Swine Flu

[Docker Clint]

You work in the pharmaceutical industry don't you? Every year they bring out these scare tactics.

A nasty virus will happen eventually. Perhaps the human race is due for a cull anyway.

 

[Dry Rot]

All flu's are an unpleasant experience, but the pharmaceutical companies put out the pandemic scare to sell their expensive drugs. Yes some people die from the flu, but most of them have underlying health issues, so they are more susceptible.

Here's a post from a hospital nurse in Georgia, USA. They probably know a bit more about all this than you

Most people think of influenza as a Bad Cold... that's because they've never seen a virus overwhelm a young adult's immune response to the point that their body's literally pull the pin on a grenade without being able to let go. That's what the "Wimpy Flu" 2009 pandemic did to a lot of young adults who (By virtue of HIPA) were never reported in the news. Healthy young adults died during the 2009 Pandemic. In my career, it was the first time I ever saw anybody die of influenza. It WAS a pandemic. One that was hidden by the Health Information Privacy Act. And one that was hidden by the sudden rule that every flu case had to be confirmed to be counted. People died who never were confirmed. They did not count. The public was in the dark. Families were embarrassed that their sons or daughters were dying of a Pig flu, so they just said it was "Flu". or Pneumonia. Pandemic was never mentioned in my hospital. Obstetricians never meet with critical care doctors and so they never communicated that the virus was alive and well in our town, as a result... many pregnant women had to have emergency C-sections to save their lives when they went into ARDS because they caught flu when they were pregnant. The only common thread was that NOBODY received an antiviral across the board.... Antivirals were being hoarded for something else. Over 90% of every child who died of pandemic flu in 2009 did not receive antiviral medication within that 48 hour window of opportunity. Mostly because NONE of them tested positive for influenza. As a matter of fact, NOBODY Tested positive for flu in 2009 until they were dying on a ventilator and deep bronchial lavage samples were sent to the CDC for PCR testing. This was in direct opposition to the CDC recommendation that treatment should NOT be based upon a flu test. Try telling THAT to a town full of OLD doctors, set in their ways who can't even use a computer Much LESS bring up the CDC Website. In the world of influenza and Healthcare.... Ignorance prevails.

http://fluboard.rhizalabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9241&start=20

 

[Donners]

A nasty virus will happen eventually. Perhaps the human race is due for a cull anyway.

It's remarkable how many viruses have emerged in the last 50 years, many of them zoonotic. As humans continue to expand into animal habitats and mix animal species which have not normally mixed in nature, it's a problem which will persist. Ebola and Marburg aren't much of a threat in their current form, but the former has had a number of different strains emerge - who knows if it could become substantially more infectious.

Antibacterial resistance looms as a real threat. There's some downright frightening levels of resistance to antibiotics.

 

[medusala]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/15/us-birdflu-genes-idUSBRE93E0CF20130415

(Reuters) - A new bird flu virus that has killed 13 people in China is still evolving, making it hard for scientists to predict how dangerous it might become.
Influenza experts say the H7N9 strain is probably still swapping genes with other strains, seeking to select ones that might make it fitter.

If it succeeds, the world could be facing the threat of a deadly flu pandemic. But it may also fail and just fizzle out.

The virus' instability also raises questions about whether H7N9 might become resistant to antiviral drugs such as Roche's antiviral drug Tamiflu, a possibility already suggested by analyses of genetic data available on the strain so far.

 

[Dry Rot]

Human cases accelerating. More questioning of the Chinese govt. Increasing evidence of H2H transmission.

 

[mantis]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/15/us-birdflu-genes-idUSBRE93E0CF20130415

(Reuters) - A new bird flu virus that has killed 13 people in China is still evolving, making it hard for scientists to predict how dangerous it might become.
Influenza experts say the H7N9 strain is probably still swapping genes with other strains, seeking to select ones that might make it fitter.

If it succeeds, the world could be facing the threat of a deadly flu pandemic. But it may also fail and just fizzle out.

The virus' instability also raises questions about whether H7N9 might become resistant to antiviral drugs such as Roche's antiviral drug Tamiflu, a possibility already suggested by analyses of genetic data available on the strain so far.

WOW 13 people, how many people die of normal flu in China every year, or other countries for that matter?

 

[Dry Rot]

Suggest you get up to speed and do better research and post better better articles than that.

If you can't make judgements about about patient numbers, clusters and fatalities re bird flu you know jack shit.

 

[Dry Rot]

Significant proportion of patients had no contact with birds

http://fluboard.rhizalabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9385

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/...-china-bird-flu-cases-who-says/#ixzz2QjUGz8L5

 

[Dry Rot]

Watch Taiwan.

It's not the guy returning from the Shanghai area with H7N9, its the three Taiwanese nurses who looked after him and now showing symptoms.

 

[dymot]

Put my China trip on hold until January and am going to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia instead. Not worth the risk even though I planned to go to Canton where there has only been a single outbreak to date.

 

[Donners]

Put my China trip on hold until January and am going to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia instead. Not worth the risk even though I planned to go to Canton where there has only been a single outbreak to date.

119 cases out of a population of about 1.5 billion?

I'd say your odds of avoiding it are fairly good.

 

[dymot]

119 cases out of a population of about 1.5 billion?

I'd say your odds of avoiding it are fairly good.

Still too much of a risk and considering the cases have surpassed that figure in the last few days I think it has and will get worse. Also the place I am going (or wanted to go) is very rural and birds galore.

 

[Dry Rot]

Here's today's map of past and present cases

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=...d=205430200180872645589.0004d962150bdee9261c0

This what it's like to get it

http://au.businessinsider.com/what-happens-h7n9-bird-flu-infection-2013-4

And some info on recent mutations

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90882/8226420.html

 

[Dry Rot]

I think that Golden Week is this week in China, when hundreds of thousands of Chinese move around China for their annual holidays.

Will be a good test of H2H transmission.

 

[tazzietiger]

I can understand the point in undertaking research of virus's when they mutate when their is a risk it could happen naturally but it seem's this research went beyond that point and was not beneficent to any developments.

Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.
They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.
Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.
“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.
“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said.

The controversial study into viral mixing was carried out by a team led by Professor Hualan Chen, director of China’s National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.
Professor Chen and her colleagues deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.

The study, which was carried out in a laboratory with the second highest security level to prevent accidental escape, resulted in 127 different viral hybrids between H5N1 and H1N1, five of which were able to pass by airborne transmission between laboratory guinea pigs.

Professor Simon Wain-Hobson, an eminent virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, said it is very likely that some or all of these hybrids could pass easily between humans and possess some or all of the highly lethal characteristics of H5N1 bird-flu.
“Nobody can extrapolate to humans except to conclude that the five viruses would probably transmit reasonable well between humans,” Professor Wain-Hobson said.
“We don’t know the pathogenicity [lethality] in man and hopefully we will never know. But if the case fatality rate was between 0.1 and 20 per cent, and a pandemic affected 500 million people, you could estimate anything between 500,000 and 100 million deaths,” he said.
“It’s a fabulous piece of virology by the Chinese group and it’s very impressive, but they haven’t been thinking clearly about what they are doing. It’s very worrying,” Professor Wain-Hobson said.
“The virological basis of this work is not strong. It is of no use for vaccine development and the benefit in terms of surveillance for new flu viruses is oversold,” he added.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...a-virus-in-veterinary-laboratory-8601658.html