Pop! Quiz: How are you protecting yourself against the swine flu?

I'm surprised they haven't blamed gays for bringing this epidemic to the world.  I guess they still have time though. Certainly I fear for my health but, I'm not going around wearing those masks. This disease can probably find it way into your body through your eyes, ears or skin pores. Shall we go around wearing a big bubble around us?

You can't find a surgical mask anywhere, all pharmacies have ran out of them, the soldiers nor the hospitals are distributing them in my state. I do fear for my health, because some symptoms started two days ago, I went to the hospital the day before yesterday, waited 5 ours for a consult, which I didn't get at the end. I guess you have to get there vomiting your guts out to get admitted. 

I think the media doesn't give us enough information, first they tell us that in Mexico 150+ people have died from the influenza, and now they tell us that they've only confirmed 7 deaths are certainly because of the influenza. Why did this happen? Apparently the rest of the people died of pneumonia, but as I understand, if you are infected and you don't get checked up in time, in the final state you'll end up getting pneumonia, broncopneumonia , laringitis and hearth complications leading eventually to death [according to a pamphlet the government distributed], so didn't they all die because of the H1N1 virus then if that's the true source? I truly don't understand what we are playing here. 

 

so far, i am not really alarmed. concerned, yes.

aside from the child who died in Texas, i feel if i were to show symptoms, i would be able to get treated. i only say that, because most of the deaths are in mexico (do they have a poor healthcare system??) and barely anyone has died in other places aside from there.

I’m from Argentina. Here there hasn’t been any confirmed case of swine flu yet. Although, there are several suspected cases of people who have the flu and have been in Mexico in the last few days but nothing has been confirmed yet (It’s autumn here, so we are in a flu season). At this point, all the flights from Mexico has been cancelled and there are thermal cameras in the airport analyzing the temperature of everybody who comes from abroad, and they have to answer a questionnaire about how they are feeling (if someone is feeling ill or have some temperature is been taken to an isolated area to be tested by physicians). But I think that for now I won’t be doing anything different of what I usually do in flu season (not mentioning that I’m already ending a flu).

 

I hope I didn’t make a lot of mistakes. But just in case, I apologize for my English.

people die of flu related complication every year in North America. The vulnerable one usually are the very young and the very old. Here in Toronto, most pharmacy run out of N95 masks. The same situation the last time with the Sars epidemic. Consumers do not usually buy this item so most pharmacy do not stock them. Even if they do only in small quantity. I'm a cynic, this is the case of wag the dog by some politicians and businesses to divert the attention from our current economy situation. And the media is more than happy to drum up fear for the public consumptions that translate to revenue increase.

...especially for us, is that it is occuring at a bad time of year.

School is still in, which raises the likelihood of child-child and child-parent cross infection. For LGBT folks another issue is that we're coming into a busy season of Pride parades and circuit parties where you will have literally hordes of people travelling from all over to congregate in large, densely-packed, heavy contact groups. If nothing else we, as a demographic, greet each other via kissing more than any group except maybe the French. So that only adds to the problem. At the same time, there's a lot of other major large crowd holidays and events coming up, plus sports seasons are ramping up and stadium crowds are great places to spread a serious contagion.

It's really an especially bad time for this. Hope they figure out the vaccine and mass-produce quickly.

I just hope this doesn't go on for very long, as I'm leaving for South Korea in August to teach...  The last thing I need is for my visa to be denied because of a pig flu...

 

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Chuckles!

Same as my neighbors.   There's been no reported cases in our state, and no one around us is sick.

We went to a Wildlife exhibit last Saturday that for some reason a lot of non-Mississippi people, even non-Southerners, had come down for.  One of the Yankees was wearing a surgical mask. That's the first I've seen.