Swine Flu – Top Reasons Why You Should Not Panic

Have you heard about the swine flu pandemic ? Of course you have. Seriously, who has not heard of it? Every time we turn on the television, it is there and every time we read the news, it is there. When we walk into public, we find cashiers talking about the recent illness.

So, with this being the talk of the town, you may be panicking. Even more so, when you see the word “pandemic” come up on the screen, you panic even more. We are going to start by telling you that pandemic is nothing to be terribly afraid of. Pandemic simply means that the disease has become widespread around the world. There are however many very sound reasons not to panic.

First of all, the actual number of infections is quite low. Yes, some people are dying from it, but have you looked at the death rate for the normal seasonal flu this time of the year? Have you looked at the death rate of people dying in car accidents? What about people dying of cancers? When you look at all of those, you will put the swine flu in it’s true perspective and realise that there is really nothing to panic about.

Of course, we’re not saying that you should not be concerned at all, but you should not panic. You should still take the safety precautions of washing your hands and not touching your eyes, face and mouth in public. Carry a small bottle of hand sanitizer and use it after touching anything that many other people have handled.

Exactly how deadly is swine flu? While it may affect those individuals who have weak immune systems, research is showing that it is far from the deadliest strain out there today. Case fatality is really not that bad. Case fatality is a scientific measure of how many people got the flu and how many died. Case fatality for SARS has reached fifteen percent while the bird flu is at sixty percent.

Doctors have a vaccine for the new strain and the antiviral drug Tamiflu will help. Tamiflu is a flu medication that many individuals are turning to. It is said that the swine flu trend will start to decline. The next couple of months is something that we should be watching closely as it may decline as we get it more under control with vaccination and normal precautions.

After that, we can go on worrying about something else that could wipe out the world, because we highly doubt it is going to be this H1N1 strain of flu virus.