April 30, 2009
How's your pork?
Posted by pete at April 30, 2009 12:15 AMGentlemen, start your panic:
The Houston area's first local resident to be diagnosed with swine flu has been confirmed in Fort Bend County.
Officials at Fort Bend County's health department said early Wednesday evening that they just received confirmation of the case from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The resident, a teenage girl, was not hospitalized and is recovering, said the officials. She is a student in Bellaire at Episcopal High School, which starting Thursday will close through the weekend.
STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM FORT BEND COUNTY!
The confirmation came a half a day after the CDC announced that a nearly 2-year-old Mexico City boy who fell ill in Brownsville and was transported for treatment at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston was the first U.S. death.
According to WHO, 26 cases of swine flu have thus far been confirmed in Mexico. Of those, seven resulted in death. We know nothing of what other factors were involved in those deaths. None of the 128 worldwide cases have so far proven fatal.
Meanwhile. guess what's killed more than 13,000 Americans since January?
Since January, more than 13,000 people have died of complications from seasonal flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly report on the causes of death in the nation.
No fewer than 800 flu-related deaths were reported in any week between January 1 and April 18, the most recent week for which figures were available.
[...]
Worldwide, the annual death toll from the flu is estimated to be between 250,000 and 500,000.
Wash your hands, sure, and practice common sense, but can we hold off on the comparisons to 1918 for a bit? At least until the "2009 H1N1 Flu" - as we're being instructed to call it - has shown itself to be more dangerous than tonsilitis?
Otherwise who knows what otherwise preventable tragedies might take place...
I would like a copy of THAT version of the book!