I suspect that for most people their concern about swine flu peaked the day that the World Health Organization raised their warning level all the way up to level 6 and declared that they were at "full pandemic status". Since then the world has not melted or anything, so we have all gone back to business as usual. I know that I have, and I think most people have taken the view that this thing is pretty much yesterday's story and that swine flu is about as harmful as a drink of water.
And you know what? So far, it looks as if that's about right (yes, some people have died of swine flu complications, but a lot less than were initially expected). I have to admit that I was starting to feel the same way, but I have just finished reading a book called "Survive Pandemic Flu - Understand and Protect Against Novel Strains Of Influenza", and what I found out is that looks can be deceiving when it comes to strains of flu. The author points out that the last time we saw a flu strain like this novel H1N1 strain begin spreading around the world, it ended with the deaths of about 100 million people.
It did not happen that long ago either. It was 1918, less than a century ago. An H1N1 strain came out of nowhere at about the same time of the year, spring time, and then vanished a month or two later without causing much of a problem. But then it came back in the fall.
This time it was completely changed, and that dopey virus that caused little loss of sleep in the early part of the year was suddenly dropping people in their tracks. Those that turned blue did not last very long, and in most cities around the world they quickly ran out of coffins and had to stack corpses in makeshift piles and bury them in mass graves.
Well, I could go on about the obvious parallels between the strain that emerged in 1918 and the one we are dealing with in 2009. But really, I would only be scratching the surface of a very involved story that actually goes back to Abraham Lincoln and something he did during the Civil War. Something which guaranteed that even if nature acting on its own does not come up with a twin version of that 1918 strain, we may yet get to experience it again anyway.
That was just one of the surprising things I discovered in Survive Pandemic Flu, and I can guarantee you that those "idiot" WHO officials that we all laughed at earlier when they raised the alarm and then nothing bad seemed to happen, well, they aren't quite the idiots we made them out to be. Not by a long shot.
Trust me, if you think all those swine flu warnings were hype and that our troubles are now behind us, then you are going to be one of the 99 percent of the population that gets caught with its pants down when the nasty hits the fan. No one knows whether it will be this year, the next, or five years from now. But if you would rather be among the one percent whose family isn't taken by surprise, get a hold of this book. Heck, for the cost of cheap family meal you get an education that might just save the life of a family member one day.
So drop what you are doing, and check out Survive Pandemic Flu right now so that you can get prepared well ahead of time. I know that my family is going to be a lot better off for me having learned what is in this book, and what I can do to make sure they are protected as much as possible against any pandemic threat - no matter when it makes its appearance.
Usually when someone tells you that some book they are recommending may be the most important one you will read this year, you already KNOW that it is a line. But in this case, that's just not true. At any rate, you can decide for yourself when you go check it out. You can thank me later for pointing you in the right direction.
At the very least, grab the introductory chapters of the book. If you read those and you still think you and your family have nothing to fear from the next pandemic you will at least know where to find the information later if you discover you were wrong.
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