The article I just read on the ABC Web site makes interesting reading.

States reporting new cases of swine flu are lighting up the country like election night. Celebrities, meanwhile, are wearing masks, thousands of children will be out of school for weeks, and many are cancelling their travel plans for fear of a virus that is currently on level 5 out of 6 on the World Health Organizations pandemic alert level.

Swine flu may sound nasty. As of late Thursday, there are 236 cases of swine flu and eight confirmed deaths worldwide.

But by comparison an estimated 600 people die of tuberculosis, about 1,400 people die from strep and 2,704 people die from a common asbestos-related lung cancer in the United States every year.

Last year the seasonal flu took the lives of 83 children and an estimated 36,000 adults in the United States, according to the CDC.

The head of the CDC’s influenza division, Dr. Nancy Cox, said today that preliminary research suggests the swine flu virus lacks many of the “markers for virulence” possessed by the H1N1 pandemic virus of 1918.

Because the virus lacks these key components of the virus that killed between 30-50 million people nearly a century ago, she suggested that the swine flu may not be as deadly.

“What we have found by looking very carefully at the sequence of the new H1N1 virus is that we’re not seeing the markers for virulence that we saw in 1918 virus,” she said.

Of course, pandemics can be deadly and need public health measures.

But in every flu pandemic since 1918, the numbers have luckily dwindled. The 1957-1958 pandemic flu took 70,000 deaths above the normal flu season, and the 1968-1967 pandemic flu caused 33,000 more deaths than the average flu season. The virulence of the virus does matter, but public health measures can clearly make a huge difference.

Interesting bit of info: Most meat is cheap as hell right now, not just Pork products either… Stockpile that meat now because the morons aren’t touching it. ;)

The people who aren’t just fat because they eat more calories than they burn off, but because they have a “medical condition…” The people who even choose to explain away a high sex drive and an inability to control themselves with the words: sex addict.

As American doctors prepare to recognise video game addiction, I have to say that the problem here is the individual…

What is the difference in these two types of people:
A person who buys “game A.” They continue to play it once in a while.
A person who buys “game A.” They continue to play it, all night, every night.

Did you spot it? The difference, is the person. So, where’s the real problem?

If the addicted person is a child, the fault lays at the feet of the parents. If your child dissapears every night, even when truly sick (and not at school) they still manage to play games, there is a real problem. You shape your child’s personality, you shape your child’s limits.

That’s what this is all about, limits. Set them. Enforce them.

Hilton has been released, tagged, then placed under house-arrest because of a “medical condition.” I’d guess the medical condition was claustraphobia and I guess that every single person who entered that same prison had the same medical condition, so why were they not released also?

Every single illness can be treated in prison except mental illness, so, in my opinion, she should have been moved to a mental hospital where she most likely belongs. Whatever the illness is, it does not excuse her from paying her debt to society, it does not excuse her from being scared, it does not excuse her from going through the same things every other person who committed the same crimes has done…

I guess the partying will be done at Paris’ house for a while then?

I started feeling a headache on Tuesday, woke up on Wednesday with the same headache then gradually through the day felt worse and worse. Waking on Thursday I was incredibly hot, so opening the windows I’d find myself then shivering. I wound up spending all day Thursday and Friday in bed with a sore throat, dodgy nose, extremely sore throat, fever, sweating, shivers (I sometimes went from shivers to sweating then back to shivers within minutes).

This afternoon is the first day I’ve really been able to get out of bed. I am still very low on energy, but my only symptoms right now are that I feel hot and my throat is still sore.

So, does anyone know if our world is still “small” enough for immunity (of sorts) to “local” flu to mean nothing when you catch a foreign flu? I know in the days of the explorers, many people from local tribes in Africa and the Americas died as the European explorers brought over illnesses the locals had no immunity to.