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Swine Flu

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it's always a possibility.. to you its a grand final, to us its just another game against the minnows.
 
Nardz said:
it's always a possibility.. to you its a grand final, to us its just another game against the minnows.
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And lets not forget the fact that Melbourne have historically always dominated Collingwood in big games. Premierships against Collingwood 8-1 in favour of the Dees :)

That's why Collingwood are my second favourite team. They're never really a threat for the premiership, and they seem so willing to let us win against them.
 

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Karl Pilkington said:
I've heard that. Some small towns in the United States have had communication completely cutoff except for a few flares being lit from the roof of the local shopping centre.

Scary stuff.
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I read that a group of people got together and built some sort of heavily armoured bus in an attempt to escape.
 
mantis said:
Can't you read? I was talking about the bad flu that happened 3 or 4 years ago, this flu is a minnow in comparison, yet no media pushed panic then, people actually died from that flu in Australia & people were really sick for a week or so.
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That flu you refer to Mantis is known as the Brisbane strain. It's also resistant to tamiflu.

The media don't want to talk it up because it's ours... and when got into Italy was referred to as the Australian Flu.
 
So long as we can put the name of an animal before the word 'flu', it must be serious...run for the hills people...half of our population is going to be wiped out unless Kevin Rudd (SuperKevin) saves the day !!!

I just can't believe how many people have died from it world wide. I mean, it's less than the normal flu...oh, hang on, I mean, the 'homosapian' flu.

This is really getting serious, we are so lucky that the WHO and our government were quick to act otherwise there would have been about a million deaths in Australia according to some:cool:
 
Going on the USA experience, there will be 10,000 infected here now.

Australia swine flu tally soars near 500: official

By Neil Sands – 7 hours ago

MELBOURNE (AFP) — Australia's swine flu tally soared again to nearly 500 confirmed cases, just a day after a sudden spike made it the Asia-Pacific region's worst affected country.

Victoria health minister Daniel Andrews said 89 new cases had been identified in the state overnight, taking its total to 395. The national count now stands at 496, the fourth largest worldwide.

Australia had only one case of swine flu just a fortnight ago but the numbers have grown exponentially since the controversial move to let infected passengers leave a luxury cruise-liner last week.

On Tuesday, Carnival Australia warned that another of its vessels had been turned away from the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia because of possible flu cases among its passengers.

"We reported that some people on board had flu-like symptoms," Carnival Australia spokesman Anthony Fisk said.

"We anchored and they asked us not to disembark any passengers."

Samples from four or five of some 2,000 "Dawn Princess" passengers will be tested for swine flu before the vessel returns to Sydney on Friday.

Australia this week overtook Japan as the region's swine flu hotspot, lagging only the United States, Mexico and Canada in terms of the number of cases.

With the country heading into the southern hemisphere winter, Queensland health minister Paul Lucas warned deaths from the virus were unavoidable....
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CAS79 said:
That flu you refer to Mantis is known as the Brisbane strain. It's also resistant to tamiflu.

The media don't want to talk it up because it's ours... and when got into Italy was referred to as the Australian Flu.
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Ah yes, the 'Killer Australian Flu'.

Coming to Britain - the Australian flu virus that has already killed hundreds

A flu virus more deadly than any seen in two decades is threatening Britain.

The strain originates in Australia where it has claimed hundreds of lives, including those of children.

Called Brisbane H3N2, it is so virulent that health chiefs have had to change the make-up of flu vaccines to deal with it.
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Sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? :eek:

Too bad for the flu fear mongers around here that the article is dated September last year. :rolleyes:
 

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jumpinjimmy said:
Thank goodness for that. It may protect them against the next Avian flu.
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jumpinjimmy said:
Yeah I remember that hype:rolleyes: My kids contracted it too...very nasty, but not life threatening - just like the latest Influenza 'A' (swine/avian).
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Good to see you applying your deep knowledge of the subject here.
 
Our response not going too well

Medical response in chaos in swine flu pandemic

Siobhain Ryan and Adam Cresswell | June 13, 2009
Article from: The Australian

ANGRY GPs have slammed a "conspicuous lack of leadership" in Australia's response to the swine flu crisis, with some patients waiting eight days for test results or receiving anti-viral drugs too late to limit the infection.

