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Originally Posted by Arbitrary  First of all I would like to preface this by saying that the media is full of shit and not to be trusted until they remember the difference between entertainment and information. Infotainment is not your friend.
Dear Lithose, Cytokine storm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It is believed that cytokine storms were responsible for many of the deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed a disproportionate number of young adults (a phenomenon that could repeat itself in future flu pandemics). In this case, a healthy immune system may have been a liability rather than an asset. Preliminary research results from Hong Kong also indicated this as the probable reason of many deaths during the SARS epidemic in 2003. Human deaths from the bird flu H5N1 usually involve cytokine storms as well.
The Spanish flu pandemic lasted from 1918 to 1919, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. While older estimates put the number of killed at 40–50 million people, current estimates are that 50 million to 100 million people worldwide died, possibly more than that taken by the Black Death. This extraordinary toll resulted from the extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.
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Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. |
That was a cat 5 pandemic. It's a highly unusual mutation that happens extremely rarely..Here is the thing, your standard flu vaccine would *not* have saved those people because the mutation would have rendered it useless.
Even then, the death rate among those infected in the U.S. was less then 15% and those 15% still included the elderly and children (Trying to find exact break downs is a bitch, will try looking in the medical journals in school today). Deaths around the world however were reaching 50% or so, but thats mainly because many people didn't have access to even simple amenities like
warm beds and plenty of
clean water (Don't forget, this was during WWI). The highest death rates happened in third world countries, of course. Had this flu been contained to western countries untouched by the war, the death toll would have been exponentially lower.
Which is the underlying irony of all this..People talk about the flu like its the armageddon in a box..They don't realize these pandemics kill because people in most parts of the world can't afford to be sick with even a cold. Their living conditions are too poor, they don't have access to clean water and they can't "rest" with a healthy amount of food. Treating the flu is like giving someone Tylenol because their leg is infected with gang green, your going after the symptom.
Do you know that it's estimated that
10 million people will die of starvation this year alone?
When people don't even have enough to eat, how can you expect any kind of resistance to a bad sickness?
The best defense against another pandemic isn't it the form of a vaccine. It's going to come from making sure Johnny Ethiopian can rest in a warm bed and drink clean water. Then, even the *Worst* flu virus that we have ever seen, might be fatal to a tiny % of the overall population of any country.
