Swine Flu: Is it adding to your Pre-existing anxieties?

[klytus]

Redzer, nonsense.

i mean how does a virus just appear from nowhere?

It does, and this is very common. Pigs are the perfect host for a wide variety of viral infections. And especially viruses of the family to which the human flu, the bird flu and swine flu belong, have the special characteristic that their genetic material is segmented. That means, it's like a collection of Lego bricks which you can assemble in a great many meaningful ways and they are compatible. If a pig gets infected by all of them at the same time, which is not too unlikely, it may happen that the viruses' genetic material gets mixed. This results in new combinations in a very natural way. ("Reassortment" and "antigenic shift" are keywords to be looked up.)

 

[Sinar_Matahari]

I was worried about it before, but now I'm not.

 

[dooby-duck]

No it doesn't really worry me. I think the media got hold of it in a slow news week and hyped it up, just like bird flu. I haven't heard any news about swine flu for weeks now.

 

[mikestar]

Its a load of old tosh. Blown way out of proportion its just a flu, televisons fault yet again

 

[doesit]

yep its load of crap and i dont care about it 30k people in the states die from regular flu each year,and on top of that theres around 100ppl who died from swine flu in total,and still most of them had pre-existing conditions,no no its nothing to worry about.

 

[Thelema]

People deserve it for what they do to animals

No, they don't. If you step on a bug, you don't get an arm chopped off for the offense. A human life and an animal life are not equal.

Funny how scientists and researchers try to find a cure or a vaccine to fight viruses and diseases yet they don't realise that the human species is the greatest virus on the planet. We behave like viruses in every way.

You know how we get a fever sometimes when we get sick? Mother Earth is sick because we are killing her with our parasitic lifestyles, and the Global Warming we are experience is like a fever that Mother Earth is suffering from.

The Earth isn't a conscious entity. The matter it is comprised of has no feeling, wants or desires. You might as well hold up a mud ball in your hand and start telling me what it wants like it was a child, but you don't do that.

The analogy is absurd.

Disease as some sort of righteous punishment? Right...

 

[Blue Teardrops]

Thats worldwide right? Its around 40,000 in US I think.

Yes, what they're estimating is that the number of flu death cases will simply double to 90,000 in the US alone.

 

[Blue Teardrops]

yep its load of crap and i dont care about it 30k people in the states die from regular flu each year,and on top of that theres around 100ppl who died from swine flu in total,and still most of them had pre-existing conditions,no no its nothing to worry about.

I wouldn't say it's a load of crap. The pandemic of 1918 was definitely not a load of crap. We just keep getting lucky that a virus hasn't mutated into something super deadly like that in 1918. We're definitely due for another one.

 

[Blue Teardrops]

Redzer, nonsense.


It does, and this is very common. Pigs are the perfect host for a wide variety of viral infections. And especially viruses of the family to which the human flu, the bird flu and swine flu belong, have the special characteristic that their genetic material is segmented. That means, it's like a collection of Lego bricks which you can assemble in a great many meaningful ways and they are compatible. If a pig gets infected by all of them at the same time, which is not too unlikely, it may happen that the viruses' genetic material gets mixed. This results in new combinations in a very natural way. ("Reassortment" and "antigenic shift" are keywords to be looked up.)

You nailed it.

 

[Ashiene]

No, they don't. If you step on a bug, you don't get an arm chopped off for the offense. A human life and an animal life are not equal.

Again, human ego makes us think this way. All life is equal on this planet, since all life is made up of essentially the same components, the only difference is the quantity. Is a shorter human being less significant or of less worth than a taller human being? Don't forget that humans are animals too. It would be foolish to think that humans are gods.

The Earth isn't a conscious entity. The matter it is comprised of has no feeling, wants or desires. You might as well hold up a mud ball in your hand and start telling me what it wants like it was a child, but you don't do that.

The analogy is absurd.

Disease as some sort of righteous punishment? Right...

Obviously you have never heard of metaphors...

 

[Thelema]

Again, human ego makes us think this way. All life is equal on this planet, since all life is made up of essentially the same components, the only difference is the quantity. Is a shorter human being less significant or of less worth than a taller human being? Don't forget that humans are animals too. It would be foolish to think that humans are gods.



Obviously you have never heard of metaphors...

No, all life is not equal. If your assertion were true, your body's immune system would be evil for killing the living sickness inside you. Bacteria is a living being and you said that you can't stratify by size. When was the last time you cursed your immune system for saving your life? You don't even believe what you're saying.

Perhaps you mean that a higher life form, a clear and obvious contradiction to what you said, such as a monkey or a horse or a dog is roughly equal to a human. In that contradiction, you've invalidated yourself.

We are the highest being on Earth simply because we have these wonderful brains. Our ability to contemplate and reason, to move beyond instinct and form a morality system, is why humans are the highest form of life on the planet.

An absurd metaphor used as some form of moral justification for disease in defense of a ball of rock.