The doctors have blamed delays and inconsistent responses at state and federal levels for undermining efforts to contain the disease in Australia, placing the nation on the front line of the world's first flu pandemic in more than 40 years.

The World Health Organisation conceded defeat early yesterday in global efforts to confine the novel H1N1 strain, upgrading its six-level warning system to full-blown pandemic.

Despite the worldwide upgrade, Australia yesterday did not lift its own pandemic alert status to the highest level, on the basis that the disease remained a mild one for most of the population.

The number of Australians infected with the new H1N1 strain is, however, believed to be far higher than last night's official national tally of 1391 because Victoria has abandoned its daily caseload updates.

The state last Wednesday cut back its laboratory testing for the virus from about 500 to 1000 samples a day to 50 to 70 a day, after acknowledging it could no longer contain the disease.

Even then, patients were falling through the cracks in the testing system, Melbourne GP Kirstin Charlesworth told The Australian.

She said a 17-year-old boy who came to her Toorak practice two weeks ago with classic flu symptoms, including a 39C fever, had to wait for eight days for test results to confirm his diagnosis, by which stage he was back at school.

The patient was initially refused priority testing because he fell outside Victoria's risk criteria, and could not be fast-tracked even after classmates tested positive to swine flu.

"They said they couldn't do it - it was on the slow train to nowhere and had been sent interstate," Dr Charlesworth said. "I asked if I could at least have Tamiflu for the patient, for his household, and for myself - and they said, 'No, because he doesn't have swine flu at this stage'."

Thomas Lyons, a GP from Eagleby, southeast of Brisbane, said logistics were "falling over" in the fight to contain the virus, and likened the bureaucrats responsible for organising the national swine flu response to the generals in charge at Gallipoli.

"There is a conspicuous lack of leadership at the state level here in Queensland," he said. Dr Lyons said a woman who had been a passenger on the Pacific Dawn cruise liner, which hosted a major swine flu outbreak, had told him hospital staff had promised that masks and other equipment needed for her quarantine would be sent to her home.

"It arrived eight days later - much too late to be of any epidemiological or biological use whatsoever," Dr Lyons said. Pathology companies were quoting him testing turnaround times of between two and five days, yet the anti-viral Tamiflu commonly used for treatment was largely ineffective more than 48 hours into the course of the disease.

"Giving it more than 72 hours after the onset of symptoms is a waste of time," Dr Lyons said.

Sydney GP Mike Moore, chief executive of the Central Sydney GP Network, said authorities could have managed the situation better.

"If we had been more careful, we could probably have delayed entry of the virus into the country, and (if) various jurisdictions had been more co-ordinated," he said.

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon yesterday sought to head off doctors' concerns by announcing almost $4 million in new funding to provide extra support for GPs.

"It is about ensuring that those people who have to provide the frontline care are provided with up-to-date information about swine flu, including things like testing protocols, infection control, and how to use the personal protective equipment properly, and how to organise practice systems to help manage a potential pandemic," she said.

Kevin Rudd defended Australia's preparation for the swine flu epidemic as "among the best in the world".

"Our response throughout has been to respond calmly and in a measured way to the medical and scientific advice given to us daily by the Chief Medical Officer of the commonwealth and of the states," the Prime Minister said.

Cross-border relations between health agencies have, however, deteriorated as the virus has spread, with Victoria first criticising NSW's lax quarantine rules in its handling of the Pacific Dawn outbreak, then accusing its neighbour of imposing too tough a school exclusion regime on children returning from visits to Melbourne.

Queensland Health has also come under fire, with Broncos chief executive Bruno Cullen declaring the department's quarantine advice after star fullback Karmichael Hunt's diagnosis with swine flu too inconsistent to be taken seriously.

As one of our closest neighbours - New Zealand - yesterday forecast that up to one million Kiwis could be infected with the virus, Swiss drugs giant Novartis completed a first batch of swine flu vaccine for pre-clinical trials and aims to make a version available by the end of the year.
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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25628852-2702,00.html?from=public_rss
 
I almost never go to the doctor for a flu, not since I was about 12. Got a terrible flu only 6 months ago and you wouldn't believe it, but I survived due to a lot of rest and water.

:eek:
 

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There seems to be a bit of a view that the flu is mainly media hype and lots of people get it every year and are fine from it. I think some of it stems from the number of people who feel a bit sick and say "I have a touch of the flu".
 
