What made swine flu so worrisome was the high death toll it wrought in Mexico. Most of us assumed that the virus would be at least as lethal wherever it spread. It wasn’t. With the virus temporarily in retreat, current estimates show all but one of the swine flu deaths were confined to Mexico, and all but a few of those were in Mexico City. Why? Rampant poverty, for one, which kept many in Mexico who contracted swine flu from going to the doctor until it was too late. Swine flu isn’t much more dangerous than seasonal flu, it just struck a particularly vulnerable population. That didn’t prevent a public panic, of course: the Mexican economy could lose as much as $5 billion before tourism and economic activity recovers. [%comments]
The Importance of Sample Size, Swine Flu Edition
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In addition, the only person to die in the United States was a child of Mexican citizens who brought the child to Houston for treatment. Tragically, they came too late.
So no US Citizens were killed by the “Swine Flu”.
I believe a lot of it had to do with the impovershed people over there
Is the cost of providing decent health care to those in poverty in Mexico less than that which is lost in a international panic to Mexico’s industry?
(from a humanitarian angle I think universal health care should be available, and at a minimum to those in extreme poverty, but sometimes people see financial incentives more easily then humanitarian need.)
It’s also possible that there were also many more in Mexico who caught the swine flu, didn’t go to a doctor (and therefore went unreported), and didn’t die, which artificially propped up its measured mortality rate.
In mexico,even the poorest workers that work for legal established companies have acces to the “insituto mexicano del seguro social”,and also,there is a system of hospitals for free for anybody who requires inmediate atention.
But most of poblation ,even middle,and upper middle classes avoid going to doctor afraid to lose a day of payment.
Finally,We have the notion that the doctor charges excesive fees,and that prescription includes many expensive medicines that only will calm the pains and do not cure completely!
It is a mistake,but we,mexicans,continue trusting in herb healers,and pharmacist advice!
Thanks for the support of our northamerican friends and neighbors!
Mexico surely must have suffered under normal flu and yet there are not that many deaths until recently.
The lack of deaths due to A(H1N1), the current Swine Flu, is due to prompt prescription of Tamilfu, not because this flu is as mild as the normal flu.
But Tamilflu is very expensive. If we let this Swine flu to spread as normal flu, many places will run out of Tamilflu and worst, many will be treated as normal flu, i.e. treated with antibiotics to fight secondary infections.
The worst scenario is that it will be resistant to Tamilflu just as the normal flu for year 2009 had become resistant to Tamilflu. Then we can talk about how mild this flu is.
Economic activity is not a reason to risk millions of lives.
First US Citizen death from swine flu was just reported.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30398682/
Rob,
You should have phrased it “The first US Citizen with Swine flu has just been reported dead”. The woman had many other health issues so it’s likely any strain of flu virus would have been enough to cause her death.