pig flu outbreak
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- Andrew_D0
So, I've been working on a project with the federal government here in Canada that was put in place after the SARS outbreak to deal with matters similar to this outbreak.
I can't really speak towards the project as it's not public knowledge yet, till we submit it to the Minister Of Health. This article makes a small mention of it: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/Articl…
Anyway, the amount of stupidity in this thread is worry some(you're right TBO), because this is a real threat. Honestly, you people should be washing your hands or using Purrell a few times a day. It can spread that easily.
- ********0
what is it with these virii? why do they hate us so much?
- Andrew_D0
It's nature, unfortunately. It sometimes destroys itself.
- threadpost0
but what about octamom? can we please get back to the important issues at hand here people?
call me when Octaflumom comes out. then we can all lose our freaking-fickle-media-fear-drive... minds!- the octaswine! oh we're dead.threadpost
- Nice one.Andrew_D
- kgvs720
It's here in the North Side of Chicago. YAY!
- ukit0
Laugh now, die later
- benfal990
Monarch flu!
- brains0
I really don't know what to think anymore. It's a cause for concern, but honestly, I can't tell how much scare-mongering is going on, and for what reason.
If the media had not been reporting on this so intensely, and people were getting sick and everywhere but mexico, they were mild cases that were recovered from, everyone would just think "oh, the flu is going around." Virus' spread. It's how it goes, especially on planes, and with travel the way it is.
I understand the way this is setting itself up mimics the flu of 1918, but a lot has changed since then. Hygiene has improved, vaccines have been used over the years.. I understand that the "first wave" in spring / summer is mild, and when fall / winter comes around, chances are the virus has mutated to better attack humans, resulting in a well spread and strong virus.. But isn't it better to be exposed to mild cases now then? If it's virulent, but not fatal anywhere but mexico, wouldn't it be the natural vaccine for people to be exposed to this strain to build immunity?
- mayday baby!!!GeorgesII
- I was thinking the save thing today. It wouldn't be terrible to get it right now, if you didn't die of course.rosem
- I'm worried that we'll use all our anti-viral meds now, when they're not truly required.. then when it comes back at winter we'll have no defence left.********
- ..we'll have no defence left.********
- janne760
holland has the first case today. kid that came back from mexico.
- jabblon0
i'd be a lot more worried if the media wasn't going completely apeshit over this. on monday, when there were only 2 suspected cases in scotland the bbc was telling us that millions would die. i for one refuse to be manipulated through opinion and conjecture. in the words of arnie, 'if he dies, he dies'
- The problem is, that could happen, but the media blow it out of proportion saying that it WILL happen.Andrew_D
- brains0
I guess the best way anyone has put it was in a guardian pundit article. The guy had basically turned down interviews with the BBC and Al Jazeera (who were looking for a debunk of the entire hype) and he couldn't do it. Mostly because what he saw was that this was a real threat. Not that it was definitely going to happen, and the projections were going to be true, but because the way it was happening, it was a possibility.
The way he put it was something like this:
"I assumed they were adhering, robotically, to the "balance" template, but no: he kept at it, even when I protested and explained. "Yeah, but you know, it could be like Sars and bird flu, they didn't materialise, they were hype." Simon Jenkins suggested the same thing. It's not true, I said. They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is. I've never been hit by a car, but it's not idiotic to think about it."
- richardkark0
Seattle apparently has a couple cases. I'm getting a little bit nervous.
- ********0
"
Swine Flu: Don't Blame the Pig
By JEFFREY KLUGER Wednesday, Apr. 29, 2009Guy Christian / Hemis / Corbis
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Pity the poor pig. The otherwise estimable mammal has never had a very good rep — something about the mud, the snout, the oink. Now add the flu.Related
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Avian Flu: How Scared Should We Be?
