The fact that it makes pigs 'sound bad' almost made me laugh. In school I'm always saying things like 'pigs are people too'. The name swine flu will stick. It has already become too public to be known as H1N1 influenza. =/

Triple Post.

Pigs are so cute, just look at the link Mopiece posted, how sad the pigs look. . Anyway, I hope everyone is okay, I'm pretty safe in the "meantime" here, in our country. There are no reports of cases here in South East Asia yet right? Well, I can sleep peacefully for a while. Take care guys.

as a joke one of my friends brought around 20 air masks and gave em to all of our friends. we wore them all day today. and these girls made silly posters saying 'swine flu patrol' all day we walked through the halls yelling "Swine flu patrol! every one stay at least three feet away from each other and make sure you wash your hands! this is not a drill! swine flu patrol!" it was hilarious. it started a food fight at lunch and then the teachers started retaliating against the masks, it all started to get a little confusing during the end of the day though.

Well, at least you are still happy and having fun, and not letting the flu affect you much. Good for you.

KTC: lol The "H" and the "N" are abbreviates for the proteins / antigens found on the virus.

The government here now supplying the influenza vaccine to workers who are at higher risk of contact with the public. We, as medical students however, are not covered.

In short, we are on our own.

It concerns me because the teaching hospitals here receive plenty ill foreigners... especially in the medical wards. :/

So, any news about H1N1?

I listened to one of my friends tell me ALL about avoiding swine flu on the bus last Thursday.
The symptoms and results sound very extreme, but I'm not worried about catching it right now.

Nothin's changed for a while now, that's more confirmation for me that the people probably are blowing this out of proportion. Or my family needs to watch the news channel more. XD

Sorry, no time for jokes.

@BeMused: Just curious but why is the government where you live supplying flu vaccine to workers now when the current vaccine doesn't protect against this new strain. There is work to develop a vaccine that will protect against this one but that will take several months at least. Or is it something that they will do once it's made?

I wonder about that too: the email I received said exactly that. :/

I doubt the current vaccines worked at all against this new viral strain... I am guessing it means that workers get the new vaccine once it's approved; but not the students.

lol so students are nothing? xD

well, with all the problems and stupidities with the governments of the world, its not so hard to see why a mistake like this would be made.

Im from the US, and our government here is so dumb, Im supprised something like this hasn't happened here.

I don't know what to think of this whole mess, but it does re-emphasise the need for more secure borders for this country (even though i do know the people who have it here got it were citizens on vacation)which is a really pressing issue.

but I don't think this flu will become too much of an issue. I see a repeat of the avian flu scare, except this time, the disease is even more mild.

Let's not talk about the bad things let's talk about the hope
I have a little philosophy here it goes
Wars Fights Death Rejection Racsism It can be avoided because if there's already so many bad thngs that will happen no matter what we do some bad things are humanity's faul

I think I'll post that in the college

Yes only what we can do now Is believe that all will be ok and Everything bad will end and gone.

This flu will give up and go away. We all don't want that this virus is here on our world. GO AWAY H1N1! We don't want you here!

It's not like it will disappear by itself. As long as there are "live" to sustain it, it will not "go away" that easily. -_-

Even if we have come up with a vaccine which help us to boost our immune system against it, that does not mean that it will not mutate to become a stronger "bad guy". That's all we know will happen. But when? We never know. :/

@LordMaeglin
I don't think this was due to stupidity and I can't really blame anyone for it. I mean, it happens. We know that viruses can mutate but there's nothing we can really do about it except try to defend ourselves against it. It's nature.

As for tightening borders...are we really going to stop every single person who has a cough or a runny nose from coming into a country? It's just not feasible and being completely ridiculous. Most of the time, it'll just be because of allergies or a simple cold, nothing serious. Besides, with the flu, it's possible to not show any symptoms at all yet still be a carrier of the virus with the potential to spread it to others unknowingly. How do you test for that unless you test everyone? Again, that would not be possible with the sheer number of people traveling around the globe every day.

And, to be honest, I think the health organizations are reacting very well to this. They created protocols for these kinds of situations and they're putting them into action in an organized and efficient manner, as far as I can tell (at least, where I am it seems so).

I agree with Aeternus. Nature is nature. A world without disease would be a world with no news, honestly. And this is as good as it will get. Imagine all other epidemics and pandemics that have happened in the past. This might be close to half as bad as those diseases. Our government may be stupid, but living in America, our medical orginizations have got this under control. Humanity isn't going to end, people.

A girl in my class has been absent from school from a few weeks, saying she has a chest infection. Now everyone in my class is freaked out that it's H1N1. As far as I knew, those two were different illnesses, correct?

When you say "chest infection", that's actually VERY broad and VERY vague. An infection is just that - an infection, an invasion of some sort of microorganism. It doesn't say anything about the type of microorganism or where it is or what kinds of effects it's having.

H1N1, though, is quite specific to this virus. To be honest, I don't know a whole lot about it so I don't know if infects the chest (e.g. lungs), per se. If it did infect the lungs, then it would be a chest infection, if you wanted to call it something broad, but a chest infection does not necessarily mean H1N1. It could be anything.

I believe it was an upper-respiratory infection of some sort. We didn't learn much, as our teacher didn't want us more worked up.

If it's an upper-respiratory infection, than it's probably not the Swine Flu. I haven't heard anything that the Swine Flu causes that.

Just wanted to add my two cents the thought that infectious diseases would go away. It's wishful thinking that we can get rid of them. They mutate fast enough that they are able to adapt to the environment as we change it.

In the 1960's and 70s, there were many public health officials who thought they were seeing the end of infectious diseases as a major health threat but they were very wrong.

Look at the situation today, infectious diseases are still with us and still causing problems. There are some that have decreased but there's new ones coming up all the time.