Got Garlic?

[Nanker]

Pass the garlic and silivovitz!

These days, Serbian media often compare what happened at two popular music festivals as proof of the alleged medicinal virtues of garlic.

That's because Serbia's first swine flu cases were confirmed after the annual Exit rock music festival in July in the town of Novi Sad, where authorities say the mostly young audience indulged in beer and marijuana.

By contrast, the media say, no swine flu cases resulted from the equally popular folk music festival in Guca, central Serbia, where the generally older, more tradition audience gorged on meat dishes heavily spiced with garlic, and drank slivovitz.

Cover your cough and sneeze.

Now that nearly 4,000 Americans have purportedly died from the Swine Flu, the left is going apoplectic.

Such has been the administration’s incompetence and indifference to the pandemic that commentators have suggested the swine flu may well become “Obama’s Katrina,” a reference to the callous and blundering response of the Bush administration to the hurricane that laid waste to the US Gulf Coast and its principal city, New Orleans, in 2005.

As was the case with Hurricane Katrina, the swine flu epidemic has revealed the decrepit state of infrastructure in the US and the indifference of a government whose overriding concerns are the profit margins of Wall Street banks and the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

WHO says More than 6,250 deaths in the world, while the CDC now claims 3,900 is the "best estimate"

The CDC said Thursday's report re-calculates the first six months of the new H1N1 strain's spread, from April through mid-October. As a result, the CDC said: About 98,000 people nationwide have been hospitalized from the flu or its complications, including 36,000 children, 53,000 adults younger than 65 and 9,000 older adults.

Deaths could range from a low of 2,500 to as many as 6,100

, depending on how the data is analyzed. CDC settled on 3,900 as the best estimate. The estimate of 540 child deaths compares to 129 based on lab-confirmed deaths as of a week ago. "We don't think things have changed from last week to this week," Schuchat stressed. It's "a better estimate for the big picture of what's out there."

About 8 million children have become ill, 12 million adults younger than 65 and 2 million older adults. In a typical winter,

seasonal flu strains cause 200,000 U.S. hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths

, the vast majority in people over 65.

I remain a bit skeptical about the change in counting. But that's just me. Can't help but feel that the Public Health officials in charge of managing this epidemic are frustrated with the low turnout for inoculations. Perhaps it's just a way of lobbying for more resources.

Poor Russia, falling behind the west, yet again. This must be incredibly galling to Putin.

 

Curious that America is such a focal point for these deaths. Is the reporting here better than elsewhere in the world? How can that be with the shambles of a health care "system" that we're saddled with?