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The Swine Flu Emergency/Pandemic IS overblown. It's a great story for the media because it invariably involves human tragedy, always good for getting attention. And it is a tragedy for any family losing a member, particularly a healthy young adult in the prime of life. BUT... there is no pandemic. The WHO itself now characterises this as a mild outbreak. The definition of a pandemic has itself been changed in recent years and watered down from epidemics spreading throughout huge/multiple geographic areas to simply a single disease appearing in multiple geographic areas in a very short period of time (can you say air travel?). There need not be true epidemics anywhere for it now to be a pandemic.
While H1N1 is killing what are considered non-traditional populations (the young & healthy) more so than other forms of flu, it is not striking the population with markedly greater intensity than other highly virulent forms of the flu, and it's not the orders of magnitude more deadly that most people seem to think it is. Some (a large part, perhaps) IS due to the media focus, which has prompted people to take the common-sense precautions of washing hands frequently, and dealing with sneezing or coughing more effectively.
As I said, it is a tragedy for any family to lose anyone, especially those in the prime of life. I do speak from personal experience, my mother died of the flu at age 29. But H1N1 is simply NOT the killer threat it is made out to be.
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The secret to great marksmanship is deciding what the target was AFTER you've shot.
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