Am I missing something - or is this a "crock of...."

I don't think it is a crock but obviously some of the measures like banning pork from the U.S. and Mexico was ridiculous. I am also pretty worried about the measures we have imposed over here in Hong Kong. Anybody coming from a city that had reported infections would be compulsorily sent to a hospital for observation should they be found to have a fever. The degree of self damage to our tourism would be enormous as people would avoid travelling over here.

However, if a pandemic occurs then the consequences would be horrific from a public health and economic point of view.

In previous pandemics (H3N2 1968, H2N2 1957, H1N1 1918), up to a third of the world's population were infected within 1-2 years. All the rest of the population is infected eventually and most people will probably be infected mulitiple times throughout his/her life.

The unusually mild H3N2 "Hong Kong flu" in 1968 only caused around 33,000 deaths that year. But it has now caused cumulatively more than 1 million deaths to date. It is still the predominant human influenza strain. If a pandemic on that scale occur today, it will lead to a reduction of 1% of global GDP.

But nowadays, we have got much better tools available to combat a potential pandemic. If we hold off the virus for at least a year. We may have developed an effective vaccine by then.

Although the cases outside appear Mexico have been mild. A mere 100 cases or so is statistically insignificant. We need many more cases before we can come to a conclusion about the virulence of the virus. Morover, since the virus is mutating rapidly all the time, there is no guarrantee that it may become more virulent later on.

If a pandemic does occur, then at one stage the governments would have to relax most of the control measures and let life gets on as normally as possible. My hunch is still that this will not turn into a pandemic, not certainly this year as we are getting near summer. There is also encouraging news from Mexico in that the number of new infections seem to have stabilized or even coming down.


Derek

It is not as serious as they are acting. It's no worse than the regular flu, I think the concern is just that it is spreading so fast and it's new.

It's only been on the media a few days or so and I'm sick of hearing about it already.

EVERYONE PANIC! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. THE FLU WILL KILL US ALL. BE SCARED, HAVE NIGHTMARES AND RUN IN THE STREETS YELLING!!

It's a simple magic trick.

"Let's make massive spending, bailouts, and the lousy economy dissappear..."

We have 12 confirmed cases here in NZ, these kids will be back to school next week and can,t see what the fuss is about.
Thom your right, these kids just come back from a Mexican field trip, phew... when I was at school our field trips consisted of the nearest empty field.

Plus hundreds of thousands of people die of flu each year anyway... so this one has a ways to go before it evens bumps the averages up noticeably...

I'm definitely keeping my eyes and ears open on this, but not succumbing to the media panic. Sensational news coverage is a stronger and faster virus than flu nowadays.

Media stupidity is a good guess, Kay. What do you expect from a group of "reporters" who are inane enough to have Katie C winning awards. End of Watergate reporting sharps to be sure.

Anyhow - with all the hype about socialized medicine we can get used to this tripe. Socialize medicine and every time someone sneezes there will be gun point inoculations going on. I believe the hype is going in the direction of swaying public opinion in the direction that they will view forced treatment of anything a good thing. The resistance to forced vaccinations should tell them otherwise. Just more Gov BS getting in the way of REAL science.

I just seen on CNN this morning that Ohio National Guard troops are in charge of guarding and distributing Tamiflu.

They can stay out of Wenatchee. I don't want that toxic swill anyhow so they can give my share to anyone brave enough to swallow it. Just make sure if you take any that there is someone around who will keep you from running in front of cars -- and be on the first floor in case you get a sudden whim to jump out the window.
If anyone can report better psycho reactions, like believing the guy next to them looks like JoMo or something, then maybe I'll try it.

It really is another case of media induced hysteria.

Not many confirmed cases of people actually dying from this. But the media is acting like it's the full blown Black Plague again. I won't be worried unless the confirmed death count rises dramatically and is also in my state which it isn't yet.

Ohio National Guard, Hmmmm, The same outfit that was at Kent State
in 1970. I'm so relieved. For a minute there I thought we were all gonna
die.

Tom

This is happening right here now with us

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Hong Kong 'flu' hotel sealed off

Giving what we have been through with H5N1 and SARS, there is wide community support for this sort of action at the moment. But I am not sure if this escalates and continues for a long time.

