Test yourself for swine flu!

Here's a quick and easy test for whether you have swine flu, with some helpful links for transmission prevention. Enjoy!

Swine Flu Quickfacts

About the spread of swine flu:
1. The handful of people in the US with lab-confirmed cases haven't died. Out of almost 200 cases, five were hospitalized and one died - and that one travelled to Mexico and caught it there.
2. The cases trickling in are cases that happened a 2-4 weeks ago, and we're just now getting genetic results back on the specific strains of flu they had. Basically: swine flu already happened, and we're just figuring it out. It's probably over. EVERYBODY PANIC
3. There are going to be more cases of this. The reason cases are coming in is because we're now actively looking for them. It's just that simple.
4. No there won't be a pandemic. You have to die a lot to have a pandemic. Even in Mexico, the death rate for flu-like illnesses that might be swine flu is a staggering .07%. My god, we're doomed!

About swine flu itself:
1. Symptoms include coughing, sneezing, sore throat, fever, headache, body aches, vomiting, and diarrhea. It's a flu! Surprise!
2. It does seem to transmit from human to human rather than pig to human. That means it spreads fast. In fact, it already happened. Did you miss it? It was that fast.
3. Genetically, this thing is awesome. Four different strains of swine, human, and avian influenza! This exchange of genes is called genetic shift and it's something flus do naturally. Because they're whores.
4. It may have some characteristics that are a little like the killer 1918 flu except for the whole part where it's not really killing people, and also those characteristics might be a fluke of Mexico's flu surveillance. They do more containment/treatment than genetic testing of flu-like illnesses, so it's hard to say.
5. It does not infect pigs. No, really. I know it's called swine flu. Genetically, it's... Sigh. Just trust me on this, your bacon is safe.

What to do about swine flu:
1. Wash your hands.
2. Cover your face when you sneeze/cough.
3. If you're sick, consider doing to a doctor.
4. Does this list look familiar? Like maybe it's exactly what you do for every other minor illness that's ever happened? Yeah. There's a reason for that.

What to do if you're paranoid:
1. Get a respirator rated N-95 to filter out virus bits.
2. Stock up on water and non-perishable foods.
3. Make signs reading "THE END IS NEAR" and a nice hat out of foil.
4. Repeat steps 1-3.

If you have any lingering concerns or questions, please do ask. I like being useful. Right now I'm laughing at my family, cackling madly: "SEE?! MY OBSESSION WITH THE BIRD FLU IS USEFUL! I KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN ONE DAY!" If you want to wade through a lot of technical and political jabber, check out the CDC or WHO. That's where I get all my information.

So why is the swine flu such a big deal? Beats me. Maybe because it's a potential gateway for high-death flus like avian influenza H5N1, which this blog is about. If this swine flu combines with my bird flu, that's really bad. But it hasn't. You'll notice I mentioned up there that this "swine" flu has like four different flus in it, including a bird flu. But somehow I'm not worried! Why? It's the wrong bird flu. As you can tell just by the numbers, this flu is not a big deal. It's not that deadly. In fact, the symptoms and severity are the same as the regular flu. Some people die of seasonal flu every year, so a handful of deaths is nothing to worry about either. So stop worrying. Just wash your hands and cover your face when you sneeze. Those are the official CDC recommendations for how to deal with this swine flu. Oh, and... take a chill pill.

Alright, start at the beginning. What's bird flu?

The bird flu is a kind of influenza virus that mostly infects birds. It's very contagious and very deadly among birds. Since 2003, it's been increasingly killing humans as well. It's technically called "avian influenza" and the specific subtype I talk about is "avian influenza A (H5N1)". It's still considered a bird flu because it can't easily move from person to person, but if it develops that ability it'll be considered a pandemic flu. For the sake of consistency I'm going to keep calling it bird flu, because that's a more informal name and the one it's most likely to be called in public. Bird flu and pandemic flu are both totally different than the seasonal flu we get every winter.

What is a pandemic anyway? Is it like an epidemic?

There are some words you just gotta use even if they're awkward - they have a specific meaning, and you don't want any confusion on the issue. "Pandemic" is one of those words. A pandemic is when a disease meets four criteria:

1. It can be transmitted to humans.
2. It can be transmitted easily from human to human.
3. Much of the human population is susceptible to it.
4. It has a high death rate.

In other words, a pandemic happens when a disease spreads quickly and kills a lot of people. An epidemic is when there's more cases of a disease than expected for that time and place. An epidemic might involve a city; pandemics often involve countries. The 1918 flu spanned the entire globe, and it's usually used as the worst-case-scenario for the spread of modern diseases.

The 1918 flu is pretty interesting all on its own. You probably know someone that lived through it - ask them about it, read stories at the PandemicFlu.gov archive, or check out the National Archives. It is really depressing, though - anything that ends with mass graves is not going to be a happy story.

Who cares about bird flu?

Well, not many people do care! It's just not a problem for most people right now. I mean, if you live in Turkey and have a turkey farm you might be worried. It is the bird flu after all, and it kills a lot of birds. In fact, when bird flu is found in a poultry farm, they "dispose of" a lot of birds that might have been exposed just to make sure it doesn't spread.

