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US Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Apr 26, 2009 02:58 PM
from the man-bird-pig dept.
from the man-bird-pig dept.
mallumax sends word from the NYTimes that US government officials today declared a public health emergency over increasing cases of the swine flu first seen in Mexico. Here is additional coverage from CNN. From the Times: "American health officials [say]... that they had confirmed 20 cases of the disease in the United States and expected to see more as investigators fan out to track down the path of the outbreak. Other governments around the world stepped up their response to the incipient outbreak, racing to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases from New Zealand to Hong Kong to Spain, raising concerns about the potential for a global pandemic. The cases in US looked to be similar to the deadly strain of swine flu that has killed more than 80 people in Mexico and infected 1,300 more." Reader "The man who walks in the woods" sends a link to accounts emailed to the BBC from readers in Mexico. While these are anecdotal, they do paint a picture of a more serious situation than government announcements have indicated so far.
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Combat Wombat writes with this excerpt from Reuters:
"A strain of flu never seen before has killed up to 60 people in Mexico and also appeared in the United States, where eight people were infected but recovered, health officials said on Friday. Mexico's government said at least 20 people have died of the flu and it may also be responsible for 40 other deaths. [The government] shut down schools and canceled major public events in Mexico City to try to prevent more deaths in the sprawling, overcrowded capital. ... Close analysis showed the disease is a mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC. Humans can occasionally catch swine flu from pigs but rarely have they been known to pass it on to other people. Mexico reported 1,004 suspected cases of the new virus, including four possible cases in Mexicali on the border with California.
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God damn... (Score:5, Funny)
...Mexican swines!
Re:God damn... (Score:5, Funny)
Not if you want god to damn them all.
You want them all damned - you say swines just to make sure.
Or he might damn just one swine and then where would we be? Back at square one, that's where.
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Re:God damn... (Score:5, Funny)
Not if you want god to damn them all.
You want them all damned - you say swines just to make sure. Or he might damn just one swine and then where would we be? Back at square one, that's where.
GCC (God's Communication Compiler) Compiling...
Error Line 1: Unrecognized token 'swines'
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That doesn't seem very intelligent to me (Score:5, Funny)
Design that is.
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Re:That doesn't seem very intelligent to me (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:That doesn't seem very intelligent to me (Score:5, Funny)
That tends to happen when you attempt to use a snake as your intermediary with God. Just be happy he doesn't get pissed off enough to toss your ass out on the street and foreclose on your home... assuming he hasn't.
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Not necessarily over-reacting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not necessarily over-reacting (Score:5, Interesting)
I caught a few minutes of a press conference on CNN. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security started it by saying something to the effect of 'this makes things sound worse than they are, but it allows us to activate public health resources'.
So perhaps the vocabulary is poor, but the reaction doesn't really resemble crying wolf.
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Captain Trips! (Score:5, Funny)
It has arrived. Evil people start moving toward Vegas. Good people will be found in Colorado.
Who has been talking to you? The Old Lady or the Walking Man?
"Public Health Emergency" - burocratic for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to note... declaring a 'Public Health Emergency' sounds all kinds of doom&gloom-y, but doing so simply enables measures to be taken more quickly, more easily, etc.
"We are declaring today a public health emergency," Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said today at a White House news briefing. That declaration is "standard operating procedure," Napolitano said. "It is similar to what we do when we see a hurricane approaching a site. The hurricane might not actually hit but allows you to take a number of preparatory steps. We really don't know ultimately what the size or seriousness of this outbreak is going to be." - webmd.com
It's when the CDC starts issuing emergencies, quarantining local communities, ordering a halt to any and all traffic into / out of certain areas, etc. that you should start raising eyebrows.
