we went to Jake's kindergarten orientation, the school administrators said--'H1N1 is coming for sure, so we're implementing a rigorous handwashing program this year,' his hands wringing with palpable nervousness. E-gad! Has swine flu become a pandemic right under my nose? Have i not been paying enough attention to the news? Or are the administrators just transmitting unsubstantiated paranoia?
I wanted to get to the bottom of this H1N1 thing....I found this great video at LiveScience that set me straight. Please visit this link and watch!
http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=LS_090428_pandemic
According to Dr. Siegel, it seems public scares (including SARS and mad cow disease in 2003, bird flu in 1997, and swine flu for the first time in 1976, just to name a few) have become more frequent while pandemics themselves may not be more frequent. Public scares are drummed up by the media, being hand-fed by the CDC. It's easy enough to vilify the media--historically, they make a good target due to their tendency to propagate amoral sensationalism--and the government to boot for feeding this underhanded strategy. Why would they trick us into thinking that 40-60% of the population (
compared to 5-20% normally) might get sick this flu season when it has a near equal chance of not happening?
When imagining the worst situation possible, a lot of people think back to the 1918 spanish flu pandemic--where over 500,000 people in the US died in one flu season. What if this extra virulent strain of flu hit us today! Catastrophe! True, spanish flu was horrific. But, many medical advances like antibiotics and antiviral drugs and steroids have been made since then. If the 1918 flu happened today, it would have killed many, many less people.
Though our current health care system is far better equipped for pandemics, do the dangers of passing disease though airtravel balance tip the scales the other way? Theoretically, diseases are more quickly spread if people are more quickly shuffled from one geographic area to another. Theoretically. To my knowledge, there is no strong scientific evidence that airtravel significantly affects the spread of a pandemic. Airtravel can bring a virus into the region, but local factors like sanitation and health practices are what make a virus fly into a pandemic. Thus, it is simply handwashing and staying at home are the most important things to do. If you have to get on a plane, just wash your hands a lot.
That's where the government and media kick in. How do you make sure people wash their hands incessantly? Scare them. Gets people's attention. Keeps them safer than they would be if they weren't scared.
But we are being lied to! You complain. But, you could also argue--it's for our own good.
The organizations that are making public health decisions are operating with
incomplete information. No virologist or epidemiologist really knows how to effectively combat a rapidly mutating virus like H1N1. No one really knows for sure how pandemics work.
But, the one thing we do know for sure is that the simple strategies of handwashing and taking sick days goes a long way. So, after being educated on the subject, i realize that's what we must do--the same thing that the government and the school administrators recommend.
But, now that i am educated, thankfully, i no longer have to be scared.
