Since there are more flu than AIDS deaths in US

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

Since the flu is a bigger killer in America than AIDS, Hollywood is sure to create fund-raisers for this epidemic. And when you battle an epidemic, you need a ribbon. I say the ribbon should be a yellowish color -- representing the snot that comes out of you when you cough...

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,74884,00.html

 

Flu Deaths Rise Sharply in U.S. Since 1970s, Largely Because of Aging Population

 

CHICAGO — Despite the advent of a vaccine four decades ago, flu-related deaths in the United States have risen dramatically since the 1970s, and influenza now claims more lives each year in the United States than AIDS, researchers say.

 

The rising death toll is attributed largely to the nation's growing number of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the flu.

 

Only about 65 percent of older people get vaccinated, and the annual shots do not protect aging immune systems as well as they do younger ones.

 

The U.S. death toll surged fourfold from 16,263 in 1976-77 to 64,684 in 1998-99, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Flu deaths now average about 36,000 a year, up from 20,000 in previous estimates, the CDC said.

 

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said the news "that influenza may be taking an even larger toll than we have realized" underscores the importance of flu shots, especially for older people.

 

The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

While drug breakthroughs in the mid-1990s helped tame AIDS and reduce the U.S. death toll from 51,000 in 1995 to about 15,000 in 2001, the main weapon doctors have against flu — vaccines — have proven disappointingly ineffective in the most vulnerable population, people 65 and older.

 

The death toll pales in comparison to that of the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918, which killed more than 20 million people, including 500,000 Americans.

 

The new numbers frustrate public health experts who had hoped the development of flu vaccine about 40 years ago would have had a greater effect.

 

Annual flu shots have been recommended in the United States for people 65 and older since the 1960s and for those 50 and older since 2000.

[Guest DrTom]

Hollywood won't get behind anything like that. Yes, I know you were being facetious, but they only like to go after the causes that are "fashionable" to care about, like AIDS and their former pet project, the homeless. Celebrities love doing empty gestures that make them feel better while doing nothing constructive to solve the problem, and a bunch of ribbons is just another example of this.

[Guest Mad Dog]

"While drug breakthroughs in the mid-1990s helped tame AIDS and reduce the U.S. death toll from 51,000 in 1995 to about 15,000 in 2001, the main weapon doctors have against flu — vaccines — have proven disappointingly ineffective in the most vulnerable population, people 65 and older."

 

 

Funny how in the late Eighties the media wanted us to believe that millions of people were dying from AIDS.

 

Or the fact that they lied about who the disease targets.