Swine flu vaccine: Poland smarter than everybody else :P

[merithyn]

The point of my Russian roulette analogy is that in life, it's possible to make a bad decision and get lucky.  Life is not deterministic, life is very much stochastic, with chance playing a big role. 

There aren't just two possible states that could encompass the swine flu threat: "full on pandemic" or "overhyped threat".  The more likely model is that a threat much like the swine flu has a 5% chance of becoming a devastating pandemic like the Spanish flu, and a 95% chance of being just the plain old flu.  Just because you invent some stupid reason to convince yourself to take your chances doesn't mean that your reason was correct.  It's much more likely that you just wound up in the lucky 95% of the outcomes.

Results-oriented thinking is human, but it's very fallacious when you're dealing with stochastic events.  I like this kind of thinking in other people, it makes it easier for me to win at poker.

This makes sense, but I think the difference in how I view it is that I saw the chance of it being a deadly pandemic around 2-3% (based on independent studies done on the April outbreak), but the media and pharmaceutical companies hyped it to 30-40% chance. (Made up numbers, just trying to explain how it felt watching the media.)

Given that the normal flu has a 0.001% chance of killing you, that I wasn't in any danger group, and that I had been thoroughly exposed to the disease at work, it made little sense for me to worry about this particular bout of the disease.

[Martinus]

I don't think many thought it was akin to a Spanish flu, but rather they feared it could mutate into another Spanish flu.  Just because such fears turn out to be not be realized doesn't mean that they were unjustified.

The thing is, every year there is a risk of normal flu doing just that, not to mention there being countless other diseases in the case of which the risk of a lethal mutation is similar - and no such measures are taken, because simply it would be too costly compared to the risk.

Elimination of a very remote, small risk at an enormous cost is just not something that is a rational response - it is purely emotional.

[DGuller]

I don't know all the specifics about the swine flu, and whether it was an extraordinary threat.  My main beef is with the fallacious reasoning employed after the fact. 

The fact that millions of people didn't die doesn't validate or invalidating anything by itself.  My Russian roulette analogy was an extreme example of how evaluating the action by its results can be so stupid.  The same beef applies whenever some stupid people go "What global warming?" whenever there is a cold spell, or many other similar situations.

[The Minsky Moment]

Poland didn't buy swine flu vaccines. Apparently, the rate of deaths and illnesses in Poland is about the same as in Germany and France, and way below the normal annual flu.

Just goes to show that even deadly viruses have some standards about where they go.

[Slargos]

I don't know all the specifics about the swine flu, and whether it was an extraordinary threat.  My main beef is with the fallacious reasoning employed after the fact. 

The fact that millions of people didn't die doesn't validate or invalidating anything by itself.  My Russian roulette analogy was an extreme example of how evaluating the action by its results can be so stupid.  The same beef applies whenever some stupid people go "What global warming?" whenever there is a cold spell, or many other similar situations.

I have a red hat you need to wear.

It wards off tiger attacks.

[Josquius]

For a similar reason they say Mongolia has one of the world's lowest rates of automotive deaths.
Not really something to be proud of though.

[Malthus]

DGuller is right on this one.

The fact is that the H1N1 did not mutate so as to be particularly deadly.

However, a truly deadly pandemic will very likely occur eventually. We have been very lucky with emerging diseases over the last few decades. HIV is bad but relatively difficult to get; same with SARS. H1N1 wasn't really deadly. Ebola, while horrible, is limited to remote parts of Africa.

The worrying aspect is that our public health systems are not particularly well prepared to deal with it. If anything, hopefully the latest scare will have helped in that respect - a dry run.

The opposite reaction - complacency - is a bad idea. Many a hurricane missed New Orleans before Katrena; that does not mean neglecting the floodwater defences proved a good idea and a justified savings of money!

[Faeelin]

Isn't this sort of like celebrating that you didn't buy a fire alarm because your house hasn't burned down yet?

[merithyn]

I agree with what you're saying, Malthus, and am not advocating complacency. My complaint has been that the pharmacuetical industry and media have now created a "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" situation. Even in Mexico City, where the Swine Flu hit first, it was never as great a danger as they said it would be. There was potential, however minute the chance, but that's not what the media (and the CDC, to be perfectly honest) trumpeted. The way it was presented was, "If you get Swine Flu, you've got a good chance at dying. If your children get it, they are more likely to die than you are, even if they're perfectly healthy people. Get the vaccine or risk losing everything important to you."

Now, they're finding that the deaths of Swine Flu were not much different than the regular flu. Yes, lots of people got sick, but they nearly all got better, just like the regular flu. The reports coming out are showing that, well, they were off by 85,000 deaths.

How are people going to take that? Who's going to believe the next big media circus around a disease? What happens when that one actually is real? The nation may be ready to handle the problems, but are people going to listen? Even on this one - with all the hype and drama and fear-mongering - how many people still didn't bother, or outright refused, to get the shot?

