Yup, but a biological weapon that only kills the old and weak makes no sense, wouldn't you agree?

For some reason that doesn't quite surprise me much.

(By the way, on a more serious note; there's a good reason why the infection is able to spread amongst under 25 years of age this rapidly. Many children and young-adults go to school and interact quite often with eachother, basically just about every day. Add to that the amount of carriers that do not get (very) sick and it's not too surprising.)

What I do know is that many of the people that have died of the swine flu, probably wouldn't have survived a normal flu either. Most deaths are somewhat 'special cases', even though its becoming more frequent.

German:

Hab regade eine Sagrotan (Desinfektionsmittel) Werbung gesehen
"Tötet Bakterien und die Vieren der Schweinegrippe"
Dann kommt eine Kind (quitschi, dubbi dubbi, ach wie niedlich) und eine Hausfrau im Werbespot.

ärgerlich wie dumm die Werbung und die potenzielle Kundschaft
ist...

On the map in week 43, 5,453 of the 5,474 influenza infections in the US are H1N1. In Europe it's 892 out of 893.

So *most* of the flu cases in the US and Europe are H1N1.

Those numbers imo aren't about the actual number of infections. As I see it it's about the results of some specific labs from cases where people wanted to know the exact flu subtype (e.g. to exclude H1N1). It doesn't include the majority of people who just visit the doctor and get a flu diagnosis plus some medicine and go home (or simply cannot afford expensive tests - I don't know if a test is for free when there's a H1N1 suspicion)...

It also can hardly be another way as with like 200000 infections and 40000 seasonal deaths from "standard flus" it'd be hard to reach such a numbers...

EDIT:
Ah ok - you mean that map. Will have a look into it...

EDIT2:
Well it seems this also is just about the result of test labs but not about general flu infections itself. So imo the result of the graph is that swine flu is rather easy to diagnose as people suspicious of having it usually and actually have it...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

BTW a question: In another discussion about swine flu etc. this came up:
http://www.patentstorm.us/applications/20090010962/claims.html

Can someone here explain what exactly this patent is about and if it has any close relation to the swine flu everyone is talking about? I kinda lack the knowledge to understand what exactly this patent is about...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

It is about general flu infections, at least about the ones serious enough for hospitalization. They have to do a general test to get the base type in order to treat it. If you go to the graph you linked, you'll see that 33.2% did not get the H1N1 subtype test, but they can assume its H1N1 since there really hasn't been enough of the other cases yet.

I'm not trying to make people panic, this isn't end times :), but you shouldn't take H1N1 too lightly either. It's a bit more serious then the normal flu.

As far as the conspiracies go, leave them for the X-Files. This is not a bio-weapon. The patent you quoted doesn't look too unusual (this is what bio-companies do), other then the fact that they are using the same virus that is going around. If our current H1N1 outbreak was an interferon resistant tumor killer, the hospitals would be overflowing by now.

Yes, but this shouldn't necessarily raise any alarm bells, as people are being cautious when they catch a bad flu. Meaning chances are high they've got H1N1 if the flu itself is so bad that people are being (voluntarily) hospitalized.

I'd like to see a total amount of flu cases to put all these numbers into a perspective, but I agree, it shouldn't be taken too lightly either.