Swine Flue outbreak in Mexico, US; 20 confirmed dead.

[Brazen]

[Grey Fox]

It seems that Mexican are simply not use to having the flu.

[grumbler]

Gods it'll be just like sipping cognac when the Titanic founders 

New is slow reaching your neck of the woods, isn't it?  Hate to tell you this, but you missed your chance to sip cognac when the Titanic founders by some 97 years.

[Caliga]

20: Are we all going to die?

A: Yes

Hell's bells! 

[DisturbedPervert]

Any deaths so far outside of Mexico?

Give it time.  It's just beginning elsewhere and people are going to hospital over sniffles, when that's all Mexico had they didn't realize anything was wrong.  Prepare to die.   

[Eddie Teach]

I have a bad cough, should I be worried?

[Neil]

I now really regret not stockpiling some Tamiflu earlier.  By now they should be out of stock in all drug stores.  The only way to get them now is by going to a doctor/hospital - but that's probably the last thing I want to do if I am infected.

Maybe some tiger penis will help?

[Malthus]

Epidemiologists are generally of the opinion that if we channelled all the money from pandemic panics into diseases that actually do kill vast swathes of people, the money would be much better spent. But the pressure is on governments from the public in wealthy nations to protect themselves rather than save poor people. 1.6 million people died from TB in 2005, for instance. That's 24 per 100,000 population.

Well, naturally people are more concerned about what might affect them personally. Witness all the angst over the recession. People in some third-world countries were dying of starvation and whatnot both before and during this recession - but the press is far more concerned with people in the first world losing their jobs or their investments, than hordes of third-worlders dying.

Similarly, we in the first world keep people alive with expensive heart surgery and the like, when a pittance of the same resources could save hundreds of third world lives.

[Brazen]

There were 69,000 deaths from TB in Europe in 2002, 46,000 in The Americas in the same period and 749 in the US in 2001. It's not just a developing world problem. It just doesn't have the glamour of the pandemic prefix or the association with an animal.

[Grey Fox]

What's TB?

[Brazen]

What's TB?

Tuberculosis.

[Neil]

There were 69,000 deaths from TB in Europe in 2002, 46,000 in The Americas in the same period and 749 in the US in 2001. It's not just a developing world problem. It just doesn't have the glamour of the pandemic prefix or the association with an animal.

749 deaths?  More people die in the US from accidentally inserting their penises into blenders.

As for Europe, well large swathes of Europe ARE 'the developing world'.  Russia and its former colonies, for example.

[Malthus]

There were 69,000 deaths from TB in Europe in 2002, 46,000 in The Americas in the same period and 749 in the US in 2001. It's not just a developing world problem. It just doesn't have the glamour of the pandemic prefix or the association with an animal.

I'm not sure I follow. Depending on definitions, large parts of "the Americas" and "Europe" *are* "developing world".

There is no doubt at all that people in the first world are - more indifferent to the diseases of  poverty. That's simply a symptom of the fact that they are more indifferent to the *existence* of poverty and inequality, and are unwilling to pay the price of reducing the same - whether in their own countries or, even more so, in other countries.

[Razgovory]

What's TB?

Triple penetration.  Really hardcore porn.

[Habsburg]

What's TB?

Consumption, what Legend Kidman died of at the end of Moulin Rouge!