I chose not to because I read a bunch of articles coming out of Mexico City this summer that showed that the death rate was no different than any other flu. It showed that people were sicker for longer, but with basic flu symptoms. Various studies over the years have shown that getting a disease is always better than getting a vaccine, because there are no side-affects to the vaccination, no danger of getting it when the vaccine wears off, and the body has a built in ability to adjust to mutations if they've had the disease before. When the disease is such that it can cause serious and dangerous problems, I get the vaccine. When the disease is simply an inconvenience, I don't.

Is it a gamble on whether this flu or that one is serious and dangerous versus an inconvenience? Sure, but it's a calculated risk with a good bit of research behind it. Unfortunately, not everyone does that, and instead listen to the news for direction. When the media blows it out of proportion too often, they don't even bother with that anymore. This is the greater concern, from my perspective.

[Zanza]

We also didn't pump a single euro into the economy as a "bailout" measure and yet have the highest GDP growth in the EU because a lot of the money pumped into their economy by the Germans trickled to Poland. 

You are welcome. We are charitable like that to our poor neighbours. 

[Martinus]

It showed that people were sicker for longer, but with basic flu symptoms.

Actually, the swine flu is characterized by the basic flu symptoms (high fever etc.) lasting for 4 days, instead of 5 days as per normal flu. I am not saying this makes it less lethal or less dangerous - just a factoid.

[Malthus]

I agree with what you're saying, Malthus, and am not advocating complacency. My complaint has been that the pharmacuetical industry and media have now created a "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" situation. Even in Mexico City, where the Swine Flu hit first, it was never as great a danger as they said it would be. There was potential, however minute the chance, but that's not what the media (and the CDC, to be perfectly honest) trumpeted. The way it was presented was, "If you get Swine Flu, you've got a good chance at dying. If your children get it, they are more likely to die than you are, even if they're perfectly healthy people. Get the vaccine or risk losing everything important to you."

Now, they're finding that the deaths of Swine Flu were not much different than the regular flu. Yes, lots of people got sick, but they nearly all got better, just like the regular flu. The reports coming out are showing that, well, they were off by 85,000 deaths.

How are people going to take that? Who's going to believe the next big media circus around a disease? What happens when that one actually is real? The nation may be ready to handle the problems, but are people going to listen? Even on this one - with all the hype and drama and fear-mongering - how many people still didn't bother, or outright refused, to get the shot?

I chose not to because I read a bunch of articles coming out of Mexico City this summer that showed that the death rate was no different than any other flu. It showed that people were sicker for longer, but with basic flu symptoms. Various studies over the years have shown that getting a disease is always better than getting a vaccine, because there are no side-affects to the vaccination, no danger of getting it when the vaccine wears off, and the body has a built in ability to adjust to mutations if they've had the disease before. When the disease is such that it can cause serious and dangerous problems, I get the vaccine. When the disease is simply an inconvenience, I don't.

Is it a gamble on whether this flu or that one is serious and dangerous versus an inconvenience? Sure, but it's a calculated risk with a good bit of research behind it. Unfortunately, not everyone does that, and instead listen to the news for direction. When the media blows it out of proportion too often, they don't even bother with that anymore. This is the greater concern, from my perspective.

The notion that the scare was a conspiracy by the pharma industry and media is cracked. The fact that it did not turn out to be a big disaster is pure ex post facto thinking.

Fact is that the World Health Organization listed this as a "level 6" situation - a full pandemic.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html

Unless the WHO is controlled by the "big pharma and the media", of course.

This was not a "minute" thread blown up by the media; it was a real and pressing threat. The virus did not mutate so as to be deadly, but there was zero way to predict that in advance.

People may well be stupid and not realize that not every biological threat can be predicted exactly. Same with the threats posed by extreme weather, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. They are only partly predictable by science. That does not justify *not taking precautions* when the evidence suggests a threat is, in fact, likely; the costs of being wrong and having a "false positive" are outweighed by the extreme costs of a "false negative".

[Martinus]

Dude, a PANDEMIC doesn't mean it is dangerous. jesus christ. That's the thing. Media and everybody else heard the word "pandemic" and went into a panic mode.

Common cold is a "pandemic". Herpes is a "pandemic". But noone shits their pants over it because the fact that something is a pandemic does not say anything about the threat.

[Tamas]

Isn't this sort of like celebrating that you didn't buy a fire alarm because your house hasn't burned down yet?

[Malthus]

Dude, a PANDEMIC doesn't mean it is dangerous. jesus christ. That's the thing. Media and everybody else heard the word "pandemic" and went into a panic mode.

Common cold is a "pandemic". Herpes is a "pandemic". But noone shits their pants over it because the fact that something is a pandemic does not say anything about the threat.

Dude, the WHO stages are specifically designed as an 'alert'. The UN doesn't "alert" you to the seasonal common cold now, does it?

Read the link. "Phase 6" is intented to trigger, and I quote, the "Current phase of alert in the WHO global influenza preparedness plan". Unless you are of the opinion that the WHO needs a "Global preparedness plan" for the common cold ... ?