Foot in mouth disease

Following my two earlier posts on Swine flu [influenza A(H1N1) as of yesterday], I confess I forgot to mention perhaps the most important point of all:

Never, never listen to poor Joe Biden!

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs turned into a stand-up comedian today when tap dancing around Joe Biden’s controversial remarks this morning on the flu. If you didn’t hear about Biden’s appearance on the Today Show, he basically said that in order to remain safe from the flu, people should avoid cars, planes, classrooms, trains, subways, and confined spaces. Where should they go? Biden said the “middle of a field” was pretty safe. (You can read more about it here).

He must have taken his collar off again!

Swine flu again

I am touching on this issue again because I have noticed that a lot of people do not know how to react to the bombardment of news they are subjected to; I was surprised (and a little revolted) by the time that was given by the Media yesterday to the death of a Mexican child in Texas which, sad as it is, should have been better employed to inform the public.

A few points that might help you interpret correctly what is going on:

• between 250,000 and 500,000 people die every year of seasonal flu
• normally, the more dangerous the virus is to its host, the less it will spread (e.g. Ebola)
• understand the difference between Case Fatality Ratio (CFR), virulence and mortality rate
• Mexico’s numbers are, for the moment, almost useless to determine any of the above (in fact yesterday Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease…not 150 as circulated before)
• relatively recent epidemic/pandemic fears like Mad Cow disease, SARS and Avian Influenza have had a beneficial effect in promoting awareness, stockpiling of anti-viral drugs and preparation of contingency plans; however, authorities must balance these advantages against crying wolf too many times.
• the 1918 pandemic that killed 50 million people is often quoted; remember though that at the time the world was just coming out of  World War I and no anti-viral drugs or antibiotics (to cure respiratory complications) were available.
• take also into account, that vested interests, political agendas, snake oil salesmen must be factored in when reading or watching news about swine flu (or anything else for that matter)

Swine flu: useful links and tips

Mashable has a few useful links to follow the developments of this latest disease outbreak to which I would like to add my own suggestions. A word of caution, though: there are many vested interests involved and, consequently, a tendency to exaggerate and unnecessarily scare the public; keep this in mind, especially if you follow MSM sites (popular blogs are usually more reliable) or public timelines, and don’t panic!

1)  Get a twitter account: yes, twitter is the gossip and celebrities micro-blogging platform of choice but, if used correctly, also the best real-time news search engine there is. Once you have an account, you want to follow these:

redcross
breakingnews
emergencynews
reutersflash
cnnbrk
ntarc

While on twitter you can also search for #swineflu (with a pinch of salt, see above).

2) Google is of course also a good resource: you may want to set up a search (and relevant email alert) as follows: “http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=%22swine+flu%22+OR~H1N1&scoring=n”

3) Detailed maps of the outbreak can be found here.

4) Of the official specialized sites, I would follow CDC (at the moment the most reliable) and WHO (pinch of salt here, too).