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Worried About H7N9 and some other stuff


aliciarune

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I'm not sure I want this to be my first post, but I kind of just wanted to get it out of the way. Warning to those who don't like this stuff, don't read if you're scared by these things. 

Anyway, as for the topic, I decided to post here since I find a lot of people here to give good posts both on and not on visual novels. To be honest, I need some help to calm down I guess (if it's possible), after reading about this today. You see I suffer from severe anxiety and it's hard for me to calm down when reading things like this. This is why I try to not read the news or posts on things like politics and so on. Sadly, sometimes I end up doing what I use to do and read the news foolishly. This time it happened because an artist/friend I'm working with told me she was sick and there is some concern there. 

Anyway, I read some things about H7N9, a sorta of new flu virus caused by birds again. I've learned a lot about it from articles like this

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/health-chief-bird-flu-strain-h7n9-could-cause-world-pandemic-q8g2ctz2x

and this 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6541824/new-strain-bird-flu-h7n9-kills-nearly-half-contracted-china/

and opinion articles like this 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-the-next-plague-hits/561734/

I've also read articles on how the flu that dogs get may end up becoming transmittable to humans. 

I know these articles are true. I get that. But sadly, I'm not too smart when it comes to things like this and politics, nor do I read the news (when I can help it), so I don't know how severe this is. I guess I'm hoping someone can put my mind at ease a bit. I'm finding it hard to do so myself. Or if you can't, I guess I really have a lot to worry about...

(But i often wonder how people don't talk about these things. Does it worry them as well?)

Any help is appreciated.  

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Hey, I read about that before. The world health organization has a page on it.

According to that, it's pretty hard for the virus to pass from person to person, and we can't get it from eating chicken or eggs either, thankfully. 

It's an unfortunate fact that news reporters usually want their articles to be seen, and end up exaggerating their stories pretty often to cause fear or rage or any number of emotions that makes ideas stick in people's minds and makes them want to share them. There's a lot of fearmongering and very little truth to be found in a lot of articles because of that. It also often ends up helping radicalize people into extremist ideologies, which is always pretty rough. 

It's still important to know about and really shitty since it does cause hundreds of chinese people to get sick once every year. Then again, people who do get sick seem to be those that have a lot of contact with birds in marketplaces with poor hygiene conditions and lots of live birds. I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you're in a position like that.

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19 minutes ago, Kaguya said:

Hey, I read about that before. The world health organization has a page on it.

According to that, it's pretty hard for the virus to pass from person to person, and we can't get it from eating chicken or eggs either, thankfully. 

It's an unfortunate fact that news reporters usually want their articles to be seen, and end up exaggerating their stories pretty often to cause fear or rage or any number of emotions that makes ideas stick in people's minds and makes them want to share them. There's a lot of fearmongering and very little truth to be find in a lot of articles because of that. It also often ends up helping radicalize people into extremist ideologies, which is always pretty rough. 

It's still important to know about and really shitty since it does cause hundreds of chinese people to get sick once every year. Then again, people who do get sick seem to be those that have a lot of contact with birds in marketplaces with poor hygiene conditions and lots of live birds. I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you're in a position like that.

Hey Kaguya, thanks for taking the time to read this and answer back. I'm really grateful and you words make me feel better. I guess I never thought about articles doing this fearmongering stuff. I've heard about, but it doesn't always click with me. It's a terrible thing to do and just makes people like me panic =(. 

 

And nope, I don't live with live birds, thankfully. I guess I just remember how ebola was and is still a major problem. As for the passing on from each person, what scares me is they say it's mutating to being able to. That's the scary part.

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It's pretty scary so I wouldn't blame anyone for being worried about it. Still, it's a disease that's been around for 4 years, less than 2000 people have ever been infected with it and only about 1000 died. At the risk of sounding condescending, China is a huge place. There's over 1 billion people in it. It's unfortunate that in the last outbreak almost 700 people had to deal with this disease, and even moreso that a large portion of them lost their lives, but this huge, incredibly densely populated place with poor hygienic conditions and a lot of birds being killed on the open is the perfect place for a disease like this to thrive. 

That so few people have been contaminated by it still with every single thing going in favor of the virus should show it's no big concern for most of china, much less to the rest of the world. 

Still scary though. Always is. But hey, nice that you brought it up anyway. Probably something people should know about. 

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11 minutes ago, Kaguya said:

It's pretty scary so I wouldn't blame anyone for being worried about it. Still, it's a disease that's been around for 4 years, less than 2000 people have ever been infected with it and only about 1000 died. At the risk of sounding condescending, China is a huge place. There's over 1 billion people in it. It's unfortunate that in the last outbreak almost 700 people had to deal with this disease, and even moreso that a large portion of them lost their lives, but this huge, incredibly densely populated place with poor hygienic conditions and a lot of birds being killed on the open is the perfect place for a disease like this to thrive. 

That so few people have been contaminated by it still with every single thing going in favor of the virus should show it's no big concern for most of china, much less to the rest of the world. 

Still scary though. Always is. But hey, nice that you brought it up anyway. Probably something people should know about. 

Yeah, it is rare from how you put but still scary...And who knows if they're telling the whole truth. But yeah, it's good for people to be aware off. 

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It's mostly clickbait journal articles, the one that goes like "OHLALA DISEASE X WILL COME IN 10 DAYS"

The thing is, H7N9, and all its variants, are here since a lot of time, and they have yet to become pandemics, and while it is true, flu epidemics are generally a dangerous thing (see the spanish flu for info, for example), we are still far from a mortal danger for every single individual on earth.

No need to stumble into panic. 

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