I guess I should sell my clutchfans account. I wonder if there's anyone in vtexas' 4th period who needs it.
OK maybe it might be time for a little alarm. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30398682 U.S. declares swine flu public health emergency 20 cases have been confirmed so far in the U.S.; up to 81 killed in Mexico Government officials have declared a public health emergency in connection with the swine flu outbreak that has killed dozens in Mexico and sickened 20 in the U.S., said the nation’s director of Homeland Security said Sunday. Janet Napolitano also said border patrol agents have been directed to begin passive surveillance of travelers from Mexico, with instructions to isolate anyone who appears actively ill with suspected influenza. The number of cases confirmed in the United States by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now 20, including eight New York City high school students. Other cases are in Ohio, California, Texas and Kansas. Patients have ranged in age from 9 to over 50. “As we look for swine flu, we are seeing more cases of swine flu and we expect to see more cases of swine flu," said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC, during a White House press conference Sunday. "We view this more as a marathon." Napolitano said the emergency declaration is a warning, not an actual imminent emergency, similar to preparing for a hurricane. "I wish we could call it a declaration of emergency preparedness,” Napolitano said. Besser noted that compared to cases in Mexico, “what we’re seeing in this country is mild disease,” nothing that the U.S. cases would not have been detected without increased surveillance. “The real important take away is that we have an outbreak of a new infectious disease that we’re addressing aggressively,” Besser said. He said he still can’t say why cases in U.S. are so much milder than the deadly cases in Mexico where up to 81 have died and more than 1,300 have been sickened since April 13. The incubation period for this virus is 24 to 48 hour period. President Barack Obama recently traveled to Mexico but the president’s health was never in any danger, said John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. President Barack Obama has received regular briefings from advisers on the swine flu outbreak and the White House readied guidance for Americans. “The government can’t solve this alone, we need everybody to take some responsibility,” Napolitano said. Besser urged Americans to practice frequent handwashing and to stay home if they feel sick. “If your children are sick, have a fever and flu-like illness, they shouldn’t go to school.” The U.S. will begin screening travelers at the nation’s borders and isolating people who are actively ill with suspected influenza, the director of Homeland Security said today. No travel restrictions are issued currently, but that could change, she said. Napolitano said she’d ordered border officials to start passive surveillance protocols to screen people at U.S. borders. asking "Are you sick? Have you been sick?" Health officials said the facts of the outbreak don’t yet warrant testing or quarantine of travelers from Mexico, but that that could change if the situation gets worse. Officials said Sunday they are considering whether to begin manufacture of a vaccine. “At this point, there is not a vaccine for this swine flu strain,” Besser said. Deaths in Mexico Symptoms in the New York cases have been mild, said New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. New York health officials said more than 100 students at the St. Francis Preparatory School, in Queens, recently began suffering a fever, sore throat and aches and pains. Some of their relatives also have been ill. Some St. Francis students had recently traveled to Mexico, The New York Times and New York Post reported Sunday. The World Health Organization chief said Saturday that the strain has "pandemic potential," and it might be too late to contain a sudden outbreak. Monitoring possible cases State infectious-diseases, epidemiology and disaster preparedness workers have been dispatched to monitor and respond to possible cases of the flu. Gov. David Paterson said 1,500 treatment courses of the antiviral Tamiflu had been sent to New York City. The city health department has asked doctors to be extra vigilant and test patients who have flu symptoms and have traveled recently to California, Texas or Mexico. Investigators also were testing children who fell ill at a day care center in the Bronx. Two families in Manhattan also have contacted the city, saying they had recently returned ill from Mexico with flu symptoms, Frieden said. Frieden said New Yorkers having trouble breathing due to an undiagnosed respiratory illness should seek treatment but shouldn't become overly alarmed. Medical facilities near St. Francis Prep have already been flooded with people overreacting to the outbreak, he said. Kansas health officials said Saturday that they had confirmed swine flu in a married couple living in the central part of the state after the husband visited Mexico. The couple, who live in Dickinson County, weren't hospitalized, and the state described their illnesses as mild. "Fortunately, the man and woman understand the gravity of the situation and are very willing to isolate themselves," said Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, the state health officer. Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A flu viruses, the CDC's Web site says. Human cases are uncommon but can occur in people who are around pigs. It also can be spread from person to person. Symptoms include a high fever, body aches, coughing, sore throat and respiratory congestion. No immunity Health officials are concerned because people appear to have no immunity to the virus, a combination of bird, swine and human influenzas. The virus also presents itself like other swine flus, but none of the U.S. cases appear to involve direct contact with pigs, Eberhart-Phillips said.
