Tamika Reynolds
Nov. 27th 2009
4:44pm
The number of global deaths due to swine flu has increased by 1,000 in a week. The figures were reported from the World Health Organization. Europe alone has seen an increase of 85% of deaths, from 350 people to 650 people reported dying. The positive not is that the majority of people who actually get swine are only showing mild symptoms and they are recovering. The biggest rise in deaths was found in America having the highest record of 554 cases in one week. The most frightening part is the mutated strain that is affecting people. The article states that is every mutated strain was reported it would be like reporting the weather. The mutated strain has the ability to further damage the respiratory system. There is another mutated strain that is resistant to the current resistant drug known as Tamiflu. The researchers of health are questioning will this pandemic influenza will change its fundamentals or will it severity changes for the worst? With no answer to that question, they are more concern is the virus itself is increasing in number. There are some countries that stopped counting the number of milder cases so the number being reported is lower than what is actually occurring.
I think this is a very interesting article. I still believe that with globalization and the increase in communication and travel that the flu has increased around the world in great number but now that it is mutating that this strain too will move from country to country. The problem with this is, there is no cure and the resistant drugs out there are being fought with the flu strain mutations. I look forward and hope that fewer cases are happening not because people are reporting it but because the strain is losing its strength.
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3 comments:
I think it's interesting that this is being made such a big deal globally (not to say that it isn't), but that there doesn't seem to be any wide-scale effort to combat the virus on a global scale (apparently the WHO said some places have stopped recording individual cases and that the real number is probably not as high...), like the smallpox scenario we talked about the other day in class. Maybe there is and I just don't know about it yet, but it just seems like The Media is very excited about all this.
I think that the vaccine got out remarkably fast and a large part of the reason milder cases aren't being reported is because it takes time and money to perform the test it takes to confirm swine flu when the article says most people are recovering fine. I think that it is good for people to be educated about changes in the virus and methods to help stay well.
I think there is some room for error in not testing for milder cases. It means that many people who claim to have had swine flu may have only had a severe virus (other than flu) or a case of the seasonal flu. I am honestly not certain of the differences in symptoms between H1N1 and seasonal flu. It's interesting that mutations are being found so late in the year, yet officials are continually stating that they will not be resistant to the vaccines already administered. I wonder how they can know this for sure.
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