We cant all die off yet (Score:5, Funny)
Its not 2012...
worry in october, not now (Score:5, Informative)
recall that the spanish flu of 1918 came out in the summer, and was mild
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-diseases/next-killer-flu.html [nationalgeographic.com]
then the cold weather came, and it came down like a scythe. we will experience media hype for a month or two, the swine flu will be forgotten, then it will suddenly resurge like crazy in october. the reason is the flu virus actually survives better in the cold air than the warm air, and travels greater distances. the warm summer air will help us fight the flu, for now. there was science a few months ago that proved that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7276447.stm [bbc.co.uk]
thats why flu is always a cold month thing
so the thing to do is not worry now, worry later. the warm weather will mitigate the flu. then we should all keep a very wary eye come october, that's when the swine flu will prove if it is a superkiller or not
one more concern:
the cytokine storm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm [wikipedia.org]
this explains why those who died of the spanish flu, and are dying of swine flu now, are young, healthy adults. perversely, the healthier you are, the more you will be prone to die of the swine flu: your body overreacts, like anaphylactic shock. less healthy immune systems mean you underreact, and your lungs aren't flooded to death by your won body. the very young, and the very old, they should be able to weather the swine flu. the worst case scenario (hopefully this just fizzles out like SARS), it is us in the prime of life, 25-45, who will bear the brunt of mortality when everyone gets it this fall, hospitals are swamped, and the tamiflu runs out. then you have children and elderly with no breadwinners to take care of them
prepare now, you have until fall until the scythe comes (hopefully, it won't, it could still fizzle out)
absolutely (Score:5, Insightful)
the flu can still spread in warm climates, flu in fact is a regular feature of the tropics. but in warm weather you will see more close contact cases, cases among families, cases among office workers cube-to-cube. long term close contact being needed in the warmth. not random walking-by-on-the-sidewalk transmission, like you will get with cold weather
the whole point is not that the summer months will destroy or prevent the swine flu. the problem is it will still spread, but at a lower background noise rate. seeping all around in tiny little clusters
then the weather gets cold, and the flu will suddenly leap out of all of these tiny below the radar clusters, and expand exponentially in a matter of days, and suddenly be everywhere at the same time, with falling temperatures
seriously, worry come october for us in the northern mid-latitudes
or, alternately, if you are in the far north (in a populated area, rare), or in the soutern hemisphere as your winter approaches, worry now
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Define Irony (Score:5, Funny)
Checking Slashdot and finding this article at the top?
Right next to the poll, "How long do you expect to live?"
Environmental Factors? (Score:5, Interesting)
Those comments are horrifying (Score:5, Informative)
As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were.
I'm a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks.
I am a doctor and I work in the State of Mexico. We doctors knew this was happening a week before the alert was issued and were told to get vaccinated.
In the capital of my state, Oaxaca, there is a hospital closed because of a death related to the porcine influenza. Many friends working in hospitals or related fields say that the situation is really bad, they are talking about 19 people dead in Oaxaca, including a doctor and a nurse. They say they got shots but they were told not to talk about the real situation.
Two of my friends at work are sick, they were sick for a couple of days, they went to the hospital and they sent them back to work. The doctor told them it was just a flu until Friday when the alarm was spread, then they were allowed to go home. I work in a call centre and I'm worried because there are no windows in the building so it cannot be ventilated and around 400 people work there. We all have talked to our supervisor but no one has done anything not even sterilise or disinfect the area. We will be sick soon and, well, do the math - 400 can infect at least another two per day.
Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
Those thousands that die are among hundreds of thousands or more who get infected. This strain has infected far fewer people, yet killed more of them, so the mortality rate is much higher.
If infection became widespread, as was the case in 1918, then we could be looking at serious losses.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly Influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. Historical and epidemiologic data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the virus.[1] Most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. The pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is estimated that anywhere from 20 to 100 million people were killed worldwide.
While we, at least industrialized countries, are far better equipped to deal with another major outbreak than in 1918; I feel taking precautions would be the rational thing to do.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
While we, at least industrialized countries, are far better equipped to deal with another major outbreak than in 1918; I feel taking precautions would be the rational thing to do.
