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It’s an unfortunate reality, but as a widespread, somewhat mysterious illness that has more questions than answers, the swine flu is a ripe target for scam artists. So along with protecting yourself and your family from infection, you’ve also got to be on guard against unscrupulous and shady marketers. There are three main types of swine flu-related scams:

Swine spam
Swine malware
Swine “cures,” “remedies,” and “vaccines”

Swine spam are e-mail messages that have the words “swine flu” in the subject line. The senders are simply using swine flu as a hook to get you to open the e-mail. When you open a spam e-mail, the sender may be notified that yours is a valid address and that you are amenable to opening messages. At a minimum they can collect these “good” addresses and either use them in other marketing campaigns or sell them to other marketers. Once you’ve opened the e-mail, […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has elevated their swine flu pandemic alert to phase 5, the number of confirmed cases as of April 29, 2009 remains extremely low, with most cases mild and rarely fatal. In fact, although you may hear about some 2,500 cases in Mexico with 152 deaths, only 26 cases and 7 deaths have actually been confirmed as being due to swine flu. Around the world only 148 cases are confirmed. The one death of the 91 cases in the United States was in a Mexican child who contracted the illness in Mexico before visiting the U.S. The only thing newsworthy about these numbers is that they are so low and yet the reaction to them so high.
It’s important also to remember that “pandemic” simply means worldwide spread. An epidemic is a localized outbreak of an illness and a pandemic means that it’s spread to more […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

The current swine flu outbreak has many people worrying, and even more wondering, about how to avoid getting sick. And because of all the media photos and videos of people in Mexico walking around wearing face masks, people in this country naturally want to know if these are an effective means of prevention? Unfortunately, however, as with many aspects of this unusual epidemic there aren’t adequate answers for all the questions. It turns out, that there just haven’t been enough studies to say whether or not wearing a face mask would help prevent infection.
Some people will doubtless say that it’s obvious that wearing a mask would reduce the chance of your inhaling a respiratory virus that can be spread by coughing and sneezing. But it’s not nearly as obvious as they would have you believe. There are several reasons why you could still become infected in spite of wearing a […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

As I wrote earlier if you’re an average person living in the U.S. there’s absolutely no reason now to panic about the current swine flu situation in spite of the media hysteria. That may change as time passes, but it could just as easily go the other way and not become a full-blown pandemic. That’s what happened in 1976, when a swine flu scare led to emergency vaccination of some 40 million Americans in 10 weeks but the feared pandemic just never panned out. The Los Angeles Times has a nice piece on that story.
But many people have questions about the flu vaccine right now. Does this year’s vaccine cover the current swine flu strain? Why doesn’t the flu vaccine cover all strains? Why do I need to get a new flu immunization every year when I don’t have to do that for most of the other illnesses I got […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

Shingles is a painful rash caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox and there are about 1 million episodes of it in the U.S. every year. If you’ve ever had chicken pox, you are at risk for developing shingles and your risk increases with age, especially over the age of 50 and increasing thereafter. Recently issued guidelines are now recommending immunization for all individuals over the age of 60, with a vaccine designed to prevent shingles, even if they’ve previously had an episode of shingles and even if they have a chronic medical illness. The vaccine has been available in the U.S. since May of 2006 and is called Zostavax. It is made using the same virus that’s in the chicken pox vaccine, which is routinely given to children and has been in use since 1995.
You’d think that if you ever had chicken pox […]

Original post by natalieb and weightlossopinions.com

You’ve probably heard that we’re in the midst of flu season and that cases are being reported from all around the country. You may have also read that this year’s vaccine isn’t protective against most of the influenza virus that’s circulating around. In fact, it seems as though this year’s formulation is only protective against about 40 per cent of this year’s flu strains. How can this be and who’s to blame?
I learned a lot about influenza vaccine when I worked for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals back in the mid-eighties. And one of the main things I want you to understand is that of all the people involved in creating each year’s influenza vaccine, the pharmaceutical manufacturers are in no way responsible for deciding which strains are put into the product. In the case of influenza vaccine, the pharmaceutical manufacturers are just that: manufacturers. They take […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com