Official Swine Flu thread.

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Could they potentially stop all international air travel from the US if it got too worse?

 

[Scarpozzi]

I heard somewhere that the 141 deaths in Mexico were all in the same apartment though.... Is it really that widespread yet?

 

[NissanGurl]

Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
I heard somewhere that the 141 deaths in Mexico were all in the same apartment though.... Is it really that widespread yet?

*Smacks forehead*

 

[vhx]

Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
I heard somewhere that the 141 deaths in Mexico were all in the same apartment though.... Is it really that widespread yet?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/8018428.stm

Might be worse. Apparently Mexican doctors have been told not to put Swine Flu as causes of death in a lot of cases.

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. Our authorities say nothing. Life goes on as usual here.

 

[JS80]

wow they totally called it in the 1970s http://www.buzzfeed.com/bigcru...970s-swine-flu-psa-4rw

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Just got this email from my university

It has come to our attention that two University of Canterbury staff and
two of our students travelled from the United States at the weekend on a
plane carrying secondary school students infected with Influenza A.

Students will be aware that Swine Flu (H1N1) is a new strain of
Influenza A.

The two staff members and two students have been asked to remain in
isolation for three days having commenced a precautionary course of
Tamiflu. They will be guided by doctors as to when they can return to
the University.

During this period of uncertainty about Swine Flu, it is important to
keep abreast of current and correct information, especially regarding
impending travel. Appropriate local information can be found at
http://www.fluinfo.org.nz/

Another useful link is http://urgent.internationalsos.com/default.aspx.

Students should consult a medical professional if they have any health
concerns, particularly if they have visited North America or Mexico in
the past fortnight.

Students who are intending to travel to these areas in the near future
are advised to monitor developments.

--
Professor Ian Town
Deputy Vice-Chancellor

 

[Printer Bandit]

how many people think this strain is naturally occurring?

 

[0roo0roo]

gmaps swine flu
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms...5.738151,25.488281&z=5

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: Printer Bandit
how many people think this strain is naturally occurring?

As opposed to...?

 

[zoiks]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat

Originally posted by: zoiks
I was going to take a fishing trip on May 21st to Cabo. Dunno what I'm gonna do now.

Whens the latest you can cancel w/o getting a penalty? It should be safe enough to go, but Ill bet youll have a lingering worry the whole time.

I'm still in the clear. I took vacation off from work but I almost purchased the tickets yesterday. I think I'll wait it out. Apparently the CDC is readying an advisory for all travel to Mexico. They're recommending against traveling unless absolutely necessary.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: Printer Bandit
how many people think this strain is naturally occurring?

As opposed to...?

engineered?

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: Printer Bandit
how many people think this strain is naturally occurring?

As opposed to...?

engineered?

Yeah, I'm not following. This isn't bioterrorism. There would have been far better places to have released such a viral agent, and any kind of lab-created influenza strain would be far less effective than a more serious virus, of which far more exist that we are far less prepared to handle, no matter what any government says. A smallpox bioterrorism event would be far more effective in a major city if carried out properly, and spread far before the government could contain it most likely. I might be wrong, who knows. And gaining access to live smallpox samples here in the US is no small feat unless some bioengineering student went nuts.

All flu strains are naturally occurring. Just, not always actually 'occurring' until it, well, does. Influenza is a constantly mutating virus, with a couple varieties and a large assortment of strains for each variety. And then, each strain can mutate further with different protein composition, and become a fun little bug once you introduce effective contagiousness between different species. The avian flu, at least the H5N1 strain that's been in Asia for awhile, would probably make this current swine flu look like a little bitch if it mutated for human-human transfer. If THAT strain mixed with a compatible strain of swine flu, it could also more likely mutate for human-human spread, and be just as nasty.

 

[greatBLU]

As serious as this could be, I can't help but be peeved at how the news covers it. I have trouble trusting them after how they portrayed SARS and Avian flu.

These dudes have a point...

The Difference between Swine Flu and a Trip to Mexico

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: greatBLU
As serious as this could be, I can't help but be peeved at how the news covers it. I have trouble trusting them after how they portrayed SARS and Avian flu.

These dudes have a point...