Don't be so sure about it my friend. My parents work in the NHS. The procedure for a flu pandemic assumes that society will collapse, which will likely be a reasonable assessment. All the preparations have been aimed at H5N1, so though the anti-virals stockpiled will most likely work*, the vaccines will not**.
I think this one is the real deal. The death rate is high, considering it's in Mexico, which may not be on a par with the UK in medical treatment but isn't sub-Saharan Africa or rural China either.
The BBC is quoting doctors as saying that this has been around for a week. If people in Mexico City are expressing symptoms, you can bet it's around the world now, by people carrying it during its incubation period. I live in London, and I bet you a tenner that someone, somewhere in this city has this right now.
*There are some reports that anti-virals are ineffective, I think they're hysteria.
**They probably wouldn't have anyway.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
*There are some reports that anti-virals are ineffective, I think they're hysteria.
The US Centers for Disease Control say the following [cdc.gov]:
"There are four different antiviral drugs that are licensed for use in the US for the treatment of influenza: amantadine, rimantadine, oseltamivir and zanamivir. While most swine influenza viruses have been susceptible to all four drugs, the most recent swine influenza viruses isolated from humans are resistant to amantadine and rimantadine. At this time, CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with swine influenza viruses."
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
Oseltamivir is the one the NHS has stockpiled, under the brand Tamiflu.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
Is 7% a "high" death rate?
Wikipedia has normal flu mortality at 0.1%.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the deaths in Mexico were young adults. From the WSJ:
"Mexican health authorities said the death toll from the new strain of A/H1N1 swine flu remains at 20, and they are continuing to investigate whether more than 1,000 others were infected with the mysterious bug, which attacked in three geographically diverse areas of the country and is taking its heaviest toll in young adults."
Imagine it's scary for you too. Because it is.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a new strain of "swine" flu (only called that because it originated in swine) that contains elements of bird, human, and swine flu viruses. It is transmitted between humans. Stop spreading misinformation.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't really know the carrying capacity of the Earth, and at any rate allowing billions to die isn't a valid solution by any reasonable moral standard.
Continued growth with the current trends is the real problem, but even then there are much more humane solutions than allowing the horrors of history to continue to work their course. Raising the level of development in a region tends to cause a decrease in the birthrate, so much so that Europe is having the opposite problem, so continued efforts to develop poorer states (and, coincidentally, mitigate these kinds of pandemics) is the best way to keep populations under control.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
Adding to the nuisance, is the fact that flu strains can swap components with one another to produce exotic variants quickly. Pigs are excellent for that, because they have their own strains, and some degree of susceptibility to certain avian and human strains.
It might well burn itself out; but it would be a pity if it were the start of Spanish flu 2.0 (now with high speed air travel!).
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, this flu is different. It is primarily killing young healthy adults. It looks to work the same way as the 1918 flu, killing those with the healthiest immune systems through the "cytokine storm".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:W_curve.png [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Funny)
> Why does this one have a special name?
a) It is genetically different from the usual flus.
b) In 1918 a form of swine flu killed millions.
> I can't decide how scared to be.
So far it seems to kill only Mexicans. I suppose you could construct a conspiracy theory around that.
> As if there were anything I could do about it anyways.
Avoid people. They're dangerous.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The flu kills thousands of people every year. Why does this one have a special name?
So far it seems to have a 5% mortality rate, which is above normal. Usually mortality is 5% of those hospitalized, rather than 5% of all. Of course, the stats are from small numbers that are very new, so we'll have to wait for better information. It's certainly worth paying attention to though.
I can't decide how scared to be. As if there were anything I could do about it anyways.
If everyone would make an extra effort to wash their hands, cover their nose/mouth when coughing, and stay the f*** home from work/school when you are sick, that would help. If you can slow the spread, researchers can get a better understanding of the flu and how to treat it before everyone gets sick.
