H1N1

Bookworm · Post by **Bookworm** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 11:19 pm

Are we getting too hyped about this particular flu, or are we not being concerned enough?

Do you know of anyone who has gotten H1N1? My niece just wrote in her blog today that her youngest child has a fever and tightness in her chest, and the doctors are treating her with the assumption that is is H1N1 without even testing.

Are you planning on getting vaccinated for H1N1? My family has never taken any of the seasonal flu vaccines and we won't be taking the H1N1 either. Besides, my wife reads a lot of sites like the following that turn her off to vaccinations.
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sf1.html

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Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 1:15 am

Hyped. Absolutely hyped.

I got my seasonal flu shot with no ill effects (as expected). I will probably get the H1N1 vaccine too.

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Stasi · Post by **Stasi** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 2:36 am

Bookworm wrote: Are we getting too hyped about this particular flu, or are we not being concerned enough?

Do you know of anyone who has gotten H1N1? My niece just wrote in her blog today that her youngest child has a fever and tightness in her chest, and the doctors are treating her with the assumption that is is H1N1 without even testing.

Are you planning on getting vaccinated for H1N1? My family has never taken any of the seasonal flu vaccines and we won't be taking the H1N1 either. Besides, my wife reads a lot of sites like the following that turn her off to vaccinations.
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sf1.html

Too bad your wife actually believes the kind of fearmongering you linked to. It's funny because the author says that the cause of the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by vaccinations, though flu vaccines didn't exist until the 1940s. Also, her assertion that the smallpox vaccine causes various other secondary conditions isn't supported by the scientific/historic literature on it. It's sad how some people seem to actually want to believe the fearmongering.

I've never gone in for flu vaccinations, not because I think it's a part of a conspiracy, just because I've never felt the need. As for whether or not the H1N1 thing is being overhyped, I believe it is. However, I can understand public health officials, whose job it is to try and avoid catastrophic epi/pandemics, and their zealous efforts.

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manadren · Post by **manadren** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 6:11 am

Stasi wrote:
Bookworm wrote: Are we getting too hyped about this particular flu, or are we not being concerned enough?

Do you know of anyone who has gotten H1N1? My niece just wrote in her blog today that her youngest child has a fever and tightness in her chest, and the doctors are treating her with the assumption that is is H1N1 without even testing.

Are you planning on getting vaccinated for H1N1? My family has never taken any of the seasonal flu vaccines and we won't be taking the H1N1 either. Besides, my wife reads a lot of sites like the following that turn her off to vaccinations.
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sf1.html

Too bad your wife actually believes the kind of fearmongering you linked to. It's funny because the author says that the cause of the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by vaccinations, though flu vaccines didn't exist until the 1940s. Also, her assertion that the smallpox vaccine causes various other secondary conditions isn't supported by the scientific/historic literature on it. It's sad how some people seem to actually want to believe the fearmongering.

I've never gone in for flu vaccinations, not because I think it's a part of a conspiracy, just because I've never felt the need. As for whether or not the H1N1 thing is being overhyped, I believe it is. However, I can understand public health officials, whose job it is to try and avoid catastrophic epi/pandemics, and their zealous efforts.

I skimmed through a bit of the parent article. I gather this particular woman is so against vaccines because she is against the germ theory of disease. As such she believes that doctors that subscribe to the germ theory (the vast majority) are confused and using reckless guesswork in treating patients.

Anyway, I don't want to just attack the argument without putting anything forward. Wired actually has an article about the anti-vaccine movement that actually gets the science correct for the most part.

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

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Stasi · Post by **Stasi** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:03 am

Interesting article. The reader comments were interesting, too. When I worked the night shift, I spent many a night on my weekends with the TV on just for background noise. I caught many an infomercial, including those with Kevin Trudeau selling his books that supposedly present cures and health secrets that the pharmaceutical industry and FDA don't want you to know about, charlatans selling their colon cleansers, and other miscellaenous panaceas like seaweed supplements. It's interesting that with as much good information as is out there, the bad information holds such influence on people's opinions. I enjoyed this paragraph of the article:

The rejection of hard-won knowledge is by no means a new phenomenon. In 1905, French mathematician and scientist Henri Poincaré said that the willingness to embrace pseudo-science flourished because people “know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether illusion is not more consoling.” Decades later, the astronomer Carl Sagan reached a similar conclusion: Science loses ground to pseudo-science because the latter seems to offer more comfort. “A great many of these belief systems address real human needs that are not being met by our society,” Sagan wrote of certain Americans’ embrace of reincarnation, channeling, and extraterrestrials. “There are unsatisfied medical needs, spiritual needs, and needs for communion with the rest of the human community.”

