H1N1 - What's the Feeling in SL Community?

I actually agree with you on many of your statements - I just think that most of the time you do a pretty sloppy job of arguing your point, letting too much emotion, name calling, and put downs get in to it rather than sticking to logical arguments.

Meh... I would, but my lizard overlords have advised me against it.

Now, hold on. Vaccinations as a general concept and term do work in most cases.

The immune system is comprised of two parts: the innate and the acquired.

The innate immune system is your natural immune cells that keep the body healthy. The innate immune system response to a challenge invasion (such as a virus) is approximately 30% -- meaning roughly 30% of the immune cells jump into action when the call goes out.

The acquired immune system builds up over your lifetime. When the immune system meets up with something nasty, the white blood cells produce antibodies in response to the antigens (virus, bacteria, etc..) Once the immune system has produced a specific antibody, it also produces "memory cells" that will always remember that antigen. This is why once you've had a specific strain of flu or some other disease, you will naturally be immune to it when it comes around again. The immune system remembers.

What a vaccine does is expose the immune system to a weakened form of the disease so that the immune system produces the antibodies to combat the disease if it should ever come into contact with it. Things like cold and flu mutate quickly and different strains come out every year - which is why the cold you got sick from this year will not be the same cold you get sick from next year. If it was the same cold virus, you would already have antibodies to it and be protected.

You mean THIS Dr. Carley?

http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/carley1.html

I read that. Yes, it's scary. Then I did a general search on thimerosal, mercury in vaccines, vaccination and autism, etc.

The majority would seem to disagree with Mr. Kennedy.

Debra, I have been in meetings like the one Mr. Kennedy talks about. I suspect that if you or I had been in attendance, we would have heard the remarks Mr. Kennedy quotes in their proper context. It's very easy to pick and choose your quotes to support your conspiracy theory.

I find the fact that Mr. Kennedy equates ethylmercury with methyl mercury to be significant. Other, and to me more credible, authorities have looked at the two chemicals and the pathways by which people are exposed to them and determined that they are two very different animals. In other words, Mr. Kennedy is grasping at straws.

You see, I figured someone would have drummed up an explanation for colloidal silver's lack of efficacy for the purpose of curing all that ails ya! "You're not doing it right! The stuff sold in stores is too old and no good"...

Typical.

Let's count the marketing buzzwords in this next statement, shall we:Would you mind perhaps sharing a link or two to a scientifically-researched, peer-reviewed medical journal article that supports these claims you are making?Silver is effective at retarding bacterial growth when externally applied to an open wound having potential for infection. I will grant you that. But the key words here are "retarding bacterial growth", not "curing infections already in progress", and certainly not internally.It sounds like the FDA are on top of their game here, preventing snake-oil vendors from infesting the medical profession. You would think "Big Pharma" would be all over something like silver colloidal, figuring that anything silver-based would be sure to fetch big bucks on the prescription and OTC markets; but even *they* realize it is nothing more than snake-oil.The Internet is a mighty big place. What is stopping them from publishing this "research"? Could it be that the "research" has more value kept secret than it would when exposed to public scrutiny?Roger that!

Personally I enjoy the science coverage at http://www.badscience.net/ which demonstrates that it is possible to both practice good science and distrust the pharmaceutical industry at the same time. There is a lot of good information there relevant to this discussion.

Well, that's just it. Regardless of the marketing potential for this thing, you really cannot deny that we ARE in a pandemic, with something that we don't have a lot of immunity to, hence the widespread nature of this beast so early in the "traditional" flu season. Calling it "swine flu" may not have been entirely accurate because of the mongrel makeup of this virus; but the main reason the media stopped referring to it as the swine flu was because of outcry from pork farmers who were watching sales of pork products falling through the floor because of some mass hysteria that was going around that one could get swine flu from eating pork.

I don't know about silver, but Colloidal Oatmeal is a wonderful product. It works on heat ras, bug bites, minor scrapes and bruises, rabies, dementia.......

A classic case of cause appearing to follow effect. That's the first bit of sound advice I have seen from you yet. I suggest you follow it.

I can deny anything I want. This is the Internet.

I find collodial silver to be very effective when spread on glass and exposed to light through a focusing lens, and then processed with developer, a stop bath, and a fixing agent.

QFT! I've listened to medical experts on radio programs who say the swine flu (I'm tired of this H1N1 whatever PC crap) has actually decreased and the cases of people who have died from it in the US have on the whole already had a suppressed immune system due to another illness.

I don't trust Obama...I don't trust the current administration...in fact I plan to use my vote next year to vote against all incumbents and that plan has been making the rounds of the more conservative groups.

I'm not ABOUT to have some new vaccine that has been rushed onto the scene injected into me.

And I reiterate a post I made on the subject, if not here, then in some forum...lol. The swine flu, when it was actually CALLED that due to PC not having gained the foothold it currently has, swept the country in the early 70's and had a lot of the similar scare tactics associated with it that we see now. Vaccination "stations" were set up in shopping malls.

My then husband and I went one evening to get our shot and found ourselves in a loooong line, even with many stations set up. Finally we decided to come back during the day on Wed. which my husband had off from work. Prior to that happening, though, news reports began surfacing that a number of people who had taken the swine flu vaccine had developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, "a paralyzing neuromuscular disorder."

Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak

Interesting how history repeats itself. In the above Wiki, the 1976 flu was actually referred to as "a strain of H1N1 influenza virus."

Beyond my personal convictions, I keep hearing that the current swine flu is largely affecting the younger population with the theory that they were not around to build up an immunity to the 1976 version, so since I was, I'm not in the target group. Also, I stay largely at home, don't go to large gatherings of people, and have been more conscious of practicing preventative hygiene. I don't think I've ever washed my hands so much in my life! I purchased a solution for handwashing that doctors use that is supposed to kill germs for 8 hours.

pics please

QFT

Very true. Even that site you cited from the National Autism Association seemed inconclusive - on the one hand stating that the causal relationship between ethylmercury and autism is a "biological certainty" while in other places admitting that insufficient research had been conducted.

The thing is, even in the 21st century, there's still a lot we don't know about chemistry and how different chemical elements interact. Who's to say that mercury, when in the presence of specific other chemicals, isn't safe? After all, you wouldn't think about putting out a fire with hydrogen, or oxygen, or a combination thereof; but *chemically* combine the two, and you have yourself a very effective fire extinguishing agent that also doubles as a life-essential beverage. Just be careful how you chemically combine those oxygen and hydrogen atoms, lest you turn that life-essential beverage into a poisonous bactericide.

For what it's worth, I am distrustful of products containing mercury. But until science can give us a safe and effective alternative, and as long as the benefits outweigh the risks, this is what we have.

So I guess offering you half my tuna sandwich is out of the question?

Isn't that what SL looked like back in 2003?

In other words, while the level of MMR remained stable from 1988 to 1993, incidence of autism increased. If MMR was the cause of the increase, than rates of autism would have leveled off when vaccination rates also leveled. Instead, the two variables moved independently of each other.

Not at all! The benefits of eating that tuna sandwich far outweigh the risk from the tiny probability that said fish contains harmful levels of mercury!

*nahm nahm nahm* =^.^=