The Difference between Swine Flu and a Trip to Mexico

News isn't there to be 'trusted'. Anything that can be referred to as bad news is print worthy news. But there are logical reasons to give serious attention to nasty viral bugs. We have no clue how bad, or how meaningless, they will be until time has passed. The Avian flu is far from meaningless, it just hasn't made the full mutation yet. If there is a mutation in the H5N1 avian flu strain that allows it to jump between human and human with the same ease as the ordinary flu, shit will probably hit the fan. The potential of thousands or millions dying around the world is easily a newsworthy coverage, even if in the end nothing comes of the virus. As much as I tend to hate the bad news coverage, getting people all scared of a disease, in that you coerce them to take worthy precautions, can be the difference between beating the potential for a pandemic, and actually having a pandemic.

This is brand new, people have died, and the virus, brand new to humans, can jump between humans. This is worthy of any and all coverage it gets. The impact will continue to get worse and the virus is allowed to incubate in people who don't realize they have any illness until they're sneezing in a crowded classroom or theater or marketplace. And then oops, hundreds can become infected from less than a handful original infections. And that's when you start seeing the deaths come in, unless for some reason the US is immune to death compared to healthy adults dying in Mexico. Only between 20-40 confirmed cases so far in the US, some already recovering, some just getting the symptoms, and quite a few more who haven't displayed symptoms (I guarantee that, before you show symptoms you may have already incubated it and allowed enough of the virus to multiply and became a walking viral bomb, with symptoms maybe then appearing a day after that point).

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Originally posted by: destrekor

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: Printer Bandit
how many people think this strain is naturally occurring?

As opposed to...?

engineered?

Yeah, I'm not following. This isn't bioterrorism. There would have been far better places to have released such a viral agent, and any kind of lab-created influenza strain would be far less effective than a more serious virus, of which far more exist that we are far less prepared to handle, no matter what any government says. A smallpox bioterrorism event would be far more effective in a major city if carried out properly, and spread far before the government could contain it most likely. I might be wrong, who knows. And gaining access to live smallpox samples here in the US is no small feat unless some bioengineering student went nuts.

All flu strains are naturally occurring. Just, not always actually 'occurring' until it, well, does. Influenza is a constantly mutating virus, with a couple varieties and a large assortment of strains for each variety. And then, each strain can mutate further with different protein composition, and become a fun little bug once you introduce effective contagiousness between different species. The avian flu, at least the H5N1 strain that's been in Asia for awhile, would probably make this current swine flu look like a little bitch if it mutated for human-human transfer. If THAT strain mixed with a compatible strain of swine flu, it could also more likely mutate for human-human spread, and be just as nasty.

I wasn't saying that I believed it was engineered. They could've hit other places to make a much larger impact.

 

[IGBT]

quick. kludge together a reason why the mexican flu is caused by global warming.

 

[Mermaidman]

The folks who are recovering after contracting this swine flu--Are they more immune now? (Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger . . . etc)

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
I wasn't saying that I believed it was engineered. They could've hit other places to make a much larger impact.

Oh, yeah I understand that, to me it just seemed you were probably posting that "engineered" answer to clear up the previous question.

My response was mostly targeted to the Printer Bandit who questioned how many thought it was naturally occurring. I am confused to how one would really believe it to be anything other than naturally occurring. A quick wiki browse of influenza shows how many different strains exist currently, and how many differences a single strain can potentially have.

And that is why having yearly flu vaccines isn't always a guarantee one will dodge the flu that year. The scientists who compose the vaccine for each year basically make an educated guess as to which strains will be more prevalent that year, and put those strains, or single strain, into the vaccine composition. As of the past decade, I do believe a few years that "guess" was wrong and many people still got sick, and additionally, some of the past years the CDC has actually declared an epidemic was in progress, which for the typical flu isn't so bad, just means a LOT of people had a week or two long illness. But those bad years, with or without the vaccine actually working or not, mean many children and elderly get it, and if its one of the nastier, though still not typically lethal, strains is the big one that year... quite a few of the folks with weaker immune systems (elderly, young children, those with other ailments) do end up dieing.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: Mermaidman
The folks who are recovering after contracting this swine flu--Are they more immune now? (Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger . . . etc)

Technically speaking, yes. But that isn't a guarantee.

After encountering a new virus, the body builds up specific antibodies (without going into detail what type of antibodies, that's pretty in-depth) that will help the body fight it off faster, and without as much of a problem, if it were to encounter it again. Not all antibodies last forever, depends on the type of bug basically, from what I reckon. Some last decades, some require re-exposure of some sort to build up antibodies again. That is why some vaccines require booster shots, typically of non-active cells, mostly the specific proteins and stuff.

