I am not unduly worried as I am off to Turkey and there are not many pig farms there.
I think I will wear a mask on the flight though.

No, not at all, I realise the WHO has upped the threat to level 5, but I have been watching the progress of this epedemic carefully and to be honest, looking at the actual deaths, people who have been confirmed as having the virus, and the statistics, then I will still be travelling to jamaica in 3 weeks ( hopefully ! ) without any undue worry.
I really hope this thread doesn't become a nasty one though, as some will have real concerns and others may rubbish those concerns, so lets see how it pans out.

i think its an interesting thread just to hear peoples thoughts hopefully it wont get out of hand

I agree madmadge, its just that there's a real difference of opinions over the 'to be concerned or not' type thing on trip advisor, so hopefully we can have a good old fashioned swap of opinions here on this thread without any personal attacks, which we know the mods won't allow !!

I personally think it is a lot of hype and is taking centre stage over the recession we are in. But a little part of me is concerned because in under 5 weeks we are flying out to LA in California across the Mexican border. Will they stop the flights i wonder, i hope not, we've paid over £4,500 to twin it with Las Vegas.

No as I'm going to Turkey. I'm sure where there is a conceived real threat then flights will be stopped.

Masks are a waste of time by the way - the main way of spreading viruses like this (as with the common cold and flu) is by hand, touching things. No point in you having a mask if a person who is infected has just used the door handle you've used is there? Also the surgical type masks should be replaced after wearing for a few hours (also they are made to stop the wearer infecting others not the other way around).

Just a thought. If I book a holiday to Spain (as an example) and the Phase is raised to its maximum of 6 or I suddenly decide I don't want to travel because of the swine flu, would I get my money back. What if I went on a cruise; you would only want 1 person to start showing symptoms and you could have between 1,000 and 2,000 people desperately trying to jump ship - no wonder I've woken up this morning with a headache (and no, it's not swine flu!). If this situation continues as it is, then we could find the travel industry is in trouble.

Or am I just being unduly worried?

You would only get your money back if flights and trips were cancelled because of the virus. Is it the WHO which decides whether a country is safe to visit or not? Or it could come from the government of that particular country or this one or the travel industry itself. If you were too worried to fly and cancelled that would simply be you changing your mind and would be treated just like any other cancellation.

Pesonally I'm glad we have no flights planned at this stage, as I think back to the number of bugs I or those close to me have picked up in the past after a flight, particularly long haul one's.

If the swine flu takes hold, what happens...will the airlines still fly. I can't see them stopping tourism, as its one of the worlds largest industries. But people will have to start making their own assesement of the risks and whether they want to take them.

If this flu is anything like the 1916 spanish flu then you all be very worried, healthy you adults were dying 48hrs after catching the flu, how it kills, it attacks the lungs and the cells have a self destruct built into them as a immune response, as they self destruct they let fluids into the lung and everytime a cell dies is less air you will be able to take in and you dround in your own body fluids.

It might be taking away news from the recession but if there is a global pandemic a recession could turn into depression.

This flu is very serious, when have you heard world health organisation becaome so worried about a strain of flu, the bird was hard to catch but this flu will spread like wild fire. Its the same flu as the spanish but with a different outer coating so our immune systems will not recognise the flu and it will take for bodies to produce the right antibodies and if somebody can die in 48hrs from catching the flu then our immune systems will have no chance.

Jay trip it has nothing to do with pig farms now its made the jump from pigs to humans, it will be taken to turkey by somebody infected flying in from a different part of the world. maybe a tourist from the UK

I believe that anyone who thinks it's all a fuss over nothing being hyped by the press is naive and ignorant of the facts.

No, you most probably won't die should you contract it but you really shouldn't be dismissing it as not important.

I've been on the receiving end of some of the ignorance surrounding this strain of 'flu.

I've got two African Grey parrots and yesterday a friend asked me 'Aren't you afraid you're going to catch this 'flu from your birds?'. My reply, 'No, I'm more afraid of them catching it from me and dying'. I mean, really?!

Anybody looking for medical face masks.

http://www.medical-masks.co.uk/acatalog/surgical-face-masks.html

great another reason for the British holiday maker to panic.. if its not flue of one sort or another, earthquakes, air crashes.. then it must be grannies warts....