It's arrived in Canada. Don't think people should overreact to this, the health authorities havn't even had a chance to study it in detail. http://www.healthzone.ca/health/article/624655 Swine flu confirmed in Canada Authorities to hold a press conference this afternoon April 26, 2009 Comments on this story (9) STAR WIRE SERVICES Canada’s first cases of swine flu have come to light, at different ends of the country. Health authorities in Nova Scotia are confirming four cases of swine flu in the province. The province’s public health officer, Dr. Robert Strang, says the four infected people in Windsor, N.S., are recovering from the illness. All of them had what he describes as “mild” cases of the flu. Sources say British Columbia has found a pair of cases but it is not yet clear if they have a link to Mexico. No information was immediately available on the health of the cases. Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon told CTV the federal cabinet has set up an operations committee and has been monitoring the situation closely. Foreign Affairs has posted information on its website on the health situation in Mexico but is not telling Canadians to stay away from the country. Federal authorities will hold a news conference later this afternoon. Around the world, countries planned quarantines, tightened rules on pork imports and tested airline passengers for fevers as global health officials tried Sunday to come up with uniform ways to battle a deadly strain of swine flu. Nations from New Zealand to France reported new suspected cases. World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan held teleconferences with staff and flu experts around the world but stopped short of recommending specific measures to stop the disease, urging governments to step up their surveillance of suspicious outbreaks. Governments including China, Russia and Taiwan began planning to put anyone with symptoms of the deadly virus under quarantine. Others were increasing their screening of pigs and pork imports from the Americas or banning them outright despite health officials’ reassurances that it was safe to eat thoroughly cooked pork. Some nations issued travel warnings for Mexico. Chan called the outbreak a public health emergency of “pandemic potential” because the virus can pass from human to human. Her agency was considering whether to issue nonbinding recommendations on travel and trade restrictions, and even border closures. It is up to governments to decide whether to follow the advice. “Countries are encouraged to do anything that they feel would be a precautionary measure,” WHO spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi said. “All countries need to enhance their monitoring.’’ New Zealand said that 10 students who took a school trip to Mexico “likely” had swine flu. Israel said a man who had recently visited Mexico had been hospitalized while authorities try to determine whether he had the disease. French Health Ministry officials said four possible cases of swine flu are currently under investigation, including a family of three in the northern Nord region and a woman in the Paris region. The four recently returned from Mexico. Tests on two separate cases of suspected swine flu proved negative, they said. Spain’s Health Ministry said three people who just returned from Mexico were under observation in hospitals in the northern Basque region, in southeastern Albacete and the Mediterranean port city of Valencia. Mexico closed schools, museums, libraries and theatres in a bid to contain the outbreak after hundreds were sickened there. In the U.S., there have been at least 11 confirmed cases of swine flu in California, Texas and Kansas. Patients have ranged in age from 9 to over 50. At least two were hospitalized. All recovered or are recovering. New York health officials said more than 100 students at the St. Francis Preparatory School, in Queens, recently began suffering a fever, sore throat and aches and pains. Some of their relatives also have been ill. Some St. Francis students had recently traveled to Mexico, The New York Times and New York Post reported Sunday. Preliminary tests of samples taken from sick students’ noses and throats confirmed that at least eight had a non-human strain of influenza type A, indicating probable cases of swine flu, city health officials said. The exact subtypes were still unknown, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was conducting further tests. Hong Kong and Taiwan said visitors who came back from flu-affected areas with fevers would be quarantined. China said anyone experiencing flu-like symptoms within two weeks of arrival an affected area had to report to authorities. A Russian health agency said any passenger from North America running a fever would be quarantined until cause of the fever is determined. Tokyo’s Narita airport installed a device