Personally, I believe "swine flu" to be highly overblown. It's great that folks are paying attention to simple things, like washing their hands, but most of this is wildly overblown On average, 36,000 folks a year croak from normal flu. That hardly rates a peep in the "B" section of the newspaper, next to the classified ads for amazing natural male enhancement pills
There's a reason for the expression "bird brain." According to their web page, the stuff cures or prevents:
That number was pulled out of someone's arse. However, I do agree with you that "swine flu" is greatly over-rated, normal "flu" symptoms and the common cold are being over-reacted too, "Oh My God, It's the Swine Flu!! Run for your lives!!!" The death rate from using pharmaceuticals as directed is higher than that. Here is the answer to the virus:
Well, I should have cited a source http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/flu/downloads/influ-pneu-disease-2008.pdf Trust me, I wouldn't make up something like that
Oh, I didn't think you did. However, those numbers, from the CDC, are highly suspect (read the article I linked to at the end of my last post).
Overall, I find organic-food and "natural health" articles highly suspect. I have personal family experience with how devastating the flu or any other disease can be When my Dad was 70, he caught the flu. Up to that point, he didn't get routine vaccinations. The flu damn near killed him, my Mom had to rush him to the ER, and he spent 3 weeks in hospital with many complications, including pneumonia He now gets his flu shot every fall, and has had no problems since Both my folks are from very large families. My Mom's side had 15 kids, my Dad's side 18 kids. On my Mom's side, only 9 lived to age 18: one died of appendicitis as a child, a couple died from what they suspect was the flu, one drowned in a river (I guess that doesn't count, s*** happens), one died from rubella, and one died from tuberculosis On my Dad's side, only 12 lived to the age of 18: a couple died of the flu as infants, one of the boys died of appendicitis at age 13, another boy apparently cut himself on a rusty farm implement and died horribly of tetanus (With the generalized paralysis/opisthotonus, the poor kid choked to death), two went with tuberculosis As far as I know, nobody on my Mom's or Dad's side ever ate what we would call "health" food. It was strictly meat and potatoes. The ones who died before age 18, well, s*** happens. On my Mom's side is a high incidence of cancer. All of her brothers are gone, two had prostate cancer, one had colon cancer, one got killed at Normandy (That doesn't count for this discussion). One of her sisters died of breast cancer, another survived - so far - breast cancer. My Mom had a sudden stroke in her sleep in 2005, she went quickly and peacefully. The remainder are dealing with various age-related things On my Dad's side, bad luck with heart disease. It appears mitral valve prolapse is quite common with them, I have a touch of it myself. My Dad has atrial fibrillation that is controlled with meds. His brothers that weren't killed off in WW II and Korea, went of heart attacks at fairly young ages, eg 38, 42 etc. All his sisters are gone, heart attacks at 40, 45, 48, etc, he's the only one left So it appears I'm on borrowed time, as most likely I inheritied substandard parts in my ticker. Oh well, what happens, happens. Que sera, sera The point I'm trying to make, is that it wasn't too long ago when folks *feared* disease because you never knew when it would strike you down. You could catch something as an infant, as an otherwise healthy adolescent, or as an adult. Things like appendix operations are laughibly routine nowadays, back then if the nearest doctor was 5 hours away, tough s*** A lot of folks now raise the alarm over things like chlorinated water. I'm well aware of the legitimate concern over disinfection byproducts in water, due to organics in water. Better clarification pre-dosing would take care of almost 100% of disinfection byproducts, but nobody wants to spend the hundreds of billions to do so We *will* spend hundreds of billions to bail out crooks who run banks into the ground. I covered a lot of the theory of potable water systems in another thread. I always tell folks who believe chlornated water is "bad" to just stop chlorinating water for a couple of years. It would be a good science experiment. Actually, that science experiment was inadvertantly performed right here in Canada Waterborne Outbreak of Gastroenteritis Associated with a Contaminated Municipal Water Supply, Walkerton, Ontario, May-June 2000 - CCDR Volume 26-20 - Health Canada Death on tap: The poisoning of Walkerton | CBC Archives So, a couple of hillbilly drunks ran the Walkerton public utilities department. Well, bully for them. Apparently my degree in Chemical Engineering is a waste of my time, who needs it? Just guess at residuals and dosing, even better, rely on *broken* dosing equipment. It's ALL good! We also appear to have forgotten that at one time, water borne things like cholera and parasite borne things like typhus were feared by many. There are even folks who casually throw around phrases to inaccurately describe things. Eg: the trademarked name Roundup, which is a herbicide whose active ingredient is glyphosate. Folks, especially those in the "organic food" industry, will casually call it Agent Orange The defoliant Agent Orange had, as active ingredients, about 45% 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, 45% 2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, 8% kerosene, and 2% "other" eg, trace contamination What made Agent Orange so toxic was the 2,4,5 T. Manufacturing 2,4,5 T is easy to get wrong, if you have sloppy temperature control of the batch process, which results in the creation of something you don't want Of course, I'm referring to polychlorinated dibenzodioxins. In the case of Agent Orange, that would be 2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzo-penta-dioxin. Note, you can also get trace amounts of 2,3,7,8 T from burning wood, from diesel engine exhaust, incinerators, etc Oh, did you know that *all* of us were exposed to Agent Orange here in North America? It wasn't called Agent Orange, it was sold by Dow Agrichemicals as Esteron Brush Killer Esteron Brush Killer was *very* widely used by cities to control weed growth along streets and parks. Utility companies very heavily applied it along utility right-of-ways (Power lines, gas lines, etc). It was heavily sprayed along roads to control vegitation in ditches. As far as Swine Flu, this will probably be a much larger problem in third world nations with poor sanitation and health care. Perhaps the drug lords in Mexico can use their money to improve sanitation and health care for the people, instead of buying bling-bling vehicles