Jay Dale <jd...@xpresstel.com> wrote: > All I know is, the stores here in Houston are running out of > Anti-bacterial products left and right.
That's scary. Not the swine flu -- the fact that so many people think antibiotics will do anything for a viral infection. We laugh at the snake oil peddlers of the 1800's, saying we've come so far, that people would never be fooled by that today, but snake oil would be just as effective. Below are a few facts, with references. Those so interested may want to forward this to others. Kind of the like the opposite of your typical Internet chain letter -- knowledge instead of rumor. * Antibiotics do nothing against the viruses that cause the common cold and the flu. Antibiotics do, however, become less effective when overused. So by taking antibiotics for viral infections, you're actually decreasing overall health. http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/community/know-and-do.htm * The US CDC recommends the following as the major action people should take: Wash your hands, especially before eating or after inter-personal contact. Note the distinct lack of drugs or isolation in that recommendation. http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/swineflu_you.htm * The "regular" flu kills approximately 36,000 people per year in the United States alone. This latest H1N1 strain can infect both pigs and humans, which is less common, so it gets classified as "swine flu". The media goes bonkers over this because they can't report the same old 36,000 deaths/year stat as "news", but they *can* report 150 swine flu deaths as news. http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm * By WHO definitions, "pandemic" does not mean "everybody is going to die", it means they're seeing a disease manifest in multiple regions. With modern air travel, this is not really an exceptional situation. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html -- Ben ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