The point about the present tought actions that are being taken for this virus is NOT for where the outbreak is at the moment, but for what the outbreak MAY be heading.

It is far too early to pass any judgement on what has or had not been done. My hunch is that it may fizzle out by the summer but could well come back with a vengence in the autumn.

The main point about seeing a doctor when you develop slight symptoms is to prevent you from spreading the disease further into your community. Because there could be someone who is much more susceptible and may die from it.


Derek

Kay, I suspect that the reason why the cases remain unconfirmed is that they do not satisfy the diagnostic criteria of the WHO. That means that they were not able to grow the virus but were able to detect viral genome.

The problem is that tests used to detect viral genome are extremely sensitive and very liable to give false-positive results due to contamination. Normally, it would be possible to confirm the results eventually by the detection of rising antibodies in living individuals. However, this would not be possible in dead people as they would not be able to give another specimen. I suspect many of these cases can never be confirmed.

This is not a reflection on the quality of the laboratories in Mexico as contamination is well known and happens in every laboratory. We had a lot of problems with it ourselves during the SARS crisis and eventually many of the suspected cases could not be confirmed.


Derek

According to the tv news the other day, over here in the UK, swine flu is already a pandemic due to cases being reported in several countries.
Anyway, I'm not concerned, because I've got sarcoidosis, so I'm doomed anyway. I've not been outside my house for the last month, so I'm not going to mix with anyone with any sort of flu.
I'd better hurry up, and make lots of money quickly.

Kay, I presume that some of the deaths have now been confirmed as being due to other causes. In this sort of crisis environment, I can understand why things would be delayed. For example, many medical workers would be extremely reluctant to handle bodies that may have been infected espeically for autopsies and other investigations. Often, there is a lot of wrangling before anything gets done.

Right now, our hotel quarrantine is beginning to look like a farce. Why would only a small proportion of passengers on the aircraft be quarrantined whereas the whole hotel was quarrantined. The aircraft was probably a much higher risk of transmitting infection than the hotel. Right now, it also appears that some Mexican air travellers had been forcibly detained and quarrantined in China.

Derek

Hysteria over nothing?

Experts say virus may be no more severe than normal flu

(Maybe we should be hysterical over the normal flu)

From Drudge Report

Reuters AlertNet - Mexico says flu epidemic over the worst

Plus Cinco de Mayo in NYC cancelled over fears of swine flu.

Something that originates in Mexico cancels Cinco de Mayo in the U.S.

Well, imagine that...

I think I'm about as far from Mexico as you can get in Tasmania (Australia) and I don't think there's a single pig on the whole island, but the hype here is getting extreme. In a lot of ways I wonder if the hype is the deadliest thing about the virus...

It has just been announced that we are closing all kindergartens and primary schools are to be closed for 2 weeks.

Hong Kong Closes Kindergartens, Schools - WSJ.com

My two little horrors are coming home! What the @#$%#

For the longest time, not ONE *****NOT ONE***** American died of it! THEN, they kind of HINTED one did, but it turned out that that child was from Mexico!

YEAH, I know! One might say RACIST!!!!!! WHAT is the difference!?!?!?!? Etc.... Well, Mexicans are often exposed to VERY bad water. SURE, they can "handle it", but it DOES tax immune systems. Some also live in squalid conditions and may even keep bed bugs AS PETS(NO JOKE)! Meanwhile, American water is supposed to be clean, even the WORST places are supposed to be above a certain standard, and there are mandated vaccinations, etc... From what I understand, for most Americans, this is like the NORMAL flu! NO BIG DEAL! It seems to be similar for MOST nations, except mexico.

About the tie to pigs(AKA swine). It is named swine flu because a human virus took on swine flu characteristics. Apparently this can infect swine OR people. So PEOPLE can be a vector. You don't need to have ANY pigs around to catch it, and most pigs don't have it.

jimmymc,

If I were to follow YOUR plan, I guess I should catch small pox. Never mind that I am probably IMMUNE! OH, I should catch Polio! Wait, I should be immune to THAT also! 1918 huh? Yeah, that IS pretty recent! That was only about 91 years ago. I guess I should ask my relatives about it that were around at that time. OOOPS! The only ones I know have already died, from OLD AGE! One was even over 100!

