is it the flu, or biological attacks?

with all the people dying from the flu, it seems to me that there is a possibility that somebody may have engineered a super-flu, and released it into the public. :o
I mean, the people dying, are otherwise strong and healthy people. if it was newborns and the elderly, it could just be a strong flu. but it isn't just the fragile people. it is anybody! :o
and the flu-shot was discovered to only be 10% effective. yet they still keep pushing it on people.

I have not had the flu-shot, and other than a substantial sinus headache, and a slightly warm forehead, i am just fine. well, that and my eyes feel like they are trying to escape from my skull. though i doubt it is the flu. just delirious conversation, i guess. :wink:

~Travis

Nope, but all the treatments are probably making the flue more resistant.

There are peaks in death rates every year as the flu season hits, the graph looks like a heartbeat. Some years the flu is more aggressive than others.

The problem with the vaccines is that they take months to produce and so the scientists have to guess in advance which strains are likely to be circulating. If they get it wrong the vaccine is less effective, but because the numbers falling ill can be so large even 10% effectiveness can save a lot of lives.

Most scientists are very reserved and they avoid being dramatic. Virologists though have been ringing alarm bells for years saying that a deadly pandemic of bird flu or similar is inevitable and that it gives them nightmares. If you want a nightmare read about the Spanish flue of 1918 and imagine the impact a repeat would have on modern day Western civilisation :smiling_imp:

I have noticed a large number of flu cases this year. As I work in a school, I am usually aware of the extent of influenza infection every winter. This year, more than half of the people I encounter have been ill for more that one week. While it could be explained as a statistical anomaly, that still seems unusually high.

Right?!

The Arizona Disease Control woman said on the radio last week that flu reporting was 20% higher than ever before. I'm sure Trump would tell us it's the immigrants. But I'm goona blame the gubamint. The shadow gubamint.

What is a gubamint. in this case please ?
I have searched but suspect that the Drop Bears may have evolved wings

Pidgin English for government.

Another reason for flu vaccine failure this season is because virus that tended to mutate while incubating in eggs. Eggs Taking Blame For Ineffective Flu Vaccine - Simplemost

You could also hypothesize that pharmaceutical companies distributed plain saline while charging for flu vaccine...

Tracking and trying to predict what strain of the flu is going to hit a region is very hard, and looks like its getting harder.

"Australian Flu", thats the first time I've ever heard of that strain, but it did come from Australia.
It literally got on board a plane and flew to the UK.

Usually its Asian Flu or a European flu that hits us and until the last couple of years the Vaccines have been spot on.
But just of late the strains have been mutating quicker and we have had deaths likewise that would normally have been avoided with vaccines.
My sister-in-law had her sister, who was waiting for a kidney transplant, succumb to the flu, she spent 5days in hospital before it overcame her.
We have had people of all ages and walks of life dying in the last flu season.

I get flu shot each year, have done since 6yo, but I'm not 100% protected, probably even lesser now with strains changing so quickly.

You can't blame to much use of antibiotics, because they have no effect on viruses.

Tom... :o

travis_farmer:
does the Australian Flu make your dizzy head spin the other direction? :wink:

~Travis

LOL... I don't know that's for you Northern Hemisphere residents to find out, but it could do.
Its when you start hallucinating about drop bears and saying;
"stone the flamin crows"
"giday mate"
"Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi.."
and
"A dingo took my baby."
You definitely have it.

westfw:
You could also hypothesize that pharmaceutical companies distributed plain saline while charging for flu vaccine...

You would have to be pretty cynical to go for that as a conspiracy theory.

Given the scale of the risk it is strange that Government bodies both national and international have not pumped more money into faster methods of vaccine development.

Normal seasonal flu accounts for 250,000 - 500,000 deaths a year worldwide. The last two nasty pandemics lead to 1M-4M deaths (the 2009-10 swine flu was a damp squib). The Spanish flu of 1918-19 was in an altogether different league. It killed an estimated 50M-100M people even though there was a much smaller world population back then. People would get ill in the morning and be dead by the evening. There were not enough coffins to bury the dead. Entire communities died in places.

Without a vaccine we are presently in a much worse position than in 1918. There is a larger population, the disease will travel faster, there is less local food production, and hospitals don't have nearly enough oxygen supplies to cope.

It is the emergence of a flu strain similar to the one in 1918 that gives virologists nightmares as they consider it inevitable at some point. A world in which 3-6% of the world population was killed by flu would be a very different place.

TomGeorge:
"Australian Flu", thats the first time I've ever heard of that strain, but it did come from Australia.
It literally got on board a plane and flew to the UK.

The 'strine strain?

Henry_Best:
The 'strine strain?