Avian flu still seems much worse though, since it has a much higher mortality rate, in particular among the young. It doesn't seem to be able to spread as fast though, thus the concern about this new flu.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is really valuable about this is that it looks to be a fairly safe, almost ideal model for the real thing. A test for how competently a pandemic is managed locally. Listening to the news this morning (we are 16 hours ahead of the US), our authorities seem to have concentrated all their efforts in micromanaging the school threat, and ignored contamination of everyone else on the plane. Provided the officials stay inside the school, they should be safe.
Personally, I'd prefer a bunch of veterinarians running it who aren't allowed to shoot and burn. At least they have a holistic approach. However, I'm getting old and cynical. Younger people seem to prefer touchy-feely sorry-about-the-megadeaths administrators.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Interesting)
stay the f*** home from work/school when you are sick, that would help
If only it were that easy. Even when I'm ill with things that make me unable to work (such as vomiting every half hour) employers tend to be unsympathetic, even more so when its something where you feel miserable and are sick with something contagious (such as normal influenza), making staying at home little more than a dream. Schools aren't much better and sometimes much worse. For example, school nurses usually have a set fever number where they will not send kids home if they don't reach it (such as 100 degrees) and so even when you are visibly sick, feeling miserable but yet can't hit the magical 100 degree fever, you are stuck in school transmitting whatever you have. And most parents send students to school even with high fevers, when kids are visibly sick, and even when they are vomiting.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good point; I should have added "If your employer has a halfway decent policy, ...". In tech fields, most employers do have a reasonable policy; however in many service fields, the written or unwritten policies are not nearly as accommodating.
For any employers out there, make sure sick people can stay home, since it is better to lose their (partial) productivity for day, rather than to make the whole office sick.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd take a little time to read about it... yes, it's 'really' special.
I'm not saying "ZOMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE"-special - we're not, as it is, many of those infected happily survive.
Let's start with 'the flu', though.. There is no 'the flu'. Influenza is a big ol' family of viruses.
This one - although it baffles me why the media latched onto 'swine' as their name for it, maybe the pork industry lobbied strongly against naming it 'pork' or 'pig' flu - is one of the mutations of form H1N1 ('bird flu' was H5N1; H and N refer to certain protein types). That only tells part of the story as there's multiple H1N1s with different aminoacids and whatnot, like yea olde Spanish flu (yeah, the proper pandemic one) was H1N1 as well. There's the first 'special' bit; it shares a name with the Spanish flu.
Won't go into details about how it differs from Spanish flu - suffice it to say that this particular strain of H1N1 influenza appears to be a mixture of porcine, bird and human flu viruses' RNA. From there comes the second 'special' bit. It's 'rare' that the flu jumps species from pigs to humans in general, even rarer for it to thrive, but even more rare that it appears to spread between humans.
Now for the third special bit... even H5N1 - that other 'big scare' - mostly affected the (really) young, the elderly, and the weak in terms of severity. This one, however, seems to just as happily make young healthy adults sick.
That's why it deserves its own little name. As for how scared you should be:
'Swine' flu responds well to the relatively recent anti-flu drug Oseltamivir (marketing name: Tamiflu). That is to say, it gets killed pretty quickly and eradicated from the body if treatment is followed through (yeah, I know, right?). That's good news for the producers of Tamiflu who love having this in the news, and for their shareholders who saw their stock skyrocket as a result. It's pretty special that there's tons of people out there just waiting around to make money off of this kind of thing.
Oh, and it's also good news for those infected, of course.
Unfortunately, Tamiflu (and others) are prescribed willy-nilly as seasonal flu drugs (despite the CDC advising against it; like 'advice' matters if there's a mint to be made), making it all the more likely that more resistant strains will pop up in due time.
At the same time, being a relatively recent drug, not all of the side-effects are fully known and understood yet.
As for what you can do about it...
- I wouldn't plan a trip to Mexico and go frolic with any pigs if I were you.
- I wouldn't swap spit/etc. with any of the students already diagnosed as being possibly infected.
- If you are infected with any type of flu.. cover your mouth when sneezing/coughing, wash hands regularly. Won't do much for you, but it'll help prevent spreading of it.