Aw heck, I guess I will go with MY plan and try not to catch it.

Kay,

You are probably right. Do you know how many people are KILLED, or driven INSANE by PMS!?!?!? I'm NOT kidding! If not the women, then the men they encounter! YIKES! Oh well, they have drugs now that limit the menstrual cycle to like once every THREE months! THAT should help peoples sanity.



Steve

Yes but those guys deserve it - it just takes the PMS to give women the impetus to do the job!

I used to have a sign that said - I have PMS and I'm armed. Any more stupid questions?


Actually - the death toll from this flu in the US is now 43. I can't find any stats about whether the victims are mostly hispanic or not. There is still a feeling that is is a manufactured illness rather than a natural one - and with genetic engineering, and genetic idiosyncrasies in each race, it will be very interesting to see if the predisposition to killing Mexicans is also being seen in America where the water, etc, is not going to be a factor. I am wondering if the virus continues to show a preference for killing hispanics if we will even hear about it.

Yes but those guys all deserved it - it just took the PMS to give women the impetus to do the job!

Derek - per capita, how much more deadly was the 1918 flu than the bubonic plague?

I heard a news caster say today 43 in the US. The only ones I have heard of individually are of people who would have been in the normal high risk categories, not the young and healthy as first held to attention.

Sal, the 1918 flu only had a mortality of 2.5%. But it was able to kill 40-100 million people because at least one third of the world's population got infected that year.

There are lots of viruses and bacteria that are much more deadly than the 1918 flu but they do not spread that well. The bubonic plaque won't happen again because we have got much better sanitation and rodent control. Also the efficacy of the antibiotics are very high, much higher than those currently available for flu.

It looks like now we are withing minutes of being declared to be in a pandemic by the WHO.

Normal flu infections would go down and almost disappear during summer months. Therefore it is not surprising that swine flu is declining in N. America whereas infections are now going up exponentially in countries of the Southern hemisphere such as Australia where winter is about to begin. During past flu pandemics, the virus came in a number of waves rather than pure exponential growth as in the case of HIV/AIDS. As far as countries in the northern hemisphere are concerned, the big test is going to be in the autumn which is when the next and possibly the "real" big wave is going to come.

From an epidmiological basis, it does not matter whether the all the deaths are Mexican or not. What is important is whether the infection had been acquired and treated in the US. It is not even clear whether the mortality rate is significantly much higher in Mexico than the U.S. it just could be that they have had many more infections.

A pandemic warning is not given ligthtly, especially that there has not been one for over 40 years. Few people have any idea of what effort and resources that the WHO and member countries have put into monitoring influenza pandemics. What seems to be clear at the moment is that this virus is spreading as efficiently as the common H3N2 flu and is replacing the H3N2 as the common flu. This virus is behaving exactly like the others were at the beginning of a pandemic. The big issue is whether it will cause many more deaths than what you would normally get from common flu.


Derek

How this pandemic unfolds will be very interesting. If somehow the spread of the virus is delayed, a closely matched vaccine may become available and be delivered to those who are vulnerable. Therefore, there is a real chance that the worse effects of a pandemic can be minimized. This is touted as the main reason why our government decided to close all primary schools and kindergarten for 2 weeks.

As the virus spreads, it will soon reach a point when health authoritis do not bother to make a laboratory diagnosis anymore. A presumptive diagnosis will be made on the patient's symptoms only. The good news is that older people (those born before 1957) seems to have some natural protecction against this virus. The bad news is that some healthy young people are particularly susceptible to severe disease.

The main concern right is whether this virus will behave like the one in 1918 i.e. a mild wave at the beginning of the year followed by a very severe wave later on. Afterall, this virus is H1N1 which is exactly the same type as the 1918 virus.

