Tuesday
30Jun2009
SWINE FLU PARTIES?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 12:04PM There are fears that parents are taking their children to ‘swine flu parties’ in the hope they will catch the disease now and build up immunity. Discussions over whether parents should take steps to acquire immunity before the main flu season in the winter, when the virus is expected to be more potent, have taken place on family website mumsnet.com. One user posted: 'Great idea. Get it now while it's mild and there's plenty of tamiflu. There could be a swine flu party.'
Mad!
tagged Health, medicine, sSwine flu hysteria
Health, medicine, sSwine flu hysteria 
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Reader Comments (8)
As an added bonus all attendees will automatically qualify for the Darwin awards.
Wow, there is a group of parents stupider than those who think you can only get measles once and hold measles parties accordingly. Definitely Darwin Award candidates.
Wayne Madson on Russia Today re Swine flu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNS0Q-uxycA
Criminal charges
http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/case-about-bird-flu/
Are you both sure there is no such thing as building an immunity to common diseases? While you both quote Darwin, it seems neither of you believe his theories...
I wonder how many Black Death parties there were....
Ernest, the problem with their reasoning is that flu mutates - so even if you could develop immunity to that strain, the more potent version would be a different thing entirely. It's the same reason that there are new flu vaccines all the time (and that is indeed based on the fact that the flu evolves).
Of course you can build an immunity, Ernest. But would you seriously shove your young child in front of people with an infectious disease and give them it now just so they might not get it later? That's barking!
Frank,
Then why do the doctors push having flu jabs every autumn? even though they are based on last years strain. They might not stop infection entirely, but they certainly do reduce the severity of subsequent infection, by even the current years 'new strain'. Surely anything that strengthens the immune system has to be beneficial.
While I would not recommend deliberate infection via association, the idea is not quite so insane as the hysterical 'Mummy's little helper' suggests, certainly not as bad as keeping them so coddled that they fall prey to even minor infections and such things as 'hay fever' and allergies, - modern afflictions of the mollycoddled generations of the late twentieth century.
Darwin is all about evolution, and that includes our immune systems as well as the viruses that infect us...read the tales of Captain Cook and his travels in the South Pacific to see how it works in real life...