The World Health Organization has told its member nations it is declaring a swine flu pandemic — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.
The move came after an emergency meeting with flu experts here [Geneva] that was convened after a sharp rise in cases in Australia, which reported 1,224 cases on Wednesday, and rising numbers in Britain, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia.
In a statement sent to member countries, the W.H.O. said it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, indicating a global pandemic outbreak, The Associated Press said, attributing the information to health officials from Scotland, Indonesia and Thailand. An official announcement of the change was due at 6 p.m. Geneva time Thursday (12 p.m. in New York).
Daylife/Reuters Pictures
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In an effort to avoid triggering panic with such an announcement, W.H.O. officials are expected to include with their formal announcement a caveat that the flu is not more deadly now that it has been declared a pandemic. Rather, the announcement reflects the global spread of the disease, not an increase in its severity.
According to W.H.O rules, the organization should declare a pandemic once it finds evidence of widespread “community transmission” — meaning beyond travelers, schools and immediate contacts — on two continents…
The declaration of a pandemic will trigger drug makers to speed up production of a swine flu vaccine and prompt governments to devote more money to containing the virus. While international health officials have said the flu appears to be less deadly than the annual bouts of seasonal flu that sweep the globe each year, they have warned that the virus could mutate into a more lethal strain during the southern hemisphere’s upcoming winter flu season.
Don’t panic! Yet.
Follow the money.
“trigger drug makers to speed up production of a swine flu vaccine and prompt governments to devote more money to containing the virus”
So even though this flu is “less deadly than the annual bouts of seasonal flu” we are all up in arms!
And as for the ludicrous sheeple statement “warned that the virus could mutate into a more lethal strain”, so what!!!
ANY virus could mutate into a more lethal strain!
Not only follow the money.
People are getting anxious about money spent in this country for bailouts and wondering if “health care reform” (i.e. socialized medicine) is such a good idea.
Quick! Redirect their attention. Create concern. “Help us oh powerful government”
One of the ongoing lies of these virus hunters is that “viruses mutate and get stronger”. Mutations get weaker.
Another lie they keep telling the public is that “viruses are alive”. They are not living things.
Testing protocols don’t even find the virus, only find particulate matter “associated with the virus”.
Any FAQ’s?
Thats right folks! Only the fella’s and ladies in Washington can save ya!
Quick! Everybody Panic!
I have no idea who declared a pandemic. I’ve been waiting days to use that.
Re:#5 RTaylor… WHO’s on first.
Flu strains exchange DNA. A relatively harmless but highly virulant swine flu offers the very deadly but less virulent avine flu the opportunity the exchange DNA. WHO is especially concerned with southern hemisphere swine flu outbreaks, because by the time the northern winter rolls in these two strains will most certainly have produced terrible hybrids.
Great… the WHO is officially the little boy who cried wolf.
So who do we turn to now if a crisis pops up? No one is going to take the WHO seriously.
I thought they were crying wolf as well, until I did a little research. Actually, level 6 only indicates the start of a pandemic, according to the WHO site. Until now I mistakenly thought we were doing through various levels of severity for a pandemic. Not so. WHO statement, June 11″
Also, a pandemic is just an indication of spread, not severity. Do they have levels for severity? I couldn’t find any on their sight.
I get sooo mad when I read about this. It makes me want to spit on Joe Biden in a public place, stay up all night and shake hands with everybody who has SPINE FLU!
OH PLEASE! This is getting ridiculous. Screw those guys!
Hang on, kids. Here we go again!
I’ll bet there were morons at the time who didn’t believe in the bubonic plague.
Come to think of it, I’ll bet there are morons on this blog who don’t believe in the bubonic plague!
Anyone want to take that bet? I’ll give good odds.
🙂
John, aren’t you a bit bias for associating this flu pandemic with picture of Chinese and Indian? This swine flu is originated from Mexico and then spread to the U.S. Sometime people in Asia use mask to prevent others from catching their common cold flu.
