Thread: Swine-flu Pandemic reality or.....

Yes australia is taking it very seriously like everything else that seems to happen around the world australia seems to go over the top and the media always seem to be in another frenzy feeding people with doomsday senario's no wonder half the population are popping pills :shock:
I remember the sars palarva :? did wonders for the profits of pharmaceutical industry killed airline stock prices and sold truck loads of newspapers increased the government budgets to all the research labs so what this time ?
Nothing wrong with taking precautions but if thet really want to stop this epademic why not just shut down the airports and ports wouldnt this have the required effect,oh well we will see how this one pans out ,one drug company stock price went up 80% overnight :P would have liked to have a peice of that.

Maybe one good thing is air fares could go even lower which would be a good thing :mrgreen:

Before people start posting misinformed opinions regarding Swine Flu, might I humbly suggest that they get a better understanding of what this potential pandemic entails?

For example, these articles in New Scientist magazine could be a good starting point:
http://www.newscientist.com/special/...sref=swine-flu

Whatever happens (or doesn't), it's an important issue (not a joke). It's also another looming problem for the Tourism industry in Bali (maybe worse than SARS, the bird flu scare and rabies).

:cry:

Originally Posted by gilbert de jong

bolli, yeah Australians, or at least the government I mean, tend to take anything anything very serious. How about you, buy any facemasks? :wink:.
Anton, I totally understand what you mean about the media frenzy. Most of the time I think they are some kind of Illusionists..whilest looking at the left hand the real trick happens in the right, if you now what I mean :) . More people die of Malaria or TBC for example, but no media frenzy about that :?: :lol:
Do you (members) know people who didn't want to go on holiday to Bali because of rabies?

Gilbert Aussies generally are laid back but the government can get serious on some things (they should be even tougher on certain issues but I won't go into them) I get way more hassles from our immigration when returning home than anywhere else in the world although I expect US Customs are pretty strict now too (they were when I landed at JFK well before 9/11). Aus although being isolated has to take precautions because we are lucky not to have alot of the nasties that our neighbours have eg rabies, malaria etc etc and we wanna keep it that way.

Last I heard only 7 deaths worldwide have been proven to be from the swine flu since last week so on the scale of things in comparison to thousands of other causes of death its insignificant. However the swine flu is now rated at level 5 (maximum 6) by the World Health Organisation so things must be gettin fairly concerning that it will become a pandemic. From there who knows if it worsens mutuates or whatever things could get alot worse. The Spaniash flu in the early 1900s was 1st thought not to be serious but nearly 40million died so you never know. With the media frenzy I think you'll find overseas travel will be effected with everything else going on in the world. Every person that enters an OZ international airport is now getting heat scanned to check for abnormal body temperature with the idea being if you're hot you might have the flu.Then the questions start. I think there's currently about 100 Aussies that have been bloodtested so far (results pending).They have the power to detain and isolate you.

Hopefully it will all be a "storm in the teacup" (not an issue). I asked my Indo gf tonight if anyone was talking about it in bali....her response...."what's swine flu never heard of it" :lol: and she works in an office of 10 people so obviously Balinese aren't all talking about it yet. Oh other forums had lots people asking about rabies over the last few months so I expect some will be worried about swine flu. If I was to travel in the next couple of weeks and didn't have to I consider waiting just because of the annoying delays that you'll experience with extra security checks etc and a mask aint gona help much if the person in the seat next to you on the plane coughs your way :wink: