I have been in midtown Manhattan for the last week, I have seen exactly one person with a mask. She wasn't wearing it on her nose and mouth, it was down around her neck. She was walking into the New York Palace Hotel with luggage and I'm guessing she was probably wearing it on a flight into the city. Other than that midtown Manhattan is mask free.
What is all this scarce stuff about, on a flu that doesn't seem to be killing anyone outside Mexico?
The PhysOrg science news site is now reporting that the new swine flu is likely not as dangerous as the 1918 epidemic. See here.
ReplyDeletePersonally I'd rather see governments dealing with life threatening, or at least potentially life threatening, events of this type than much of what else they do.
In the US, about 36,000 people die each year from plain old ordinary flu every year. My guesstimate is that means maybe a million deaths world wide from flu a year. I'm also guessing that one positive benefit of the current 'scare', (assuming it turns out to be a false alarm) is that the 'normal' flu death toll may be lower this year than normal.