Question about Swine Flu

[shady-lady-45uk]

My neice has now got it she was diagnosed early hours of this morning

[damian_steele]

Damian..would you like me to post you some hankies ? seriously..there is nothing worse !

Thank you, but no.
I have a decent sized stack of loo rolls which can do the job.

[damian_steele]

That sounds exceptionally efficient. Very unlike most tales of woe I've been hearing.

The problem is that the guidance for dealing with this problem is being interpreted by people. Some are naturally more efficient than others. It also depends on the resources available in each area. I would imagine that many of the big cities will have a greater number of people draining the resources and therefore making this more difficult all around.

[SalusLibrorum]

The problem is that the guidance for dealing with this problem is being interpreted by people. Some are naturally more efficient than others. It also depends on the resources available in each area. I would imagine that many of the big cities will have a greater number of people draining the resources and therefore making this more difficult all around.

It's not consistent. For instance your doctor faxed instructions and your collector knew they had to take ID. In the other area, they needed a letter of authorisation from the patient (how stupid is that?) having collected a voucher, they didn't know this and had to go back again having been refused it the first time, leading to a delay that could have destroyed the efficacy of the drug. Other people have been told that the patient has to be the one to collect it (and how stupid is that?).

It's a damned good job this isn't a particularly bad virus at the moment. I hope the authorities learn from this, so when we do get a bad one, as eventually I'm sure we will, things will run a bit more smoothly.

I do very much get the feeling though, that when the chips are down, we're on our own. (Personal experience).

[damian_steele]

I do very much get the feeling though, that when the chips are down, we're on our own.

Absolutely.
Anyone who really thinks about it will realise that the authorities will be helpless to deal with any sufficiently large deviation from normal life, no matter what the cause. Our entire society is built on so many interacting systems that everything is at risk if just one or two of those systems fail. Just look at the problems caused during a large power outage, a fuel strike or a flood. If people haven't already planned and become prepared to deal with their own problems, then they'll rapidly find themselves in real trouble. Should the large scale problem last more than a couple of weeks, then we'll be looking at major breakdowns in law and order alongside numerous deaths.

Hopefully this current situation will remain mild and most people will not need to think about the realities beyond having a dose of flu.

[leadhillsonline]

Just popped in quickly to give a first hand perspective to the speculation.

We have our Tamiflu after my O/H panicked and phoned our GP surgery. The GP immediately faxed an authorisation to our local Tamiflu distribution point with the name of our designated collector. The person we had designated had to take photo ID with her to collect the two doses. We were specifically told not to go out, not to collect in person and not to go to the GP surgery.

This is now day four for me and I am feeling much better. I have run out of hankies though. (Yuk!) We think we got this from a delivery bloke who came to our home. He said he wasn't feeling well after we'd already opened the door to him.

Glad you are feeling better.

[Fossy]

We thought the grandson had caught swine flu as he has been poorly with similar symptoms over the past few days. His mum called the Doctors today and he made a house call all dressed up in a mask, gown and rubber gloves.

Luckily the diagnosis was good and it was just a viral infection and not SF.

[deltadelta48]

But remember with the 1918 flu outbreaks, there was no antibiotics (they did not come until WWII), so if victim got respiratory distress with the flu, nothing could be done but hot soup and a mustard plaster on the chest. Now we can give any number of meds to fight the secondary symptoms and infections..

This flu was around in the 1950s, 1960s, etc. and if you caught it then, you can not catch it again. But there are millions of strains of flu so hard to know the exact one coming around and if you had it or not. This one is espec bad because younger children are catching it. Last death in Milwaukee was a healthy athletic 13 year old girl. This is a group that was never exposed to this particular flu before.

We were hit around Easter and for weeks after and I don't think we have had any more active cases for a while. Sounds like the UK has been hit really hard.

.

[damian_steele]

This flu was around in the 1950s, 1960s, etc. and if you caught it then, you can not catch it again.

No, it wasn't.
This strain is similar, but not the same. Those who caught flu back then will have resistance to this one because of the common ancestry, but are not guaranteed to be immune.