The scary part is that over the last few years, bird flu has killed an increasing number of people. Every now and then a lone virus makes its way into a person, but then it dies out before it can figure out how to infect other people. There are a couple ways it could do that: it could figure it out gradually on its own (genetic drift, in technical terms) or it could swap some genes with a flu strain that is already good at moving between people, like our seasonal flu (this would be genetic shift).

So, why worry? Well, right now it's not a big deal to most of the world. The cases in humans are in places like Indonesia, Vietnam, China, and Azerbaijan, so if you're not living there you're probably not worried. But it's really just a matter of time before bird flu goes Godzilla on us all.

Man, I live in an awesome country. I'm not gonna get sick.

Oh yeah? WHO is saying that a pandemic could hit all continents within 3 months of a pandemic outbreak. Closing the borders is just delaying the inevitable (and no, Madagascar in Pandemic is not proof that it would work). As for your awesome health care (I'm looking at you, Canada), there's really not many treatments for influenza of any kind. Antibiotics won't work because it's a virus, antivirals work but it's about two mutations away from immunity, vaccines take forever to develop and make, and everything else is just treating the symptoms and hoping you make it.

Viruses are serious business. We're just so used to the flu that we don't take it seriously anymore.

What do you mean, vaccines take forever? I get a flu shot every year!

Actually, you get a vaccine every year for last year's flu. Lemme explain.

Flu season is in the fall and winter, and after that a bunch of folks at WHO pick out the three most popular flu strains. They figure that next year, the most popular strains will be related to these ones. Then they start making vaccines from these strains. This involves incubating the virus in chicken eggs, removing the virus, killing it, and combining it with the other two strains to form the vaccine you get. The whole process finishes just in time to start distributing it for flu season the next year. Yes, it really takes 4-7 months to make a vaccine!

There's a lot of problems with making a vaccine for the bird flu, too. The seasonal flu isn't much like bird flu, so the seasonal vaccine won't give you immunity to bird flu. The companies that make the vaccine can't make enough to vaccinate the whole world. They definitely can't do it in a hurry - it's a pretty specialized process, and you can't speed it up. There's also a really basic problem: you can't create a vaccine for a disease that doesn't exist yet. Until there's a pandemic, there will be no pandemic vaccine.

Any other depressing news you want to share?

Of course! I can tell you lots of depressing things. Bird flu (H5N1, to be exact) can be transmitted among all birds, pigs, ferrets, felines, and humans. In a worst-case scenario, that means little Fluffy might bring back the flu along with that present of a dead sparrow. Also, bird flu is a systemic disease - it doesn't just sit in your lungs to make you cough and sneeze, but also hits your nervous system, your digestive tract, everything. Some people never got the "flu-like symptoms" you always hear about. They just gradually went into a coma.

Now for the good news: there's plenty of things you can do to make sure you don't get bird flu in the first place.

So what can I do about bird flu?

That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? Basically, what you can do is prevention. You can avoid catching it, and you can avoid spreading it.

First of all, I want to emphasize that you don't have to worry about bird flu at all until it's a pandemic - and believe me, you'll know when that happens. The first thing to do in a flu pandemic is, of course, to not panic. Look up information with the CDC (if you're American), PandemicFlu.gov (also American), or the WHO. They are the authorities on this stuff.

So let's say there is a pandemic. There are a couple things not to do: don't swamp the hospitals, don't freak out about the lack of an instant cure, don't listen to the tinhats telling you the world is ending.

Next, the things you definitely need to do: stay away from crowds. Work, school, whatever - being around lots of people is going to put you at risk. We've heard this one before, but wash your hands a lot. You can use alcohol-based sanitizers like Purell, too. If you do have to be around people, wear a mask - but not just any mask! You actually want a respirator, not a facemask. (Those surgical facemasks you see on TV won't filter out viruses.) You'll want an N95 rating on your respirator, which means that it filters out teeny tiny particles like mold spores and viruses. The U.S. Health Department has a whole page on what kinds of masks are the right kind. And yes, it really does matter. Wearing a loose-fitting facemask in a pandemic would be like wearing a tin-foil hat in a thunderstorm: you're just asking for trouble.

If you have to care for a sick person, your chances of catching the flu skyrocket. The CDC recommends some tough measures: wearing gloves, gown, goggles, and respirator around the sick person. Remember, the best thing to do is not catch the bird flu in the first place.

I'm feeling pretty prepared now.

Don't get too cocky. A lot of people think they know all about bird flu, but they haven't got a clue. You're gonna want to double-check your information. Fortunately, I've got a whole bunch of resources for you!

The CDC is America's governmental health organization, and they have a lot of up-to-date information on bird flu. They also have another site made specifically for the possibility of pandemic bird flu: PandemicFlu.gov.

The World Health Organization is the big, global authority on the spread of diseases. They're where everyone else gets information. This is the first place that will have reliable information on the spread of a pandemic. The reading may be a little dry, but it's important.

It's just as important to know who to not listen to. Don't listen to unofficial organizations. Think about why they're spreading the information. Do they want you to buy a product? Do they want to scare you? Be calm and be smart. Bird flu isn't the end of the world. It will be awful when it happens, but if everyone is prepared and does what's needed to keep it from spreading, we'll live through it.

Now for the fun part! Take the quiz and learn if you'll die of bird flu. Post the results on Facebook, Myspace, your favorite forum, where ever you want.