Speaking of the CDC.. they have some pretty decent pages up as well:
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/general_info.htm [cdc.gov]
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I wouldn't particularly worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Do all the normal prudent things like wash your hands plenty, try not to stand next to the guy coughing up a lung, etc. Keep up on the situation on the CDC's website, not on random places like Slashdot. The reason is that the Internet has a LOT of doomsdayers, if you haven't noticed. They are always after the next thing that's going to fuck us over. The one I remember most recently was when there were stories of cable cuts in mid east, doomsdayers said this meant the US was going to invade Iran in a couple days, Bush would declare marshal law, and the election would be suspended. Ya well, we all see how much of that happened.
So get your info from a reliable source. The CDC is interested in keeping people safe and stopping the spread of this (and all other) disease. They are also staffed with experts. People on random forums often have no idea what the fuck they are talking about, like to blow things up, and predict the end of the world every other month.
Only thing special to do maybe is make sure you've got flu food. By that I mean things like chicken noodle soup and such. If you get sick you probably aren't going to feel like shopping (and shouldn't go shopping since you don't want to spread your sickness) and you also aren't likely to feel like eating pizza and such.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Interesting)
The flu kills thousands of people every year. Why does this one have a special name?.
Flu usually kills the very old and the very young. From what I have read, this one is different; it kills young and healthy persons, a segment that rarely dies from normal flu. The so called Spanish Flu (or Grippe) from around the first world war had a very similar fatality pattern. Since that pandemic attack killed at least 50 million people around the world it is clear that this new flu must be taken very, very seriously. There doesn't seem to be that much hard evidence around regarding the symptoms though; does it attack the lungs in the same way as the Grippe? It appears that the Grippe turned peoples own immune system against themselves which is why young healthy persons with good immune systems died in such large numbers and often so violently fast.
From what little info I have seen it appears that this swine Flu attack and kills some young and healthy persons, while other victims have very mild symptoms; that is the exact same pattern as the first major wave of the Grippe. According to some researchers this attack pattern caused the Grippe virus strain to be refined to the extremely deadly strain it was when it attacked again. Some victims died within an hour of having the first symptoms, and people would literally drop dead without warning while walking in the streets, pupils in classrooms would suddenly fall over their desk dead.
--
Regards
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
> This influenza virus is a strain that utilizes pig, bird, and human genetic information.
This influenza virus is a strain that utilizes pig, bird, and human influenza genetic information.
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Re:Is this flu really "special"? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope [cdc.gov]
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Re:Souvenir (Score:5, Funny)
Herpes will last longer.
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Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
it may be 'disaster of the week' for you, but to those of us who can pay attention for more than 5 minutes will see the direct correlation between this and the 1918 epidemic that killed 50 million people world wide.
The 1918 flu was theorized to have started in Kansas around March 4th. By March 11th it was spread as far as New York City. In weeks, it had mutated into a more virulent strain that went on to kill more people than WWI had. It had killed an estimated 20 million people in 25 weeks, and that was without global air travel.
I hope that this is just a minor incident and a false alarm, but since it has already proven to be resistant to the first two of the four major flu anti-virals (the neuraminidase inhibitors - Tamiflu and Relenza are the ones that seem to be effective so far), that in and of itself is cause for concern.
And if 80+ dead in 1000+ cases worldwide so far(and they are mostly healthy and young) are not more than 'nervous hand wringing' to you, then you are a fool. Add to that, is the fact that it has spread globally in a few days, spreads person to person rather easily and the chances of finding patient zero in a place like Mexico is going to be near impossible, makes this appear to be something that is more than 'nervous hand wringing by the talking heads'
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Re:Multivitamins? (Score:5, Funny)
This virus is killing healthier people. Clearly the solution is to eat terribly and weaken your immune system.
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Re:News flash! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:That's it... Keep'em distracted (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly people, it's the flu. We get a new one every year... sometimes several. I stopped getting flu shots decades ago and have been a LOT healthier since that time...
I really hope this doesn't prove to be the "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame" comment of pandemics.