Derek

It was the type of flu and how it came to be around. I think one thing though with all that has happened it has opened up many peoples eyes how to help prevent the flu and what they should do if they are coming down with the flu. many people thing oh I getting sick I need to go the hospital when some simple natural medicine will cure, help, prevent the illness. Ok i'm done now lol

There is NO real common flu. The "flu" vaccine normally is made for about 3 flus. YOUNG kids, "seniors", and people with compromised immune systems are the most likely to have problems, so they are given more protection. ALSO, NOBODY wants to get sick. THAT is a big reason why schools close, especially if a person gets sick with a relatively new illness. Still, many sicknesses have a commonality and so people can have immunity they are not aware of. Like the guy that realized that milk maids were often immune to chicken pox! He found it was because they contracted the far weaker cow pox!

BTW they made it a pandemic because of basically ONE reported case! It had NOTHING to do with degree, cause, importance, etc... It was merely LOCATION!

steve

Steve, you are right that the current flu vaccine has 3 components: influenza A H3N2, Influenza A H1N1 (based on the one that appeared in 1977, NOT the current swine H1N1), and Influenza B. There is also influenza C, parainfluenza viruses that may cause "common flu" Of these, H3N2 is by far the predominant infection and causes the most deaths and thus is commonly deemed to the the "common flu" at the momment. Influenza B cause a much milder illness is not really that important compared to influenza A.

In the past when predominant influenza A strain is replaced entirely by the new pandemic strain. e.g. H1N1 by H2N2 in 1957, and H2N2 by H3N2 in 1968. Therefore the prediction is that H3N2 will be replaced by the swine H1N1 as predominant strain.

What is really unusal this time is that we already have a H1N1 strain in the background (virutally identical to the H1N1 circulating just before 1957 and suspected of being "accidentally" released by a laboratory in 1977). This and the fact that we have better drugs and more efficient means of producing vaccines quickly will make the course of this outbreak very unpredictable and it is possible that we will get far fewer deaths this time.

In Hong Kong, we have just heard that is is very likely that our kindergarten and primary schools will probably be closed more than 2 weeks and secondary schools will probably be closed as well. I hope they really know what they are doing. Their reasoning is that they want to delay people being infected until a closely matched vaccine is available. But I just cannot see anyway that the virus can be controlled, even if they decide to shut down our economy altogether.

You know that all virologists are public health officials are brought up fearing something like 1918 may happen again. Certainly I can tell you that the SARS and H5N1 outbreaks we had were very terrifying experiences. Then we had infections with a 15% and 33% death rate but did not spread easily at all. Therefore public health officials tend to err on the side of caution and risk being castigated by imposing tough and unneccessary measures. You know before 911, the US had one of the laxest airport securities in the world but now it is one of the toughest.

Derek

The US "TSA" is a JOKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just last friday, a FLIGHT attendant tood me how laxed it was for HER. I could think of SO many ways to defeat what they do, and they are SO worried about how parts of my laptop look, etc... Meanwhile, I take stuff that could EASILY be made into a deadly weapon! I take devices that could EASILY be made into bombs(Made of non standard material that dugs wouldn't be looking for) that, placed right, could down an L1011! And I take this stuff into the cabin! They are lucky I am not a terrorist!

Prior to perhaps the 70s, they only cared about some hijacking. THEN, they strengthened things a BIT, but lowered Xray levels. NOW, they try to appear SO serious. I couldn't even SUGGEST improving anything, because I might be DETAINED! Oh well, THEY DON'T CARE! Evidence suggests that the maintenence guys were used to do 9/11, and many are "ex"- FELONS! They said that even AFTER 9/11!!!!!

Steve

People it's called a scare tactic, or in another word propaganda. Don't you realize the more scared they can make you the more you look to the government to save you? This is what they want, to control you.

Herman Goreing said this during the Nuremberg Trials after WW2:
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."

Answer one simple question. Since 911 (which the US government did by the way) can you go through an entire day without hearing the word terrorist?

Derek,

SE IS EASY to catch! THAT is why so many mammals have been proven to have it. It is NOT a virus though! It is caught by a variant prion comming in contact with a somewhat closely related prion. If you eat infected meat, there is a GREAT chance you WILL get it! Unfortunately, it generally takes a LONG time to be noticed.

