Comments about ‘Swine flu spreads in 10 U.S. states, Europe’

This should get the racists frothing at the mouths.

Shuttering?

Maybe its time to close the southern boarder.

I am not a racist but considering that Texas is close to the Mexican border, it should be common sense that those crossing the border should be monitored more closely for flu symptoms.

It probably cannot be closed entirely, but if this flu gets out of hand it will be on Obama's head because he is acting too cautiously.

And schools in areas where the flu isn't appearing should stay open, but if I lived in Texas , Arizona, or California I'd sure be considering it.

We always had "quarantines" when immigrants went through Ellis Island because some had communicable diseases such as TB.

Perhaps we should do something like this now, before it gets worse.

Why the racist comment? This has nothing to do with race. I agree where schools start seeing the Swine Flu, that their school system should close. I also agree with the washing of hands but I also feel we might want to consider having the Heath and Drug Adm. check out all the U.S. Mexican markets and produce that come to the U.S. I spoke with friends last night that went into the non tourist sections of Mexico and they were appalled at the chickens hanging and chicken poop all over the grounds where the children play. I would question that we halt anything from Mexico coming into the states. We should also stop all travel to Mexico and not allow Mexican citizens into the U.S.

So when 10's of thousands die every year from the normal flu there is no talk of 'shuttering' schools and now that some played up random strain has killed 1 we are going to pretend this is 1976 all over again?

I would hope the American people are not this stupid, not even when his Holiness, the Lord High Obama pontificates from his throne but with a filibuster proof congress and this guy in office I don't have much hope these days...

I thought Obama said we all had nothing to worry about a few days ago? You mean he isn't in control over disease? This man is a fool's mouthpiece! Follow the prophet!

What will many of our Utah residents who consider schools free baby sitting do if they need to take care of their own children?

Swine flu has killded someone in the US!!! I need to get in my car that kills hundreds of thousands a year, drive over to my sons college where hundreds die from gunfire and get my kid home where I can calm down with a drink that kills thousands and thousands a year.

The largest concentration of victims are related to New Yorkers who wnet on a trip to Mexico. The type of travel that spreads this disease is pleasure travel, not people coming to the United States to work, to try to throw in gripes about immigration issues is to miss the point.
Beyond this, most of the cases in Mexico are in Mexico City, while from Texas to California, most of the people coming and going across the border are coming from Northern Mexico and if they ever were in Mexico City it was before this epidemic spread.
It is travelers on plans, not in the false bottoms of vans, who are spreading this disease.

"Texas Should Secede," your what ya call a race baiter. You probably work for ACORN, spending some of that 5.1 billion tax payer dollars they received as part of the bailout. hmmmmm. Well, all I can say is poor kid. I would be sad if this hit any worse and affected more people.

#1 - You don't catch swine flu from food. Not produce not pigs, not food. So searching food is funny.

#2 - the worry about swine flu vs the 'yearly' flu is that it's a strain that hasn't ever been seen before. Antivirals are only treating the symptoms not the virus itself. The strains of flu that kill people each year in general have vaccines and antivirals that kill it. Most of those that die are already sick, the elderly or the very young. With swine flu that isn't the case and won't be the case.

#3 - This variety of swine flu besides being unseen before is a combination of swine, bird, and human type A influenza. The concern isn't as much with this specific strain, it's that as it spreads (which it does easily) it mutates, and one of those mutations will be much more deadly than the current version.

#4 - The press is probably blowing this out of proportion today. However, if it mutates, and if it explodes (think 1918 flu that started the same way) if the press wasn't taking it seriously now, and if the government and world wasn't taking it seriously now everyone would be asking why they didn't do more to protect us.

It's a lose/lose situation. If they don't take the extra precautions now, it could get worse and they will be blamed if it does. By taking extra precautions now they are 'over-reacting' and if it prevents a pandemic they were wasting time and money.

Since when is a 23-year-old considered a "boy."

It's not 23 years, It's 23 months.

The story read "nearly 2 year old Mexican boy".

Does anyone see the irony in there being a NY Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene??? Health hygiene, I can see that where we take care to keep our bodies clean. Mental hygiene - what's that? cleaning up all the trash talk out there that we hear/say and removing inappropriate images that pollute our vision??

Really, what is mental hygiene?????

mmmm boy? try 23 month

To "Boy?" - it's a 23-month old, not a 23 year old. They came into the USA through Brownsville TX, and brought swine flu with them. Go back and read it a little more closely

I laugh at the idea of Congress considering closing the border. They can't close the border when millions are entering the USA legally, and yet now they think they can stop the flood of people racing to get away from the disease?! As usual, Congress is trying to close the barn door after all the cows are out.

TO: "Hero of Canton" - the last swine flu epidemic was 1968-1972. I was living in the Los Angeles area and got it myself, I was a teenager. Swine flu was not present in 1966.

WHO reports it's moving closer to a pandemic. Good grief. It's currently classified as a 4, MAYBE they'll move it to a 5, full blown pandemic is a 6. Over less than 200 deaths?! 1918 flu killed MILLIONS. POLIO killed MILLIONS. TB and whooping cough killed way more than this. And they're calling THIS a near-pandemic? Annually we lose THOUSANDS to flu. CHILL, people.

I fully agree with the whole "CHILL people" statement.

That said, there are obvious problems with your last paragraph. The whole idea behind the elevated pandemic level is that they want to PREVENT the death count from reaching the levels that are associated with the instances you mentioned. If you wait until the count reaches thousands, you likely wont stop it until it reaches the millions.

Also, the difference between this version of the flu and the typical seasonal flu that kills "only" 30000 each year are a couple things: (a) It seems to be transferred from person to person extremely easy, (b) the ratio of survivors to deaths is apparently quite a bit lower (ie. instead of 1 death in a thousand, its more like 1 death in a hundred), and (c) its not only killing people with weak immune systems (ie. the young and the elderly), but also otherwise very healthy people between 20 and 50.

I read in the newspaper this morning that there are 250,000-500,000 people that die from the flu in the world every year.