From what I am reading, this virus is distinct in that there is no natural immunity in humans (unless, I assume, you recover), that it kills those with the strongest immune systems, and the number of known cases are doubling daily. And that it's pretty lethal, at least in Mexico. Some of the estimates by doctors in the linked story says that Mexico is underrepresenting the death toll by 10x.
Comments like "The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses" do not give me too much comfort either.
As I understand it, viruses with a higher rate of mortality burn themselves out very quickly. If this is just lethal enough that most infected people survive long enough to pass it on... but a significant number of those infected experience the cytokine storm... we could all be in serious trouble. I'd rather have the CDC and WHO overreact than under-react.
I guess we'll know soon (and that's assuming there's no dramatic mutation... there were three major waves of the 1918 pandemic as it came sweeping through the population and picked off the survivors of the previous one. The 2nd I think was the most lethal.)
W
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Re:What's next? (Score:5, Informative)
Chickens, Pigs, and Humans. In some parts of the world, they are in close proximity to each other.
The influenza variants that can attack either of these three animals are very similar to each other, but not identical.
So, normally a bird flu only affects birds, for example.
However, flu viruses are extremely mutagenic, and in reality mutate constantly.
A problem with flu vaccines is they must be made from a strain that exists in early summer (to have time to make enough) but there is a strong chance that the virus will have mutated enough by the winter that the vaccine is not as effective, or has no effectiveness.
Every once in a while, because of the similarity, a mutation will happen that allows that particular strain to cross a barrier; a bird flu might mutate into one that can infect pigs, for example.
Or a swine flu may mutate to one that can infect humans. Since it is a new strain, no-one has antibodies to fight it.
The 1918/1919 strain killed between 2 and 20% of those infected. A normal flu fatality rate is about 0.1%.
Similarly, the 1918/1919 strain tended to fell healthy adults under 65 with a majority between 20 and 40, and not those under 2 or over 70 who comprise the majority of more ordinary strains' fatal victims. It is this tendency that is most alarming with the current outbreak.
A mutation of the 1918/1919 variant is called "swine flu" and is common in pigs today. That particular strain cannot infect humans. It was previously believed that the 1918/1919 strain was originally a swine flu, but recent research suggests it mutated from a bird flu. No one really knows for sure, however.
The country that best handled the risk in 1918/1919 was Japan, who issued strict travel limits, and had a mortality rate of just over twice the normal at 0.425%. Island nations who did not do so suffered fatality rates of 5% and more.
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Re:What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Probably Kung-flu.
Thanks, I'll be here all week, DON'T try the pork!
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Mod Points! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:business question (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, why are you asking? Are you planning on irridiating every one you might come in contact with? This is a respiratory virus - droplet transmission. Unless you're some sort of closet cannibal, I can't see why you are interested...
On second throught don't reply. I'm pretty sure I don't want to know....
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Re:Google mashup? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:GERMS ARE GOOD..... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Maybe if we didn't completely sterilize every conceivable surface in out packing houses
> and restaurants, sterilize foods in radiation and chemicals, and push people to drench
> their houses in Lysol every time somebody coughed, we either wouldn't have this problem,
> or it wouldn't be as bad as it is.
"We" didn't do all that in 1918. 50 million people died. Hygiene is primarily responsible for the drastic reduction in infectious disease in the last 100 years.
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Re:Google FluTrend (Score:5, Interesting)
That is absolutely NOT TRUE. Flu is considered an unstable virus. Its outer outer sheath of proteins are different all the time. BUT, this particular strain had to get its input from a number of different strains. It is POSSIBLE that a few of the genes that it picked up were from ones that CDC (and other experts) picked to be the likely strains. IOW, it is POSSIBLE that it has proteins from what was the suspected strains. At this time, it is not known EXACTLY what strains this came from.
What is more interesting, is this one has elements of Avian flu. It is possible that doing a vaccine directly against it MAY be what causes the issues, since it is current suspected that an immune storm is causing the issues.
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