Somebody really has to come up with a plausible explanation pretty soon. The swine flu scare spreading the globe, exploited by media like nothing before, is starting to become ridiculous – is it dangerous or not? Should we be worried or not? On the 11th June 2009, the World Health Organization declared a swine flu pandemic. Today Britain announces it could see 100,000 cases of swine flu in August – per day!
From Telegraph: Cases of swine flu ‘could top 100,000 a day by August’
Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said that an almost doubling of cases over the past seven days had prompted the Government to move to the third and final “treatment” stage of dealing with the outbreak.
A specially convened meeting of Cobra, the Government’s emergencies committee, was warned that cases could reach 100,000 a day by late August.
Although he insisted that this was merely a “projection” if the virus continues to spread at its current rate, Mr Burnham added: “The pressure on the system is such that it is the right time to take this step”.
The projection raises the possibility that millions of people will have had the virus even before the start of the traditional flu season.
So should we worry or not?
From Reuters:
He said the number of confirmed cases of the virus known as swine flu is doubling every week, putting pressure on health services.
“We have always known it would be impossible to contain the virus indefinitely and that at some point we would have to move away from containment to treating the increasing numbers falling ill,” he said.
The World Health Organization declared on June 11 that the outbreak of the virus was a pandemic. More than 77,000 people have been infected worldwide.
Most people who have caught the infection have only suffered mild symptoms, but in a small minority it has proven more severe, with three deaths in Britain so far.
The first doses of a pandemic flu vaccine would arrive in Britain by the end of August, with 60 million doses available by the end of the year, enough for 30 million people, or about half the population.
Health officials will make it a priority to provide antiviral medications to the most vulnerable, and will abandon efforts to trace people who have been in contact with flu sufferers.
Health authorities also will no longer compile daily updates on the number of new cases, with estimates of the general spread being issued instead.
Thre are 7,447 confirmed H1N1 flu cases in Britain, with infections spreading fastest in the southwest, the east, the east Midlands and in London, which all saw more than a threefold increase over the past week.
Wait a minute, what? Doubling every week? No more daily updates on the number of new cases? Estimates of the general spread? By the end of the year half the world will have been infected with swine flu. And then what?
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