4PW's, attempted answers below:
I think the W.H.O. confirmed H1N1 cannot be contained in one area, or even several areas. Restricting the passage of people on airliners won't help keep the flu out of Australia or any other country. Is this right?
Yes, it's right unless we destroy the airline industry, our economy and quarantine ourselves. What we can do, and are doing is
DELAY it's arrival in Australia and buy ourselves time to prepare a vaccine and make preparations for when it does arrive.
If it's not true, what are the measures we can best use to keep the flu out of Australia, and are they being utilized?
You should already know the answer to that if you are a professional international pilot. Arriving aircraft don't get automatic pratique any more, health cards are required and there is inbound thermal scanning as well as teams at each international airport. Now that can't pick up asymptomatic cases, but it's a start. When we get a confirmed case, we can at least have a go at contact tracing and blanketing them with Tamiflu as well
If the W.H.O. is on the money, why do you propogate the hype in 2009 instead of waiting till next year.
Time magazine just ran a copy saying it's all over until 2010. I figure they've used the good oil in greasing their rag. Are they quoting reliable sources?
Flu traditionally spreads best in winter. The Northern hemisphere is going into spring/summer, they therefore expect their next fall/winter to be the riskiest time for them. Time is a Northern hemisphere magazine.
You should be aware that the Northern Hemisphere folks are busy watching what happens to
us since we are entering our flu season.
You, and Time magazine, identify the world's health facilities as unable able to cope with forecasted numbers of infected people. Time differs in reporting we don't have to worry about that inconvenient truth until 2010.
If that date were an absolute, is there sufficient time to prepare, and if so, why do you keep banging on about how we're stuffed NOW, not later?
If H1N1 arrives in Australia NOW, then the time to prepare is over, it's "come as you are". In a pandemic, there is no way that medical facilities can cope. State and Federal plans are already in place to deal with the overflow as best they can. I would imagine that these plans will be tuned as we get better information on what this bug can do.
The best analogy I've read about its behaviour and possible mutations is that it is like a little puppy dog at present, we don't know what it is going to grow into, a Wolf or a Pekinese?
Lastly, isn't Tamiflu a dud if H1N1 mutates, as virus' are prone to do?
Does that mean we're doomed?
Thank God we live in Australia. We have the tyranny of distance on our side for once. We have our own flu lab at Parkville who, I imagine, are busy on seed strains for a vaccine and CSL can churn out enough for all in Australia pretty quickly.
It's all a mystery to me, but I'm not at all worried. Hungry, but not worried.
To take a leaf from John Howard, "be alert but not alarmed", do you have a plan if you or your family get sick? Do you have kids at school? What if it closes? Does your employer have a pandemic plan? What if you get sick with this bug far from home on a charter or somewhere? These are what you should be thinking about.