'strewth.." LOL
I think you have "a kangaroo loose in the top paddock!"

"Australian Flu", thats the first time I've ever heard of that strain,

I just re-read that, I meant when the term was first used last year (2017) was the first time I'd heard it used.

Its all a conspiracy for Aussie domination of the world.

All we will eventually be able to do is broadcast;
"Aussie Aussie Aussie"
and the whole world will respond;
"Oi Oi Oi.."
Ohh the power........ :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp:

travis_farmer:
not sure if i want you as a guest on my internet radio station, after that comment. :o :wink:

~Travis

ohhhh !!!!! :o :o :o

I'm So Ronery
I'm so ronery
So ronery
So ronery and sadry arone

There's no one
Just me onry
Sitting on my rittle throne
I work very hard and make up great prans
But nobody ristens, no one understands
Seems that no one takes me serirousry

And so I'm ronery
A little ronery
Poor rittre me

There's nobody
I can rerate to
Feer rike a bird in a cage
It's kinda sihry
But not rearry
Because it's fihring my body with rage

I work rearry hard to stay nice and fit
But none of the women seem to give a shit
When I rure the world maybe they'rr notice me
But untir then I'rr just be ronery
Rittre ronery, poor rittre me
I'm so ronery
I'm so ronery

I'm off to work..
Tom... :slight_smile:
PS. "Someone has to keep the wheels of commerce turning around here.."

travis_farmer:
does the Australian Flu make your dizzy head spin the other direction? :wink:

~Travis

That's funny! Scientifically misleading, but funny.

The problem with viruses (or from their perspective, the good thing) is that they can mutate very fast. And the faster we learn to combat them, the better they get at mutating to a more virulent form. I'm pretty sure they will win.

Another problem with flu is secondary infections.
I suffer badly from sinuositis, i am dependent on antibiotics and a bad case can have me in bed for many weeks.
Luckily i have managed to avoid it for 20 years or so.

I recall a comment that existing antibiotics are only three or four mutations of bugs to render them largely useless.

EDIT

This problem has already become evident with MRSA which is resistant to all antibiotics.
What for some is a case of strep throat can become fatal to others.
New antibiotics are very seldom found , although there has been a promising discovery in the last few days.Remains to be seen though as promising discoveries seldom pan out.

This is a fairly sobering article.

Boardburner2:
Another problem with flu is secondary infections.
I suffer badly from sinuositis, i am dependent on antibiotics and a bad case can have me in bed for many weeks.
Luckily i have managed to avoid it for 20 years or so.

I recall a comment that existing antibiotics are only three or four mutations of bugs to render them largely useless.

EDIT

This problem has already become evident with MRSA which is resistant to all antibiotics.
What for some is a case of strep throat can become fatal to others.
New antibiotics are very seldom found , although there has been a promising discovery in the last few days.Remains to be seen though as promising discoveries seldom pan out.

This is a fairly sobering article.

Number of new antibiotics has fallen sharply since 2000 | Antibiotics | The Guardian

Any yet antibiotics are still being fed to animals !!!!!!!!!

I went from being in good health to being a wreck in under 12 hours because of a bacterial infection. Boy was I glad to get antibiotics and that they were so effective. It made me really appreciate what a fantastic thing they are.

Recently I heard about a couple of weird things;

One is for looking at bacterial infections in the lungs such as might cause pneumonia following flu. A chemical is inhaled and then a fine optic fibre is used to look for infection inside the lung. Apparently this has not been done before.

The really strange one though is what I think of as barnacles. Blood can be passed through filters to remove bacteria and even cancer cells, but the filtering process is not particularly efficient. Enter the barnacles. These are nano-scale devices that grab passing bacteria and cancer cells. The arms of the barnacles are coated to attract them to the targets which they grab from the passing blood and capture.

ardly:
Any yet antibiotics are still being fed to animals !!!!!!!!!

It's an Orwellian plot.
The animals are secretly breeding antibiotic germs to finish us off.

ardly:
I went from being in good health to being a wreck in under 12 hours because of a bacterial infection. Boy was I glad to get antibiotics and that they were so effective. It made me really appreciate what a fantastic thing they are.

Ditto. penicillin and erithromycin both failed for me.
Had i had MRSA it think i would have been a goner.

Apparently KFC in the UK has almost completely closed down because they don't have any chicken!

That made me think of another problem with flu. If a pandemic like the 1918 one is caused by a bird flu strain then we would end up culling every domestic chicken on the planet.

The name of the Pale horse will be 'Flu' and the Black horse will follow, beside those two the Red horse is just a harmless foal :smiling_imp:

P.S.

Q: How did KFC repudiate claims that their chickens are abused and tortured?
A: Our chickens are not abused and Waterboarding is not torture!