If this flu is anything like the 1916 Spanish flu then you all be very worried, healthy you adults were dying 48hrs after catching the flu,

most of thease young men were not fit and healthy by todays standards, most had fought in or were prisoners in the great war, where they had little sleep poor diet and what is known today as stress. . if your not fully fit for any reason then you make yourself susceptible to all sorts of illnesses..

the worse scenario is 45% of the population may get it and if so 1% of those may die [ yes it a fairly large number] but as a whole that works out around 0.42% of the population which make the odds of you both catching it and dying is something around 1 in 225 [ you get wose odds of being involved in a car accident]

I agree that sensible precautions are needed [stay away from Mexico and the bordering southern us states] make sure you are both fit and healthy, don't panic and don't panic others, and waste as much of your hard earned cash on flu jabs which may not work as this is a different strain oh and mask so we can all have a good laugh...

Brian

I've just been on another site and I've had to take a walk away from the computer while I regain my thoughts because one poster is more worried about people keeping away from Benidorm and people losing their jobs than this "scare".
Are these people just burying their heads in the sand and think it will all go away or think we always have a cure for everything these days.?

The Spanish flu was in 1918/1919 (50 million deaths) Asian flu in 1957/1958 (approx 70,000 deaths) and Hong Kong flu in 1968 (1 million deaths world wide)
The Hong Kong flu shared internal genes with the 1957 Asian flu and was caused by a strain of H3N2 from the H2N2 strain by an antigenic shift, in which genes from multiple subtypes mutated to form a new virus, both these strains contain genes of Avian flu and combined with human flu, the new strain arose in pigs.

Most of us have a basic immunity to the H1N1 strain which causes seasonal influenza in humans, but not this strain which causes swine flu, we haven't seen anything like this before and whilst in 1918 we didn't have antibiotics and anti-viral drugs, we didn't have aeroplanes either to take it around the globe.

There is no cure or at the moment vaccine for swine flu, the anti-viral drugs don't cure the flu, they lessen the symptoms and shorten the illness....and it doesn't matter if you're fit, healthy, young or old because YOU haven't got any immunity to this strain of flu, it's done an antigenic shift and mutated into a strain that we haven't seen before and nobody knows how it's going to pan out in the future, it's giving the researchers an headache because it's jumping from human to human easily.

IMO:What do you expect when you mass produce food and keep animals in conditions where they can't even stand back up if they fall down because they are packed in that tight, and they breed/incubate disease amongst themselves and you feed them other dead animals, then we come in contact with these diseases/animals with a new mutated virus that is capable of further mutation and jumping species.?

Nobody can say how people will be affected and the percentage of the population because we simply do not know, but I would rather be safe than sorry.

Sanji

I think every household is going to be receiving one of these leaflets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/30_04_09_swineflu.pdf

I forgot to answer the question No at the moment I'm not having any worries about flying to Spain next month, even though swineflu has been diagnosed in Spain, but this situation needs to be monitored daily.
If the virus peters out, you should not think "that's the end of it" because the flu virus struggles to survive in warm weather and it may come back with vengence when the summer is over in the northern hemisphere, but hopefully we may by then have a vaccine.

This is a good page to show you how the virus has mutated and done an antigenic shift to form a new virus. (click on the 1 to 4 diagrams)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8021958.stm
I think the best thing is to get as much information about this and monitor it daily before either dismissing it or making any rash decisions or statements.

Sanji

Wizard

I watched a documentry on spanish flu and what shocked doctors was healthy fit middle class young adults were dying from the spanish flu and some died within 48 hours, the flu was spread by troops coming back from europe during the 1st world war, spread half away across the US until it suddenly died out and the western half of the US stayed unaffected, but with people flying all over the world it will spread very quickly, south pole should be a good place to advoid it.

I don't know how this countries health system will cope, a few years back a stronger strain than normal hit the UK and hospital were taking only emergencies.

I am hoping its not as bad as they think it is. Takes the body 6 months to fully recover from the flu, a very nasty virus what gets into every part of the body and not like cold what staying in the nose and throat.

The EU has instructed official bodies to rename the flu outbreak as ‘new flu' or ‘novel flu' to avoid disastrous consequences for the porcine farming sector.
That's novel

Sanji

my son is on holiday in australia at the moment,he phoned today said there were 30 cases reported of swine flu in queensland.he is staying in brisbane. he seems to think he is safe enough.they think the risk will be changing flights at dubai on way back next week.

percy123