I admire Joan Collins for persistently lying about her real age. We live in a society utterly obsessed with age and so it seems to me that to lie concerning your age is entirely reasonable. It has always been a woman’s prerogative to do so and now, in an age of equality, I feel that men have the right to do so as well. Julie Burchill says that there is something rather dodgy about men who lie about their age. So be it, but I shall still go on doing so.
i love how they say there is NOW a battle to contain this flu, as if all of the countries affected by it before us haven’t been worrying about it at all.
The comments from Mail readers on this story are rather tragically predictable, choosing to blame McBroon and ZaNuLiarBore for the whole thing, and demanding that we close our borders immediately (they must be creaming their pants over that one – yet another reason to hate foreigners).
We have one of the best health services in the world and have a vast supply of flu vaccines, therefore no problem, but they still choose to believe that because we have a Labour government, the bodies will be piling up in the streets. Pathetic.
I’ve already put this on my blog but, not to underplay the threat of swineflu but the BBC says this:
Mexico: 152 suspected deaths – 20 confirmed cases
So, not 152 deaths but 20?
Also, Michael Hanlon wrote this:
“But sooner or later something like the 1918 disaster will strike again. Nothing, short of perhaps nuclear war, has such potential to kill so many. The humble virus, our oldest enemy, remains the most deadly of all.”
“But sooner or later something like the 1918 disaster will strike again”
Quite likely, just not with another flu virus. We live in a very different world than in 1918. For starters we have actual vaccines these days, medical science was quite primative in the early 20th century; antibiotics, for example, weren’t discovered until 1929 and weren’t widely available until the 1940s.
Similarly, governments are very different beasts. Back then, governments basically existed to fight wars and uphold the law and little else. If a country needed to put hundreds of thousands of people in hospitals they’d need to rely on the voluntary and charitable sectors as well as for-profit private medicine since they had no real facilities of their own beyond those for military purposes. Similarly, government wouldn’t have been much good at organising something like sealing-off an airport or isolating outbreaks. Organised international health initiatives of the kind that exist now with things like the WHO simply didn’t exist at the time too.
Another factor is communication. Nowadays the TV and radio can allow a centralised health authority to relay orders and advice to citizenry but in 1918 the best way to achieve this would have been through leafletting and newspapers – slow and ineffective. This also meant it would have been hard to combat rumour and disinformation about the outbreaks.
Not to mention in 1918 there were millions of soldiers who had previously been living in unsanitary conditions in trenches all going home and spreading whatever diseases they had managed to contract. It was pretty much a worst case scenario, virus wise.
If this virus is reasonably efficient at human-human transmission we won’t contain it for long.. but will it matter? Nobody has come up with a reasonable mortality rate.. extrapolating the Mexico figures is unreliable as the number of people who got a bit sniffly for a few days then recovered simply isn’t recorded… except it only managed to kill a confirmed 20 people in a city of 10 million. That suggests it’s even less lethal than ordinary flu!
Of course the tabloids have redefined pandemic to mean ‘Mutant Killer Zombie Virus’ so when the WHO declare a pandemic they’ll go nuts – even if the virus isn’t going to kill any more people than a normal flu outbreak.
I admire Joan Collins for persistently lying about her real age. We live in a society utterly obsessed with age and so it seems to me that to lie concerning your age is entirely reasonable. It has always been a woman’s prerogative to do so and now, in an age of equality, I feel that men have the right to do so as well. Julie Burchill says that there is something rather dodgy about men who lie about their age. So be it, but I shall still go on doing so.
One has to ask if this swine flu will effect house prices?
Is swine flu Gordon Brown’s fauly by any chance?
Joan Collins making-over Camilla Parker-Bowles?
Yeah, like Joan’s such a goddam oil painting herself.
Two people sent home with the sniffles and a *possible* seven others. On the other side of the battlefield, a stockpile of thirty million flu jabs.
Can’t see it being a protracted battle.
NickPheas – Fergus Shanawhatever in The Sun manages to find a way to blame him.
i love how they say there is NOW a battle to contain this flu, as if all of the countries affected by it before us haven’t been worrying about it at all.
The comments from Mail readers on this story are rather tragically predictable, choosing to blame McBroon and ZaNuLiarBore for the whole thing, and demanding that we close our borders immediately (they must be creaming their pants over that one – yet another reason to hate foreigners).
We have one of the best health services in the world and have a vast supply of flu vaccines, therefore no problem, but they still choose to believe that because we have a Labour government, the bodies will be piling up in the streets. Pathetic.
“Julie Burchill says that there is something rather dodgy about ……”
Like I’d pay the slightest attention to JB and her estimation of what is and what is not ‘dodgy’!
PANIC
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!
I’ve already put this on my blog but, not to underplay the threat of swineflu but the BBC says this:
Mexico: 152 suspected deaths – 20 confirmed cases
So, not 152 deaths but 20?
Also, Michael Hanlon wrote this:
“But sooner or later something like the 1918 disaster will strike again. Nothing, short of perhaps nuclear war, has such potential to kill so many. The humble virus, our oldest enemy, remains the most deadly of all.”
Oh fuck I’m going to die.
Yeah a cut on the knee killed people in 1918
I don’t even think the Martians from War of the Worlds would be worried about this virus.
I think a battle may work, but I’d have more confidence if it was a “crusade”.
“But sooner or later something like the 1918 disaster will strike again”
Quite likely, just not with another flu virus. We live in a very different world than in 1918. For starters we have actual vaccines these days, medical science was quite primative in the early 20th century; antibiotics, for example, weren’t discovered until 1929 and weren’t widely available until the 1940s.
Similarly, governments are very different beasts. Back then, governments basically existed to fight wars and uphold the law and little else. If a country needed to put hundreds of thousands of people in hospitals they’d need to rely on the voluntary and charitable sectors as well as for-profit private medicine since they had no real facilities of their own beyond those for military purposes. Similarly, government wouldn’t have been much good at organising something like sealing-off an airport or isolating outbreaks. Organised international health initiatives of the kind that exist now with things like the WHO simply didn’t exist at the time too.
Another factor is communication. Nowadays the TV and radio can allow a centralised health authority to relay orders and advice to citizenry but in 1918 the best way to achieve this would have been through leafletting and newspapers – slow and ineffective. This also meant it would have been hard to combat rumour and disinformation about the outbreaks.
Why not try and contain it in some Tupperware? It contains just about everything else!
“HOW I’D GIVE CAMILLA A ######## BY JOAN COLLINS” would make a great one for the “Missing Words Round” in “Have I Got News For You?”
Not to mention in 1918 there were millions of soldiers who had previously been living in unsanitary conditions in trenches all going home and spreading whatever diseases they had managed to contract. It was pretty much a worst case scenario, virus wise.
If this virus is reasonably efficient at human-human transmission we won’t contain it for long.. but will it matter? Nobody has come up with a reasonable mortality rate.. extrapolating the Mexico figures is unreliable as the number of people who got a bit sniffly for a few days then recovered simply isn’t recorded… except it only managed to kill a confirmed 20 people in a city of 10 million. That suggests it’s even less lethal than ordinary flu!
Of course the tabloids have redefined pandemic to mean ‘Mutant Killer Zombie Virus’ so when the WHO declare a pandemic they’ll go nuts – even if the virus isn’t going to kill any more people than a normal flu outbreak.
We are all going to die.
Personally I’d rather be murdered by a jealous husband at the age of 99, but we are all going to die.