Twittering Swine Flu

Dear World

Yes, OF COURSE RantWoman has plenty else to do besides do periodic snapshots of swine flu across the interwebs. On the other hand, what is the point of a chronicle if there is not some timespan involved.

Today's link, fished via a saved search on Twitter:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/13/swine-flu-media-hype

wherein a Guardian (UK) writer gets swine flu, feels sicker than a dog, has misadventures with her healthcare system and slowly recovers enough to write about it.

Commenters still cannot agree that it's more than real flu, cannot agree about "no underlying health concerns" since the author has a history of viral meningitis. This case sounds wretched though aside from wanting some kind of data jockey to look at the histories of other "no underlying condition" cases and death, does not offer much guidance. Well, if you feel like crap, STAY HOME until you feel better. If one of your loved ones feels like crap and keeps sweating all over the bedding do what you can to keep them clean and comfortable. Not rocket science here.

For comparison WHO this week has items on health relief for Displaced Persons in Pakistan, an initiative on noncommunicable disease, oh and swine flu vaccine recommendations and other updates:

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/notes/h1n1_vaccine_20090713/en/index.html

http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_07_06/en/index.html

(comparatively a lot of newly discovered cases in Argentina, Chile: one could stage a swine flu bakeoff comparing different points of history from different Latin American countries. Well, SEOMEONE could but it won't be RantWoman.)

An item about quarantine issues in China, via a blog whose source RantWoman did not verify reporting State Department guidance:
http://pandemicinformationnews.blogspot.com/2009/07/travel-alert-china.html

Also a charming smattering of references to the Book of Revelation, mercury in vaccines, sardines, vacating the planet, and zombies. Ahhhhh, the internet at its best.