Swine Flu Quackery

As usual, whenever they’re some public scare, whether it’s about some illness, terrorism, the Earth passing through a comet’s tail which contains cyanogen, etc. it seems like there’s always some quacks out there trying to scam the public with fake cures.

Fortunately, some people are willing to inform and education rather than con. Some people are the Young Australian Skeptics. They’ve created a public notice warning the public about possible homeopathic cures about H1N1:

 

Remember:

1) Homeopathic medicine doesn’t work. Period.

2) Vaccines do not cause autism. Period. (This will be important once they develop a vaccine for H1N1).

3) Only medical science has any chance at finding a real cure. Period.

Believing 1 and/or 2 leaves you vulnerable, not just to swine flu, but to any and all other easily cured diseases. In short, believing these things can kill you. And your loved ones.

Yes, I’m Posting Something About the Swine Flu Too

As you’ve no doubt heard, there’s a new epidemic spreading throughout the world called Swine Flu. To be honest, I’m not too worried about this becoming something on the scale of the 1918 flu epidemic. We know about viral vectors, have the ability to be able to effectively quarantine affected areas, and can develop vaccines that will protect people (who are smart enough to actually get themselves inoculated) from sickness.

Not that we should become complaicent. It’s like when you see a cop while driving. You slow down, sit up straight, put down the cell phone, etc. If we all are just a little more conscious about washing our hands regularly and not coughing and sneezing all over the place, it will make swine flu spread much more slowly and perhaps cause it to run itself out.

Of course, looking at all this from a futurists’ perspective, it all seems a bit silly. An uploaded person is obviously completely immune to a biological virus. In fact, it’s a pretty good argument for why someone should get uploaded. Any and all ways you can get sick and die from being biological (flu, cancer, heart failure, stroke, etc.) become irrelevant (computer viruses are a different issue, but I think they’ll also not be much threat to an uploading brain mostly because the brain is not a binary computer blindly executing instructions, and neither will an uploaded brain be).