# 3 I DECLARE: While I agree, in general, the pandemic craze is a nonsensical over-reaction, itdoes not help to spread “iffy” statements that further trivialize it. To wit:
“Mutations get weaker.” This is sometimes true. However, BENEFICIAL mutations help the organism survive which is a sort of strength. Those mutations that DO get weaker tend to die out.
“They are not living things.” That is still a matter of debate. Some think they are evolved bacteria – like chlamydia or rickettsia, that have shed the unnecessary parts and can now only reproduce inside another cell. But, since they ACT like living things, reproduce, have genes, evolve by natural selection, etc. It is convenient to think of them as a parasitical form of life.
“Testing protocols don’t even find the virus” So? There are tests that will specifically “find” a virus. We can even visualize them. But that’s expensive and inconvenient and unnecessary most of the time. Finding parts of the protein and lipid coat of the virus can be much faster and cheaper AND lead to vaccine production.
That said, as a physician, I believe this is all an overreaction but I also suspect that the fuss may be over what it will evolve into when it hits it’s second wave in late summer, autumn. We know the typical seasonal flu often starts mild and turns nasty. Am I worried? Nope. I avoid people who are sneezing or look ill (except professionally, of course) and I wash my hands frequently. Away from a sink, I keep a bottle of hand sanitizer that has shown some effectiveness against flu viruses. Also, I try to keep my hands away from my eyes and nose. Shake someone’s hand and then rub your eye and if they had the virus, now you do, too. Eat well, stay hydrated and physically active and you’ve pretty much done what you can do.
Given that the whole purpose of the WHO in this case is to try to prevent a potentially lethal pandemic, I don’t find it unreasonable that they take measures before the death toll rises. Of course they don’t know for certain that this flu will mutate into something more deadly. But they do have the collaboration of some of the worlds best researchers to indicate which circumstances have the highest probability. It’s evident that some of the titheads on this blog have to find a money or political angle, it’s easy to find one, because there always is one. In this case however those perspectives are irrelevant.
#13 – Why am I typing backwards? This is odd. Anyway, my browser or this site is misbehaving. Let’s see if I can get this to post adequately.
I won’t take your bet. However, I will add to your bet that there are likely those on this blog who still do not believe there is a link between smoking and cancer.
#17
Typing backwards with the cursor in front is definitely an interesting experience, especially when the period shows up at the beginning of the line. This is definitely a real improvement, especially for people used to writing in Chinese. I knew they were taking over the United States but I never figure they’d start with Dvorak Uncensored!
I don’t think anyone will take us up on either bet. Neither the bubonic plague nor smoking nor cancer are in The Bibble. Therefore, they never happened!
🙂
Har! My happy face is looking in the wrong direction!!!
Ah, forget it. I can’t write with the cursor jumping all over the place and my words
formatting themselves like some bad haiku
and what the hell is “advanced path: p”, anyway?
#18 – acumen,
Then we shouldn’t make the bet on leprosy. That one made it into the bible in a number of places.
#19 – nimby,
Keep trying, you’ll get abused to it.
advance path: p — probably indicates an unclosed HTML tag or something. I’m not about to try to figure it out. If you want to do so, try clicking view source. I’m sure there must be some interesting stuff in the HTML today. This right justified text and weird placement of the period is quite interesting. I’m almost curious to know how to get a text box to look like this. It might be fun to play such a joke on users of my system. Too bad I don’t write the front end though.
Anyone care to guess by how much this will reduce comments on the site?
I declare WHO irrelevant.
#21
yeah wouldn’t it be great if this editor glitch worked as troll repelent. Unfortunately trolls are harder to repell than the average blogger.
#21 & 23
On the other hand, I don’t see Alf around. Maybe it does work!
Great!
Gotta buy plenty of Baxter International shares on Monday 😉
#22 – Senor Frog,
I used to work for the WHO (during the Kosovo conflict) and I guarantee you they are far from irrelevant. Superficial, yes. Superfluous, yes. Abusers of the world’s paper supply, yes. But never irrelevant.
How could anyone who pays minor functionaries like CEOs be irrelevant? Money MUST be spent!