I think part of it, too, is a general lack of critical thinking skills and a tendancy for some people to overreact in favor of convincingly constructed scenarios in which something they have taken for granted is actually at least partly the cause of the problem it's supposed to solve.

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Chyse · Post by **Chyse** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:39 am

it's hyped. I kind of want to get H1N1 just so I can laugh about it. It's such a bunch of BS imo, the media is bored and has nothing else to report on. Something like 5x more people die per year from normal flu than swine flu has killed in the past three years.
How to stop the swine flu: If you've got a cold+fever+nausea, see a doctor. Done.

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manadren · Post by **manadren** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 3:17 pm

Chyse wrote: it's hyped. I kind of want to get H1N1 just so I can laugh about it. It's such a bunch of BS imo, the media is bored and has nothing else to report on. Something like 5x more people die per year from normal flu than swine flu has killed in the past three years.
How to stop the swine flu: If you've got a cold+fever+nausea, see a doctor. Done.

I agree to some extent. Swine flu is the flu, it's a little worse than the regular flu, but nothing to panic over. That said, the regular flu kills people, and that's why it's important for certain high risk groups to get vaccinated. That's a big part of the reason the medical community declared a pandemic, to unlock resources needed to stem the spread and protect those who are at risk. Most people don't need to rush out and get vaccinated though. It's still a good idea though (at least once the fervor dies down and vaccines are more readily available), because there are those who can't get vaccines, and sometimes the vaccine doesn't take. For those people, the best defense is herd immunity, that enough people are immune to the virus that it can't spread very well.

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Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 3:52 pm

I work at the Hospital and I can agree, it is very hyped. The issue with that is it's filling up the ER and people with legit issues have to wait longer.

The #1 way to prevent it is to just wash your hands.

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scherzo · Post by **scherzo** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:36 pm

There is too much hype to the point that it almost a joke. Dr's remind us however this hasn't passed and there is no way to tell if this is the one.

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Bookworm · Post by **Bookworm** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:57 pm

Stasi wrote: Too bad your wife actually believes the kind of fearmongering you linked to. It's funny because the author says that the cause of the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by vaccinations, though flu vaccines didn't exist until the 1940s. Also, her assertion that the smallpox vaccine causes various other secondary conditions isn't supported by the scientific/historic literature on it. It's sad how some people seem to actually want to believe the fearmongering.

And my wife would say that it's sad that there is a hush-hush attitude in the medical community about the dangers of vaccinations. By the way, the fact that flu vaccines didn't exist until the forties would not refute the article, since the article talked about the yellow fever vaccine and a diptheria vaccine which did exist earlier.

Also, the mercury content in vaccines is a concern to my wife. Would it be fearmongering to have a concern about mercury?

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manadren · Post by **manadren** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:00 am

Bookworm wrote:
Stasi wrote: Too bad your wife actually believes the kind of fearmongering you linked to. It's funny because the author says that the cause of the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by vaccinations, though flu vaccines didn't exist until the 1940s. Also, her assertion that the smallpox vaccine causes various other secondary conditions isn't supported by the scientific/historic literature on it. It's sad how some people seem to actually want to believe the fearmongering.

And my wife would say that it's sad that there is a hush-hush attitude in the medical community about the dangers of vaccinations. By the way, the fact that flu vaccines didn't exist until the forties would not refute the article, since the article talked about the yellow fever vaccine and a diptheria vaccine which did exist earlier.

Also, the mercury content in vaccines is a concern to my wife. Would it be fearmongering to have a concern about mercury?

Yes

And here why:

1) The mercury found in vaccines is ethyl mercury, which has not been found to accumulate in the body like methyl mercury does. When you hear about people with mercury poisoning, generally they're talking about methyl mercury. Unless you are ingesting large amounts, ethyl mercury will just get filtered out of your system by the usual means.