BTW regarding SE being hard to catch? Whole herds of SHEEP have gotten it! Antelope have! Cows do! Monkeys do! When I was a kid, I heard of tribes, of HUMANS, that ate monkey brains and got it! Stanley Prusiner, a U.S. biochemist whose discovery provided key insights into dementia-related diseases, won the 1997 Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering prions. TODAY, vCJD, CJD are considered SE diseases! Of course, BSE is ALSO, hence the name, and it's nickname is Madcow. Scrapie was the first SE disease identified, and it was identified in the 18th century! BTW the bans are STILL in effect!

From the ARC site TODAY!

BTW the explanation is from THEIR site at Blood Eligibility Guidelines !

Ebola is worse than SARS! It is just BAD!!!!!!!

Steve

There always have to be something to keep people scared. If people arent scared, then they don't really need their government.

Steve, what I meant was that SE is not easily tranmissable between species, especially those that are highly unrelated. A human form known as Kuru transmitted easily among a tribe in Papua New Guinea because they ate their dead relatives. Adult males were particularly affected because they were given infected brains to eat and at one stage, almost all their males were infected.

But if you look at sheep Scrapie which has been around for hundreds of years. There is no firm evidence that it can be passed to humans and cause CJD. Another issue is that the prion protein is mainly found in the nervous system and spleen. There is very little nervous tissue in meat i.e. muscle. Indeed they were not able to cause SE in mice when they infected meat from BSE infected cattle in the brains of mice.

Therefore in theory, it is extremely difficult for humans to be infected by eating BSE infected meat. However, there seems to be another issue in the UK outbreak where at least one cluster of cases had been found. It seems somehow, nervous and spleen tissue got into meat in some places because of unethical practices of some butchers. Instead of throwing the offal away, it seemed to have been used. The problem with burgers and sausages is that you don't really know what is in them. But that is another story.

Whatever the truth is, it is clear that BSE itself is completely a man-made disease because cattle who are ruminants were meat extracts made with sheep and catlle offal. In a way, that is also suspected to be true for swine H1N1 of which the main suspect is the high density farming methods used in N. America.

Kay, if you feel 36,000 is a small number, then I will pass. Afterall, even if a full blown pandemic occurs, you are not expected to get much more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S. However, this strain appears to be more severe than the current predominant H3N2 strain and younger people are more susceptible. However, I certainly agree rather then to turn more deadly, the virus is actually more likely to become milder.

Besides the overall number of deaths, public health officials have to look at other thing. For example, how a pandemic will affect essential services if a large number of employees become ill, and how it will affect schools and the economy in general. Let's say, if a large number of medical staff at a hospital are taken iff at the same time, would the hospital be forced to close and thus people with other serious illnesses be affected. That is why one important aspect of this pandemic warning is to ask institutions and companies to plan of this.

It is no secret that primary health care and disease surveillance in the US is well behind that of Europe and many other countries, despite being the most advanced scientifically. If a bit resources can be put into that, it would help in combating other diseases in future.

Derek

As he is a highly positioned virologist (sp?), I really doubt you will hear him say that, Steve. If he does we need to get to his place and take the bottle and glass out of his hand and put him to bed.

Humans can pass SE to monkeys experimentally but there is no evidence to suggest that people have got SE by eating monkeys. However, I am sure that it would not be a wise thing to eat SE infected monkeys. In fact, the eating of monkey brains in the Far East is an urban legend. Humans and monkeys are both primates, therefore one would not be surprised if the agent is much more transmissible than let's say from human to mice.

The logic at that time was that sheep and cattle are similarly as far from humans. Therefore if humans could not be infected by eating sheep, then the risk must be be very low or non-existant as well. This was proven to be wrong but then again, there are still only just over 100 cases to date worldwide.

There is a problem with restaurant inspections all over the world. In many places, the inspectors can be bribed easily. Right now in China, there is much more worry about dangrous chemicals that had been purposefully put into food rather than infectious agents.

There is so much that is unknown about prions. All of us produce the prion protein whose exact function is not completely understood. It seems for some reason, the human/animal starts producing this protein uncontrollably once they are infected by a foreign prion protein. It seems that the vast majority of case of people who developed vCJD after earting infected beef have a particular prion proten subtype.