The proteins in this strain of Swine Flu are brand new to humans, which means no one will be prepared at first, though some vaccines might provide some initial help to make fighting it off easier on the body. One I never learned was how long immunity of influenza lasts, of which would also be strictly for those strains immunity was gained from, meaning other strains will still potentially pose a risk.

It might only be a few months or a year, which is part of the reason why they keep pushing the flu vaccine every year. The other reason, as noted above, would be due to different strains in a vaccine for some years.

For pandemics, they don't test to last too long, so that must mean natural immunity continues to build over the length of the pandemic, to the point that the threat simply removes itself as the virus loses potential targets to infect, which keeps diminishing the number of hosts from which to spread, which is a cycle that just brings the whole thing down to as if it never had happened. Kind of like what they did with smallpox so long ago - not everyone received a vaccine, but enough of the population did that smallpox just couldn't keep infecting people at the rate it did, and that continued to decline until it just vanished.

For the pandemic immunity concept, it might be from a single exposure, or it might be one infection, and maybe a few weeks later you come across another infected individual, and your body still has the antibodies, so it is able to fight it off, maybe with some illness but nothing too dangerous. Eventually, as possibly you keep getting exposed more and more as the rate of infection around you continues to grow, that your body never has a chance to lose immunity, and in fact, the immunity grows stronger as your body keeps producing antibodies due to constant exposure. That MIGHT not be how it actually works, again... been a little while since I studied that, and never really studied pandemics and influenza immunity.

 

[Printer Bandit]

Originally posted by: destrekor

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
I wasn't saying that I believed it was engineered. They could've hit other places to make a much larger impact.

Oh, yeah I understand that, to me it just seemed you were probably posting that "engineered" answer to clear up the previous question.

My response was mostly targeted to the Printer Bandit who questioned how many thought it was naturally occurring. I am confused to how one would really believe it to be anything other than naturally occurring. A quick wiki browse of influenza shows how many different strains exist currently, and how many differences a single strain can potentially have.

And that is why having yearly flu vaccines isn't always a guarantee one will dodge the flu that year. The scientists who compose the vaccine for each year basically make an educated guess as to which strains will be more prevalent that year, and put those strains, or single strain, into the vaccine composition. As of the past decade, I do believe a few years that "guess" was wrong and many people still got sick, and additionally, some of the past years the CDC has actually declared an epidemic was in progress, which for the typical flu isn't so bad, just means a LOT of people had a week or two long illness. But those bad years, with or without the vaccine actually working or not, mean many children and elderly get it, and if its one of the nastier, though still not typically lethal, strains is the big one that year... quite a few of the folks with weaker immune systems (elderly, young children, those with other ailments) do end up dieing.

From what I've read so far, it seems to be a bioengineered strain. when you step back and take look at the big picture...economic collapse, martial law, global population reduction, one world government, etc., it does make sense. Plus in 1996, the Air Force put out a study that there would be a 2009 influenza pandemic that would kill 30 million people. Then again i might be listening to too much AJ.

 

[hans007]

Last time I was in the philippines (12 years ago), I got something called dengue fever. 104 degree fever. I survived after 5 days in the hospital. I would imagine swine flu would be somewhat similar except it is spread by human to human contact instead of mosquito to human.

That said the mortality rate in the philippines during that summer was like 8% but it was mostly because people had crappy medical care. I know that summer it was 1-2% in puerto rico which has better hospitals. So I think in america given we have probably better medical care than mexico it should not be too bad. I am not really afraid though, you cant really control this stuff and let it run your life.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: Printer Bandit
From what I've read so far, it seems to be a bioengineered strain. when you step back and take look at the big picture...economic collapse, martial law, global population reduction, one world government, etc., it does make sense. Plus in 1996, the Air Force put out a study that there would be a 2009 influenza pandemic that would kill 30 million people. Then again i might be listening to too much AJ.

How are any of these in any way evidence of a "bioengineered" strain of influenza? What is it about the virus that makes you think it's artificial? Do you have a link to this study? Why would the air force publicly release documents telling the world they intend on mass murder? Why would the air force be involved in engineering a virus? What are you talking about?

Oh wait... by AJ do you mean Alex Jones? Because if so, if you listen to that jackass then there's no good reason to expect your opinions to stand up to the slightest breeze of scrutiny.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Mo0o
Anybody getting flu masks yet?

Yep. Got them for this household already.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Wow wikipedia is fast. A section under influenza linked to this already.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Originally posted by: Mo0o
Anybody getting flu masks yet?

Yep. Got them for this household already.

I read they wont really help unless its a particular very high grade of mask.