to test the temperatures of passengers arriving from Mexico. Indonesia increased surveillance at all entry points for travelers with flu-like symptoms — using devices at airports that were put in place years ago to monitor for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and bird flu. It said it was ready to quarantine suspected victims if necessary. Hong Kong and South Korea warned against travel to the Mexican capital and three affected provinces. Italy’s health ministry also advised citizens to postpone travel to affected areas. Symptoms of the flu-like illness include a fever of more than 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit), body aches, coughing, a sore throat, respiratory congestion and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhoea. At least 81 people have died from severe pneumonia caused by the disease in Mexico, according to the WHO. The virus is usually contracted through direct contact with pigs, but Joseph Domenech, chief of animal health service at U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency in Rome, said all indications were that the virus is being spread through human-to-human transmission. No vaccine specifically protects against swine flu, and it is unclear how much protection current human flu vaccines might offer. Russia banned the import of meat products from Mexico, California, Texans and Kansas. South Korea said it would increase the number of its influenza virus checks on pork products from Mexico and the U.S. Serbia on Saturday banned all imports of pork from North America, despite reassurances from the FAO that pigs appear not to be the immediate source of infection. Italy’s agriculture lobby, Coldiretti, warned against panic reaction, noting that farmers lost hundreds of millions of euros because of consumers boycotts during the 2001 mad cow scare and the 2005 bird flu outbreak. Japanese Agriculture Minister Shigeru Ishiba appeared on TV to calm consumers, saying it was safe to eat pork. In Egypt, health authorities were examining about 350,000 pigs being raised in Cairo and other provinces for swine flu. The WHO’s pandemic alert level is currently at to phase 3. The organization said the level could be raised to phase 4 if the virus shows sustained ability to pass from human to human. Phase 5 would be reached if the virus is found in at least two countries in the same region. “The declaration of phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short,” WHO said. Phase 6 would indicate a full-scale global pandemic. thestar.com
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I happened during World War I, it killed a lot of service men on both sides. Service men brought it with them when they were sent home during the war and after the war ended. I remember a teacher in one of my college history classes saying Americans now a days are unaware of this part of history. I was one of them before this class because when I thought of World War One I didn't think of the flu.
Is something fishy with this thing? It seems like the only serious cases have been in Mexico and everybody else in the world who has gotten it has either been "mildly ill" or at least recovering.
The 1918 flu killed in three waves - the first was a mild outbreak. The second was the strongest and most deadly and the third hit cities that fared well during the second. So it still got to pretty much everybody. I honestly think I've run into it - in Houston. I've been as sick as I have been in 20+ years over the last week. I got sick after seeing someone who got sick after flying into IAH April 13. I hope I'm wrong.
Epidemiology is fascinating stuff. Could be any number of factors related to health, cleanliness, and diet. Also, remember that viruses aren't stupid. A dead host is not a plus in the virus world, so it will most likely evolve into a less severe strain.
That seemed kind of odd to me as well. I'm kind of skeptical after hearing: "We're all going to die from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Mad Cow)!" "We're all going to die from SARS!" "We're all going to die from Avian Flu!" I would be interested to hear rimrocker's/Mrs. rimrocker's opinion on the current swine flu outbreak compared to the above. How many of these have been real worldwide emergencies, or have they been overblown by the media and general public paranoia?
Thats what we want, a best case scenario non-deadly pandemic if there is such a thing. Still need a bit of paranoia and full surveillance of this start to finish. Not like they're crying wolf on this, better safe than sorry
On ABC news they are doing a story on it right now and mentioned the possibility that it might've already mutated into a less virulent strain. For those who are wondering why there is such concern about this is that this is a new flu virus which humans might have little or no natural immunity too.
