Health Experts Answer Swine Flu Questions
Prevention can help: If coughing, stay home and your family stay home. Coughing is the way this thing is spread. Hand washing helps because the droplets get on hands and we humans like to touch our mucus membranes–eyes, face, mouth etc…-so wash hands.
Good News: Mortality rate may be less than previously assumed?
- mortality rate in Mexico seems to have slowed: total is 152 & health officials have speculated that tens of thousands may have contracted it so this puts the mortality rate from 6-10% to 1% or less. Still too early to know. This article gives a more accurate picture of the shear number of cases in Mexico AND that it probably has been around for months–as early as February.
- U.S. confirmed is at 91 and 1 death which again means that there could be tenfold more unconfirmed cases again pointing to the mortality rate being at the worst 1% if 1/91 rate continues…
- The other concern has been that it is killing 25-45 year olds, but we still haven’t seen the numbers to know for sure. The first U.S. death was in a baby from Mexico, and unfortunately, the baby was in the age range that we typically see being most effected by the flu–under 2 and over 65.
- Here is a reassuring article putting potential ‘worst case scenerio’ stats together to point out that even if this were as bad as the ‘Spanish’ flu of 1918….
Pray and wait.