The swine flu outbreak that has sparked widespread fear — so much so that Egypt has ordered the slaughter of the country's 300,000 pigs, even though no cases have been reported there — is easy to pin on the eponymous animal from which it emerged, but the fact is, the current epidemic is little more than an accident of evolution. If pigs are to blame, so too are birds and humans. (See pictures of the swine flu in Mexico.)The problem begins with the wily nature of the influenza virus itself. It may be an uncomplicated thing, made up of nothing more than 10 proteins assembled into a genome that's simple even by microbiological standards, but that bare-bones genome is unusually flexible, with snap-in, snap-out gene segments that allow easy mutation and exchange of information with other viruses. That's the reason we need a new flu vaccine every year: by the time one flu season has ended and the next one begins, the virus has changed so much, it can simply shake off last year's shot. Compare that with, say, polio; the vaccine was perfected in 1955 and hasn't had to change much since.
What keeps the flu relatively in check is that there simply aren't that many species that are susceptible to it — with humans, pigs and certain kinds of birds leading the list. "There are surface markers on the cells of some species that bind with sites on the flu virus," says Dr. Peter Daszak, an emerging-disease ecologist and president of the Wildlife Trust. "The influenza virus evolved along with pigs, and it did the same with a few other mammals and with birds."
The adaptability of the virus, however, made it a certainty that a strain that evolved in one of the susceptible species would easily make whatever changes were necessary to allow it to survive in one of the few other eligible hosts. So quickly and efficiently does the virus transform itself that it may require just a single passage through a single individual to get that shape-shifting job done. "Different viruses from different sources enter a cell, and the virus that comes out the other end is an entirely different one," says Dr. Richard Webby, an infectious-disease specialist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis and the director of the hospital's World Health Organization collaborating center. "The process is called reassortment."
Birds are the natural reservoirs of the common flu strains that strike in winter — and those strains reassort themselves to hit humans particularly hard. But while humans are not susceptible to every strain of avian flu, pigs definitely are. When bird flu viruses replicate in pigs, they pick up the viral machinery that gives more selective flu strains the power to spread to other mammals, like us. That's what makes pigs such potent mixing bowls for flu. The roundabout bird-pig-human route may be less common than the straight bird-human jump, but it may be more problematic. Strains of avian flu, like the much-feared H5N1, can infect individual humans, but they can't make the person-to-person leap. Avian flu that is passed through the pig's mammalian system, however, can be passed readily among humans. (Read "Why Border Controls Can't Keep Out the Flue Virus.")
All of this made the flu virus a tenacious foe from the outset, but once humans invented farming and learned to cultivate animals, we made a bad situation much worse. All at once, chickens, ducks and pigs — which never had much to do with one another — began living cheek to jowl in high numbers and often unsanitary conditions. Farm families and people working in live markets then began mingling with the critters. That's a pathogenic speed blender, and the viruses have taken full advantage of it. "It's really an ecological issue," says Daszak.
So if we can't fairly blame the pigs (indeed, the CDC has officially stopped calling the virus "swine flu," opting instead for the more hog-friendly 2009 H1N1 flu), can we blame Mexico? That charge doesn't stick either. Decades ago, numerous countries came together to develop the Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN), which allows epidemiological teams to spot new flu viruses as soon as they emerge and get vaccines ready in time. But the GISN only tracks human flu, meaning animal flu can slip by undetected. What's more, pigs that carry influenza tend not to die en masse the way flocks of birds do, eliminating the immediate tip-off that a serious pathogen is at large. None of that is Mexico's fault either. In fact, since human tourists and domesticated animals cross into Mexico all the time, there's every reason to believe that the progenitor virus behind the epidemic hitched a ride in one of them.
"I'm of the opinion that this doesn't have to be a Mexico-originated virus," says Daszak. "Somehow it got to Mexico and then mixed with humans."
If we have to pin the rap somewhere then, forget any one species or country and blame simple biology. But regardless of whence the virus came, the more salient question is, Where will it go? That's what concerns doctors as they work to stem the epidemic and make sure healthy people stay that way."
- calcium0
Why do we post articles and not links?
- it wasn't supposed to be the whole thing. For some reason it pasted the whole damn article.********
- It's all good. I just know that trend in esp. the politic threads. Like I'm just going to read them all.calcium
- yeah, I was just trying to post one paragraph!********
- it wasn't supposed to be the whole thing. For some reason it pasted the whole damn article.
- benfal990
Title of the thread is'nt good anymore, they officially call it "H1N1 Virus A" now.
Any zombies yet?
