Well, this swine flu crisis seems to be calming down

[Ripeberry]

Its been almost 3 days with NO mention of swine flu on the news. Is it already so 'old news' ?
Just worried they will suddenly come back on the news and say the death toll has jumped to 100 or more!

I hope that people lying are doing so in order to stockpile rather than to take it for a slight cold. Still wrong, but not so potentially harmful.

but two weeks ago the death rate was still only at 29, which is neglidgeable compared to the 50000 new cases that were apparently diagnosed that week.

I think the problem with announcing the death rate is that with every new death there is increased panic, and invariably the actual causes of death aren't announced until several days later, by which time all people know is that "a gp/six year old have died" and have already worked themselves up into a frenzy.

deaths not being reported should be of comfort to people - it's when deaths start being reported on a daily basis that people should start to worry IMO.

I have some tamiflu. I was "diagnosed" with swine flu two weeks ago. I was fairly ill, but whether it was sf or not we really will never know. But the gp said at the time that they basically have to diagnose everyone with more than two symptoms with sf and prescribe tamiflu. But although I (well dh actually as i wasn't allowed) collected the prescription, I didn't take them as I read that the side-effects are pretty horrible, and tbh I could have done without those on top of the other symptoms I had.

So wonder how much they will fetch on ebay when stocks start to run low.

I can see the argument for not announcing the deaths until they can also release the cause of death. However, I don't agree that deaths not being reported is reassuring - well, only if they make it clear that they are not reporting them because there aren't any! Have there really not been any for two weeks? If so that's great and they should be saying so more clearly.
I am pregnant and a lot of the advice to pregnant women from various bodies has been quite extreme - avoiding unnecessary travel etc - which is why I want to see the figures and make up my own mind.

I start the bidding at 50p

Ha ha, you've jinxed it now! I predict sudden resurgence before Friday.

think the panic is due to the fact that it seems to be little ones affected the worse rather than the elderly who account for a large proportion of flu realted deaths from normal flu. I'm sure there's a huge amount of misdiagnosis, however given SF attacks the respiritory system and my daughter had such huge problems breathing and was diagnosed as having flu along with a flu induced wheeze by a doctor in A&E I'm fairly certain we've had it.

Plus I was examined by GP on Friday in mask etc at dreaded flu clinic and she said I definately had flu and a secondary chest infection and fluid on the lung, am improving now.

Wish they could swob though as it's extremely hard to diagnose due to how it affects different people differently attacking their weak spots. I was absolutely knocked off my feet have never felt so ill and never had such a high temperature even with all mannor of pain killers, just starting to feel human again 8 days later.

My eldest had what was like an accute asthma attack early on with it but my youngest had what just seemed like could be any nasty virus and wasn't deperately poorly. My husband didn't get it at all!

p.s there is a pregnant lady from Scotland on life support in Sweden with it as she's having a special procedure carried out on her blood which cant be done here. A lady of 51 died last week who had swine flu although not sure how it was diagnosed but not sure if that was cause of death. I know cos I was petrified I'd be next felt so ill x

I've kept away from the SF threads so far but I agree Wannabe, the way it is being managed is crazy. I don't believe the incidence figures for a minute.

Kathy - the HPA publish figures on their website every Thursday relating to swine flu.

Many thanks, TheWolf.

but do they publish a running total of deaths every year from seasonal flu? (which amount to thousands fwiw). Because if not there is no more reason to publish deaths from swine flu than from regular flu.

The reason why it affects younger people is because the flu from previous pandemic was a similar strain, hence more older people have some immunity to it already. Which is why it could be argued that it is better to catch it now while it is still relatively weak, and build immunity to it so that if it mutates into a stronger virus, those who have already had it will be less affected by it.

yeah I know why it affects the young more, and I know its better to get it early if you have to have it have read all that, just hard to feel grateful when you feel so ill and have seen your kids so ill!

There's always been quite a bit on news in winter about normal flu, flu clinics and flu jabs just don't think we noticed it as much. This is a wierd flu cos it strives on heat that's why it's been so much worse in Australia and is hitting all through the summer.

Wannabe - people with flu generally don't die from it - they die from pneumonia/meningitis/heart attacks. Because flu overwhelms your immune system and then the bacterial infections get to have a 'go'. So any flu mortality stats are flawed in that it's not necessarily noted as influenza on the death certs.

I have quite a few ill relatives both in this country and Australia and frankly, the version that's doing the rounds in Australia does seem to be much worse (unless they are more wussy of course).

you're right whomovedmychocolate that's why I'm so glad I realised I'd got a chest infection as well as flu and got strong antibiotics, just bit paranoid about getting pneumonia but hopefully unlikely as improving now x

By the way, in the HPA figures from last week here they actually shrunk the numbers of deaths as some have been found not to be swine flu after all - it's now 26, which is less than the 29 reported the other week.

The other thing I found quite reassuring was comparing the number of deaths with the number of hospitalisations - 26/840. Given how sick you would have to be to go to hospital, this is quite a small fraction.

that's good news, I read that it's spreading fast but due to decline in deaths and serious illness they think it's getting milder rather than mutating and getting more evil