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Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
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| Mexican soldiers delivering masks for public distribution |
Countries planned quarantines, tightened rules on pork imports and tested airline passengers for fevers as global health officials tried Sunday to come up with uniform ways to battle a deadly strain of swine flu. Nations from New Zealand to France reported new suspected cases.
World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan held teleconferences with staff and flu experts around the world but stopped short of recommending specific measures to stop the disease, urging governments to step up their surveillance of suspicious outbreaks.
Governments including China, Russia and Taiwan began planning to put anyone with symptoms of the deadly virus under quarantine…
Some nations issued travel warnings for Mexico.
Chan called the outbreak a public health emergency of ”pandemic potential” because the virus can pass from human to human. Her agency was considering whether to issue nonbinding recommendations on travel and trade restrictions, and even border closures. It is up to governments to decide whether to follow the advice…
New Zealand said that 10 students who took a school trip to Mexico ”likely” had swine flu. Israel said a man who had recently visited Mexico had been hospitalized while authorities try to determine whether he had the disease. French Health Ministry officials said four possible cases of swine flu are currently under investigation, including a family of three in the northern Nord region and a woman in the Paris region. The four recently returned from Mexico. Tests on two separate cases of suspected swine flu proved negative, they said…
Mexico closed schools, museums, libraries and theaters in a bid to contain the outbreak after hundreds were sickened there. In the U.S., there have been at least 11 confirmed cases of swine flu in California, Texas and Kansas. Patients have ranged in age from 9 to over 50. At least two were hospitalized. All recovered or are recovering.
The WHO’s pandemic alert level is currently at to phase 3. I’m betting on phase 4 within the week. Phase 5 is what we get when the virus is confirmed in at least two countries in the same region.
Phase 6 would indicate a full-scale global pandemic. Which no one wants to see or experience.
#41 Who’s to say it won’t make it’s way to the North? Or already has in some indirect way. Oh but your of the thinking that x marks the spot when spraying for pesticides.
Don’t be so quick to shut the idea, give it some thought. Not everything is as simple as tic tac toe.
I’ll take off my tinfoil hat when you take off those horse winkers.
#23, -thank you for the clarification.
#42 rofl -good one.
..if this pans and goes full blown, any chance for an economic recovery will be delayed a few years longer..(on top of the 10+ years it may already take..)
-s
This is nothing to worry about – we’re not all gonna die. It’s too early. The end of 2012 is when we’re all gonna die…
I did some math today based on the numbers I could find and it looks like one in one thousand die.
Not so bad until you start thinking about how many people that would be.
#45 Oh wow, so you have a rating system for conspiracy theorist? I sure do wonder who’s wearing the tinfoil hat now. Let alone how your able to decide if one is good or bad.
I can only suspect your parents for you bearing the horse winkers though. Maybe if I met your parents, they could show me a “really good, fully cooked conspiracy theorist”.
What’s interesting about the timing of all this, is that the US President had just visited Mexico, on the 15th. Probably accompanied by a large number of aids and military personnel, Secret Service, doctors, nurses. And maybe a germ warfare agent too. What an opportunity to spread something there, to make Obama’s visit most memorable. It’s not like the military has never released relatively harmless germs before, to test how they spread. Maybe they goofed and brought the wrong vial. Or the Mexicans are more fragile when it comes to the flu, than they thought.
# 50 Glenn E. said, in part:
“What’s interesting about the timing of all this, is that the US President had just visited Mexico, on the 15th.”
This all started well before that. There were cases in March, if not earlier.
Here’s some more about the way it mixes and matches from WikiPedia:
The CDC has confirmed that American cases were found to be made up of genetic elements from four different flu viruses – North American swine influenza, North American avian influenza, human influenza, and swine influenza virus typically found in Asia and Europe – “an unusually mongrelised mix of genetic sequences.”[69] Pigs have been shown to act as a potential “mixing vessel” in which reassortment can occur between flu viruses of several species.[70][71] This new strain appears to be a result of reassortment of human influenza and swine influenza viruses, presumably due to superinfection in an individual human. Influenza viruses readily undergo reassortment because their genome is split between eight pieces of RNA (see Orthomyxoviridae).
The virus was resistant to amantadine and rimantadine, but susceptible to oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza).[72][73][74][75]
Several complete genome sequences for U.S. flu cases were rapidly made available through the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID).[76][77] Preliminary genetic characterization found that the hemagglutinin (HA) gene was similar to that of swine flu viruses present in U.S. pigs since 1999, but the neuraminidase (NA) and matrix protein (M) genes resembled versions present in European swine flu isolates. The six genes from American swine flu are themselves mixtures of swine flu, bird flu, and human flu viruses.[78][79] While viruses with this genetic makeup had not previously been found to be circulating in humans or pigs, there is no formal national surveillance system to determine what viruses are circulating in pigs in the U.S.[80] The seasonal influenza strain H1N1 vaccine is thought to be unlikely to provide protection.
Oh, and ECA: thanks for re-posting the map URL.
I may never eat pork again after reading the Rolling Stone article. I guess some humans (and their companies) will never rise above common decency. These pig factories have been polluting for years but as long as they line the politicians pockets they can do as they please. Now we have exported their stupidity.