2) If you could be injured by the minuscule amount of mercury in a vaccine, you'd be dead already, because frankly we are ingesting small amounts of mercury all the time in the food we eat and water we drink. But as with anything else, the poison is not in the toxin itself, but the dosage.

3) There is no hush-hush attitude about the dangers of vaccines. The reason the medical community isn't talking about the dangers of vaccination is because it's safe. Also the information is all out there, but the antivaxers just don't want to look at it... that or it's all part of the conspiracy. Yes there is a danger of vaccines to certain very isolated groups of people, but publicizing that is like publicizing peanut allergies. People with violent reactions to peanuts generally know to avoid that nuttybar, and so do their doctors.

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Stasi · Post by **Stasi** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:42 am

Bookworm wrote: And my wife would say that it's sad that there is a hush-hush attitude in the medical community about the dangers of vaccinations. By the way, the fact that flu vaccines didn't exist until the forties would not refute the article, since the article talked about the yellow fever vaccine and a diptheria vaccine which did exist earlier.

You're correct, she doesn't specify that it was a flu vaccine that caused the pandemic - my mistake. In any case, she explicity states that the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was caused by vaccinations:

However, one thing is certain — the 1918 Spanish Influenza was a vaccine-induced disease caused by extreme body poisoning from the conglomeration of many different vaccines.

How could a yellow fever or diptheria vaccine, or both, be responsible for a flu pandemic? She says on the same page (re: the 1976 flu epidemic at Fort Dix):

To add to the confusion, the doctors tell the people that there are a lot of various kinds of flu; the one which the soldiers at Fort Dix had was AVictoria flu, there are other strains of flu virus, and also, that the swine flu vaccine which so many people have taken already will not protect them against the many other types of flu. This will be used as an "out" in case of law suits later on when more casualties begin to show up. The doctors will say that the vaccine failed because it was the wrong kind of flu for the vaccine. Of course, no one can prove it one way or the other because viruses are illusive, invisible organisms which are unstable and unpredictable. One dictionary definition of virus is "a morbid poison." The vaccines injected into the body are poison and cause the typical poison reactions. Virus (poison) does not fly around and attack people.

Also:

Therefore, there will be no swine flu epidemic unless the vaccine promoters make one like they did in the 1918 flu epidemic. It will not kill 20,000,000 people unless the people submit to the disease-producing shots. There are also, other causes of disease besides vaccines, such as bad food, which has been devitalized and contaminated with poison preservatives and artificial drug concoctions. There are many more causes of disease but no diseases are contagious(See the chapter on the germ theory).

Based on her misunderstanding of viruses, the only way this flu pandemic could have happened, according her perspective, would be to infect people who received vaccines, since "no diseases are contagious".

Why would someone, in this day and age, based on what is known about disease, believe someone who doesn't believe that disease spreads? That goes against everything we know about bacterial and virus infections.

She says:

When I see people cringe when someone near them sneezes or coughs, I wonder how long it will take them to find out that they can’t catch it — whatever it is. The only way they can get a disease is to develop it themselves by wrong eating, drinking, smoking or doing some other things which cause internal poisoning and lowered vitality. All diseases are preventable and most of them are cureable with the right methods, not known to medical doctors, and not all drugless doctors know them either.

Furthermore, with as many people getting vaccinations as there are, based on her argument, we should many more epidemics than we do.

In her book, THE POISONED NEEDLE, regarding what causes epidemics (last section of chapter 10), she says:

Most people are over loaded with these infusions of blockade materials that cannot be utilized by the body. When some extra strain is put upon the vital forces such as sudden change in the weather, fatigue, fear, worry, wrong food etc., the body is unable to hold back the "bursting tide of accumulated waste" any longer and lets go—forces it out in a cleansing program, that usually lasts from 5 days to two weeks. Colds, eruptions, fevers, diarrhea and even paralysis are symptoms of this cleansing effort to rid the body of waste that has not been eliminated through the usual channels. People do not catch diseases from others who have it. All those who are ill built their own causes and the same stresses triggered off the "cleansing act" in all who had reached the saturation point of poisons.

She doesn't believe in bacterial or viral infections - bottom line. How can anyone think this woman is credible unless they also have such a primitive understanding of infectious agents and disease?

