Where is the evidence it is? CFR is lower in Brazil. First link shows that.
I’n not entirely sure, but my skeptiscism leads me to believe this might be some kind of political cover for our government’s faliure to make the required investment in order to have the right vaccine at the right time.
If national focus were put on this failure, it would surely be the death knell of the socialized health care agenda.
I think the free market would have responded to this virus much more effectively and efficiently than government did.
[taking the first place from the United States]
C’mon people, are we going to stand for that? USA..USA...USA /s
mmmmmm - Turkeys in Chile - please pass the salsa.......
I’m sure BO will tell us so.
Flue viruses are constantly mutating into stronger and weaker strains. “Random walk” or “flip the coin” models can often replicate the process.
When a very weak strain appears, it tends to spread widely among a population since its victims don’t stay at home in the bed, but rather they circulate widely and infect others.
Conversely, when a very strong strain develops, it tends to spread slowly since its victims are bedridden or even dead before they can infect a lot of their friends and neighbors.
Therefore, the development of lethal flu viruses is normally a self-limiting process.
The deadliness of the 1918 virus is explained in large measure by (1) the conditions in crowded military barracks and hospitals where the normal self-limiting process was nullified and (2) secondary bacterial infections. Such conditions are unlikely to be repeated in today’s USA.
Therefore, even if a highly lethal variety of H1N1 develops in a relatively backward part of Brazil, it’s not likely to sweep the USA or other countries that have good health infrastructures.
Add to the above factors the availability of a vaccine that will be at least partially effective against H1N1, and then I think the probability becomes vanishingly small that a lethal “swine flu” pandemic will come to the USA during the 2009-2010 flu season.
But that is TINY compared to their population of 187 MILLION.
At that rate, we will have only 1057 deaths total in the US through the worst of our coming flu season.
That's a far cry from the 36,000 they say that die each year from normal flu, or the 90,000 they say will die here from H1N1.
For ALL of South America, through their winter season so far, (that's equivalent to March 3rd here), they have had only 4 deaths per million people.
This is a manufactured pandemic/crisis.
This administration is desperate for an emergency.