Steve, I worked in the laboratory that diagnosied the first H5N1 human infection and the first outbreak. I was also there in the same laboratory that was the epicentre of the SARS outrbreak in 2003 and so I have got personal experience and I know what this was like. We were also the laboratory that detected the first case of the H3N3 pandemic in 1968. We always thought that our laboratory would be the one that would detect the next pandemic as well but it didn't turn out to tbe case this time.

Our laboratory is one of the WHO collaborating laboratories for influenza and we were well respected around the world. Dr. Margaret Chan, the present director of the WHO was my overall boss. She was round condemned and censured for mishandling the SARS outbreak in 2003 and she was accused of having under-estimated the infection and kow-towed to China who was withholding information at the time.

There is no absolute right and wrong in this. For example, there is a lot of evidence that a lot more deaths due to SARS were caused by inappropriate medicines that were used then. Our mortality rate was much higher than some much less developed countries. We will only know what the correct response should be after several years with hindsight.

Both the H5N1 and SARS outbreaks turned out to be much worse than what I originally thought. But then, I thought SARS would never disappear but then it did. Since I have been proven wrong so many times, I am certainly not going to impose my opinion on anybody and I hope you won't do so either. If you think my opinions are extreme, then please could you have a look at what some others said about swine flue in other earlier threads. A lot of public measures that have been imposed have not been proven scientifically and are often imposed so that the authorities are ssen to be doing something.

The declaration of a pandemic was completely based on WHO's own criteria that there is sustained human to human transmission in at least 2 WHO regions. In this case, it was N. America and Australia and therefore there was no doubt that it fitted the critera. It does not say or predict that we will see a full blown pandemic as in 1968, 1957 or 1918.

Derek

Derek,

I just think your priorities are misplaced. I heard about the dementia from tribes eating monkeys LONG before any SE was well known. That was in the early 70s! I DOUBT it was some kind of stupid rumor.

I don't claim to know everything, and certainly wouldn't even TRY to do some stuff others have. I do know a lot though, and hear some "scientists" say some STUPID things! HECK, I told large groups of people about how many AIDS "cures" wouldn't work, I even said WHY. One person even had high hopes for a blood transfusion cure. He lived just about long enough to find out it was a failure. He said a few months later of AIDS.

Ironically, I used to be very optimistic. Ask almost anyone that has been on this board for 5 years or more, and they will tell you I am CYNICAL!

If I were as obstinate as I USED to be, I would never go to a restaurant and, having seen all THAT garbage, I probably wouldn't even buy food. I guess I would have to be a vegetarian, and grow my own. That is HARD when you travel, as I do. I swear, it makes me feel like throwing up, LITERALLY! It is HARD to beleive that, in SCHOOL, we are taught of people like typhoid mary Mary Mallon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia !
And, according to wikipedia, if she MERELY followed the current letter of the law, EVEN if she STILL handled food, almost NOBODY would ever get sick from it!!!!!!

BTW about a week ago, no less than 3 states in the US reported their FIRST DEATH(singular) from H1N1! Of course, there are not enough details to see if the people are really american, but they ALL fell into high risk groups(very young, very old, immunity compromised)! I think a good standard flu outbreak would be at LEAST as bad. It is simply that they don't usually report dog bites on the news.(There is an old story that dog bites man is NOT a story or newsworthy, but man bites dog IS!)

Steve

Steve, you got me confused for the moment. But I searched through the literature again and I could not find any reference about monkeys. In fact, SE is not known to occur naturally in monkeys. I suspect you may have been referring to the origin of HIV and AIDs. You know, normal people can suddenly develop SE on their own (creutzfeldt-jakob disease) and their prions can infect others. There it is thought most likely that Kuru started off when a persons's brain with CJD was infected.

Anyway on another subject. We have now have our first H1N1 related death today in a 3 year old infant. No, the infant did not die from H1N1, he was not even infected. In fact he died from a traffic accident. Since all kindergartens and nurseries are ordered closed for 2 weeks. His mother had no choice but to bring him to work. While she was working, he ran out into the street and got hit by a car. There are also a few cases where parents were suspected of leaving their toddlers at home unattended all day.

The public is now getting mad. It seems that those in power just did not think how impractical it is for working parents to have their kids suddenly back home. Not all parents can arrange help at such a short notice.

Derek