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Old 05-02-09 | 07:39 AM
  #19  
interested
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Originally Posted by Bah Humbug
My problem with that is we are so far advanced beyond 1918 that I do not believe even a similar virus could have the same effect today.
Oh yes it it would, sure respirators and penicillin would mean a slightly higher survival rate for the marginal cases (at least while hospitals still function), but when the 1918 pandemic was at it its worst it would kill so fast that penicillin and Tamiflu wouldn't have a chance to work: often there were less than 24-48 hours from first symptom to death. People would drop dead when walking the streets, pupils at their desks would suddenly stoop over dead, one witness described how he got directions from a guy speaking with a normal voice, but who shortly after would fall to the ground dead. Another witness described a tram ride; when he first got on board the ticket seller just died, during the next 3 miles 5 more people died in the tram. When finally the tram driver died, the witness got of and walked the rest of the way.
Pandemics can't really be stopped; they stop when they run out of victims.

Originally Posted by Bah Humbug
As for those 20- and 30-something Mexicans, I'm sorry, but that's not the US. While Mexico has reasonably good healthcare, their pollution is far worse, and that means immune systems are much more likely to be weak, and sanitation is not as good. When young adult Americans or western Europeans start dying in significant num,bers this can be revisited, not because the Mexicans do not count, but because they are less significant indicators of virulence.
First I must say that there really isn't that must information on what is going on regarding autopsies etc. Have people really died from cytokine storm or not. Is it true that several doctors and nurses that have treated victims have died from the flu too?
So everything is pretty much speculation right now. But if several doctors really have died, and if people are also being killed by cytokine storm, then there isn't reason to believe that people die from being poor and in bad health.

In this regard it is also worth to note that the 1918 pandemic in the beginning (spring 1918) had the exact same mixture of few violent deaths while the vast majority of cases where very benign, in fact the symptoms where so mild that doctors didn't believe it to be an influenza at the time.
The 1918 pandemic really didn't turn into a massive killer until the fall of 1918, the beginning of the traditional flu season.

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