Swine flu could grow far deadlier, says WHO adviser

The virus shows worrying similarities to Spanish flu, which wiped out 50 million people in 1918

By Jonathan Owen

Sunday, 14 June 2009


One of the world's leading virologists warned last night that the swine flu virus shares worrying similarities with Spanish flu – which wiped out 50 million people in 1918 – and that we should be prepared for the worst.

As the pandemic continues to escalate, Professor Albert Osterhaus, an adviser to the World Health Organisation (WHO), expressed his fears that swine flu may develop into a far deadlier strain. "In a doomsday scenario, we could have a severe pandemic, similar to the Spanish flu, and that could arise out of a mutation of the virus," he said.

"Spanish flu also started as a relatively mild strain, comparable to the seasonal flu virus. Then, after half a year, there was a major peak and tens of millions of people died worldwide." Both viruses seem to target largely healthy adults and children, he added.

The global pandemic gives swine flu an opportunity to mutate into another form, said Professor Osterhaus, head of virology at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam and the man who discovered the H5N1 avian flu virus in humans.

"We cannot predict what's going to happen, or how likely or unlikely it is that we will have this scenario, but I think the precautionary principle is important and we should be prepared for the worst, even if there's only a small chance of it happening. We cannot rule out a repeat of a pandemic on the scale of the Spanish flu."...
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http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...ow-far-deadlier-says-who-adviser-1704820.html
 
The first mutation?

....there were underlying fears that the virus currently spreading around the world through human-to-human contact might mutate further, possibly into a more deadly form, as happened with the 1918 Spanish flu which killed tens of millions.

Those fears heightened a little Tuesday, when a Brazil's Adolfo Lutz Bacteriological Institute said its researchers had identified and isolated a new strain of the A(H1N1) virus in a Sao Paulo patient.

It was not yet known whether that variant, called A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1, was more aggressive than the more common type.

The institute said in a statement the mutation comprised of alterations in the Hemagglutinin protein which allows the virus to infect new hosts.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jOVEa-TOAEQ3t1NAik9vzooON1FA
 
There was an interesting interview on PM last night.

MARK COLVIN: An expert in public health law who advises the World Health Organisation says the WHO's pandemic alert level has unwittingly created fear and anxiety about swine flu.

The alert level only refers to geographic spread, not virulence. It's now at the maximum of six, indicating a full-blown pandemic.

Professor Lawrence Gostin says the rising level is leading countries to actually ignore the organisation's advice.

...

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: This is the first time we're actually handling it under the international rule of law because a couple of years ago the World Health Organization passed what's known as the International Health Regulations.

So that's the good news. The good news is that at least there is a legal structure with international norms. But the bad news is that we haven't really performed very well at all.

DAVID MARK: Why not?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Well the World Health Organization's pandemic alert level has been unfortunate. Their international pandemic alert level only looks at how widespread the disease is, not how serious it is or how pathogenic. And in fact this particular flu is no more lethal and probably less than ordinary seasonal influenza.

And so what it's done is it's caused a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety, a lot of concern which has caused countries around the world to really ignore WHO advice, strangely enough.

So the WHO has said that there should be no travel restrictions, yet countries around the world have done that. They said there should be no mass quarantines. Countries have done that. They said there should be no prohibitions on trade, yet countries have done that. There should be no discrimination but there's been a lot of discrimination particularly against people living in Mexico and Latin America.
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The rest is here.

I accept that Gostin is not a medical practitioner. However, he takes about as much interest in this topic as Dry Rot (who is equally qualified), so his view has some weight.

I also accept DR's point that this strain may mutate and take a similar path to that in 1918. That obviously should be taken seriously and prudence dictates that we have all possible resources ready should that happen. However, it has not happened as yet.

Further, the use and misuse of the word 'pandemic' has produced a level of fear far in excess of the threat posed at present. Whether that is the product of deliberate mischief by the media (and their sponsors) or ignorance I don't know. All I know is that it has been bandied around far too often without context.
 
DeadlyAkkuret said:
I almost never go to the doctor for a flu, not since I was about 12. Got a terrible flu only 6 months ago and you wouldn't believe it, but I survived due to a lot of rest and water.

:eek:
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Sell your way of recovery to the media + medical officals and make some $$$ :p
 

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