***edited to fix a link.

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Bookworm · Post by **Bookworm** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 3:24 pm

Stasi wrote: She doesn't believe in bacterial or viral infections - bottom line. How can anyone think this woman is credible unless they also have such a primitive understanding of infectious agents and disease?

Well stated post, Stasi. My wife would certainly admit to being able to get bacterial and viral infections, but she also sees the possibility of there being SOME truth to the idea of bodily reactions to various agents. The person who wrote my linked article may be more anti-medical-establishment than others, so perhaps I didn't find the best article to link to. I told my wife about this thread and asked her if she wanted to log into her account and post something, but she said she didn't want it to seem like she was trying to push her beliefs about this to other people.

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FloodG8-9595 · Post by **FloodG8-9595** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 9:16 am

I think most everything is hyped these days... I just try to take everything I hear with a grain of salt and do what I want to do based on whatever critera I care to use at the time.
I don't do vaccines... not becaues I believe it's a conspiracy but, because I feel it unnecissary for someone of my age and health.. I imagine it's the same for Stasi..

So yeah, way over hyped... and that woman was WAY over the top.

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Stasi · Post by **Stasi** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 9:56 am

The thing that bothers me is how many sites out there claiming that the vaccinations caused the 1918 pandemic link to, or quote this lady's books. I realize not all people who oppose vaccines do so on the basis of conspiracy theories or serious denial of the realities of disease (like this lady), but it sure seems like a lot of people there just don't want to think, and would rather let charlatans do it for them.

Yeah, I haven't gotten the flu in quite a while. I get a bad cold every now and then, but that's about it. I've thought about getting the flu shots this year, though, since my nephew is a little older and goes to a daycare most of the week, but just haven't decided....

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FloodG8-9595 · Post by **FloodG8-9595** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:00 am

I should add that I do advocate them for the elderly and the young... I haven't gotten sick in years... not REALLY sick cause food poisioning, one day bugs and hangovers don't count.

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Chyse · Post by **Chyse** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:17 am

My brother has H1N1. I feel bad for him that he's not feeling well. But I am no no way concerned about his general well-being. I'd be more afraid if he tried to fight a dead squirrel. H1N1 is just about as dangerous as a newborn kitten.

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FloodG8-9595 · Post by **FloodG8-9595** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 1:10 pm

a new born kitten that kills the occasional person?

I'd say it's a LITTLE more dangerous... I mean, a newborn kitten doesn't even make you neauseus or give you a headache... it's surely more of an inconvienence than a new born kitten...it's been a while since I've owned a cat though.. I may have blocked the symptoms

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Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:08 pm

Chyse wrote: H1N1 is just about as dangerous as a newborn kitten.

LMAO

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Bookworm · Post by **Bookworm** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 9:03 pm

Stasi wrote: The thing that bothers me is how many sites out there claiming that the vaccinations caused the 1918 pandemic link to, or quote this lady's books.

I noticed that too, as I was trying to find other sources to substantiate the woman's claims.

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Chyse · Post by **Chyse** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 5:47 pm

FloodG8-9595 wrote: a new born kitten that kills the occasional person?

I'd say it's a LITTLE more dangerous... I mean, a newborn kitten doesn't even make you neauseus or give you a headache... it's surely more of an inconvienence than a new born kitten...it's been a while since I've owned a cat though.. I may have blocked the symptoms

I didn't say it wasn't more of an inconvenience, however I'll bet that more people die from cat allergies from newborn kittens or from somehow catching FIV (HIV for cats) from said kittens...

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Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 5:55 pm

Kittens can actually do some serious damage. I tried to pick a wild one up once. It's like putting your hand in the blender.

It was so cute though, despite the blood that was drawn.

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Chyse · Post by **Chyse** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 7:07 pm

Red Squirrel wrote: Kittens can actually do some serious damage. I tried to pick a wild one up once. It's like putting your hand in the blender.

It was so cute though, despite the blood that was drawn.

See? H1N1 won't trick you into thinking it's cute, then claw the skin off your bones. It will just make you cough a lot, have to miss school/work for a week, and make everybody you know on facebook send you messages saying "OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY YOU HAVE SWINE FLU! I'M PRAYING FOR YOU!!!" like is some kind of flicking anathema.

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