The last great swine flu epidemic | Hacker News Reader

The last great swine flu epidemic

salon.com

28 pointspeter12313 comments

You know, the dark entrepreneur in me can't help but feel like all this swine flu craze could be a great opportunity for someone to make some cash.

You can stock up on Indian generic Tamiflu in case of martial law. I'm not sure how you could sell it without getting arrested (or just having it seized). Craigslist probably wouldn't work.

http://www.nicepricepharmacy.com/Products2.asp?ID=3543&T... (this was listed for $79 48 hours ago)

I bet one of the overseas pharmacies has an affiliate program.

Well, some people are trying to cash in it on it.

For instance, if you look at http://flushirts.spreadshirt.com that's some great dark humor.

"I survived swine flu and all I got were these antibodies against H1N1 surface proteins."

It´s a great marketing opportunity for antivirus companies. They could give away mouthpieces ... Everybody is wearing them over here (mexico city).

I was wondering, why are there no google ads on the swine flu search term: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=swine+flu&btnG=...

is this not a reliable way to tell if there are ads or not? or is it that not enough ads have been bought?

Google bans ads on a lot of controversial keywords

Tamiflu et al. manufacturers are probably ramping up production as we speak.

It's easy to be all cool about it, as long as you are not coughing.

I have a hard time believing that there might be a huge crisis, but that doesn't guarantee it won't happen. I bet the inhabitants of New Orleans never expected to be drowned (just mentioning another example of cases where modern life CAN be turned upside down).

Medicine doesn't seem to be very successful in stopping the normal (average) flu, so I am not sure how effective countermeasures against a really bad flu would even be.

As for politicians, I guess it is a difficult decision if a lot of lives are at stake. What is worse - being called out for wasting a couple of billions on catastrophe prevention for a catastrophe that never manifested, or being called out for letting a catastrophe with millions of victims happen? (Not sure how directly you could translate those billions spent on flu prevention to other deaths that could have been prevented, but you get the idea).

Well, uh, where's the avian flu (late years' scare)?

What do you mean? I have never heard of "avian flu". The last bigger scare I remember was SARS.

Maybe the current "scare" is all backed by the makers of Tamiflu, who earn lots of money by now. Possible - just saying that another pandemic could be possible, too. There are lots of diseases that medicine can't handle yet (HIV?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza#H5N1

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