New Swine Flu death estimate

[Maxel]

A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease.

Whoops... Good thing no one over-reacted and suggested cutting trade with Mexico.

[mlbrowninwa]

I just can't believe all the hype that is going on about this. It sure seems to me that the media is taking every chance to stir up the panic, not to mention the government officials.

[trulykiwi]

And Tami-flu has been selling something chronic too! Who is the one making millions and millions out of this scare, probably the same one who is spreading the scare, or the pig flu!

[Moksha]

Snoutbreak Report

Wonder if it may be helpful to have regular snoutbreak reports on this thread?

Edited April 30, 2009 by Moksha
new piggie

[hordak]

I read today that 36,000 people in the US die each year from the regular flu/ associated problems.

[lestertheemt]

This actually came directly from the WHO website: WHO | Swine influenza - update 5

Swine influenza - update 5

29 April 2009 -- The situation continues to evolve rapidly. As of 18:00 GMT, 29 April 2009, nine countries have officially reported 148 cases of swine influenza A/H1N1 infection. The United States Government has reported 91 laboratory confirmed human cases, with one death. Mexico has reported 26 confirmed human cases of infection including seven deaths.

The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths - Austria (1), Canada (13), Germany (3), Israel (2), New Zealand (3), Spain (4) and the United Kingdom (5).

Further information on the situation will be available on the WHO website on a regular basis.

WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders. It is considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, in line with guidance from national authorities.

There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products. Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

People just need to educate themselves and not believe eveything they hear.

[Misshalfway]

I heard three confirmed cases in Park City, Utah today. Schools are closed. So....I guess it is officially in Utah now.

[DigitalShadow]

Maybe this strain has been around for a long time in the US, we just dismissed it as a really bad case of the flu since not many people would even go to the doctor over the flu and most doctors would just tell you to get some rest if you had flu symptoms, so how would we even know? I think the only reason there are any "confirmed" cases is because of all this paranoia about the swine flu and now anyone with flu symptoms wants to get tested.

[Wingnut]

My husband mentioned to me yesterday that part of the blowing-out-of-proportion-ness of the swine flu is that right now is regular flu season in Mexico anyway. This is just a strain that isn't protected by a typical flu vaccine, so when it spreads, it freaks people out. It's perfectly treatable if people visit their doctor, though.

[WeWantLiberty]

Got this today from a friend of mine. It's a little lengthy, but highlights the hysteria:

American health officials declared a public health emergency as cases of swine flu were confirmed in the U.S. Health officials across the world fear this could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, where seven people are confirmed dead as a result of the new virus.

On Wednesday April 29th, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised its pandemic alert level to five on its six-level threat scale,1 which means they"ve determined that the virus is capable of human-to-human transmission. The initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection already traveling at higher velocity than did the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

Phase 5 had never been declared since the warning system was introduced in 2005 in response to the avian influenza crisis. Phase 6 means a pandemic is under way. WHO now openly states it is not possible to contain the spread of this infection and recommends mitigation measures, not restricting travel or closing borders.

However, a pandemic does not necessarily mean what you think it does, it is NOT black-plague carts being hauled through the streets piled high with dead bodies. Nor does it mean flesh eating zombies wandering the streets feeding on the living. All a pandemic means is that a new infectious disease is spreading throughout the world.

The number of fatalities, and suspected and confirmed cases across the world change depending on the source, so your best bet -- if you want the latest numbers -- is to use Google Maps" Swine Flu Tracker.

Several nations have imposed travel bans, or made plans to quarantine air travelers2 that present symptoms of the swine flu, such as:

Fever of more than 100

Coughing

Runny nose and/or sore throat

Joint aches

Severe headache

Vomiting and/or diarrhea

Lethargy

Lack of appetite

Top global flu experts are trying to predict how dangerous the new swine flu strain will be, as it became clear that they had little information about Mexico"s outbreak. It is as yet unclear how many cases occurred in the month or so before the outbreak was detected. It"s also unknown whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.

I suspect you have likely been alarmed by the media"s coverage of the swine flu scare. It has a noticeable subplot - preparing you for draconian measures to combat a future pandemic as well as forcing you to accept the idea of mandatory vaccinations.

On April 27, Time magazine published an article which discusses how dozens died and hundreds were injured from vaccines as a result of the 1976 swine flu fiasco, when the Ford administration attempted to use the infection of soldiers at Fort Dix as a pretext for a mass vaccination of the entire country.

Despite acknowledging that the 1976 farce was an example of “how not to handle a flu outbreak”, the article still introduces the notion that officials “may soon have to consider whether to institute draconian measures to combat the disease”.

Fortunately some respectable journalists recognize this and are seeking to spread a voice of reason to the fear that is being promoted in the majority of the media.

The pandemic warning system has failed as it simply doesn"t exist, even in North America and Europe. To improve the system, massive new investments in surveillance, scientific and regulatory infrastructure, basic public health, and global access to common sense interventions like vitamin D optimization are required.

According to the Washington Post, the CDC did not learn about the outbreak until six days after Mexico had begun to impose emergency measures. There should be no excuses. The paradox of this swine flu panic is that, while totally unexpected, it was accurately predicted. Six years ago, Science dedicated a major story to evidence that "after years of stability, the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary fasttrack".

However, maybe this is precisely what public health authorities desire.

This is NOT the First Swine Flu Panic

My guess is that you can expect to see a lot of panic over this issue in the near future. But the key is to remain calm -- this isn"t the first time the public has been warned about swine flu. The last time was in 1976, right before I entered medical school and I remember it very clearly. It resulted in the massive swine flu vaccine campaign.

Do you happen to recall the result of this massive campaign?

Within a few months, claims totaling $1.3 billion had been filed by victims who had suffered paralysis from the vaccine. The vaccine was also blamed for 25 deaths.

However, several hundred people developed crippling Guillain-Barré Syndrome after they were injected with the swine flu vaccine. Even healthy 20-year-olds ended up as paraplegics.

And the swine flu pandemic itself? It never materialized.

It is very difficult to forecast a pandemic, and a rash response can be extremely damaging.

To put things into perspective, malaria kills 3,000 people EVERY DAY, and it"s considered "a health problem"... But of course, there are no fancy vaccines for malaria that can rake in billions of dollars in a short amount of time.

One Australian news source,3 for example, states that even a mild swine flu epidemic could lead to the deaths of 1.4 million people and would reduce economic growth by nearly $5 trillion dollars.

Give me a break, if this doesn"t sound like the outlandish cries of the pandemic bird-flu I don"t know what does. Do you remember when President Bush said two million Americans would die as a result of the bird flu?

In 2005, in 2006, 2007, and again in 2008, those fears were exposed as little more than a cruel hoax, designed to instill fear, and line the pocketbooks of various individuals and industry. I became so convinced by the evidence AGAINST the possibility of a bird flu pandemic that I wrote a New York Times bestselling book, The Bird Flu Hoax, all about the massive fraud involved with the epidemic that never happened..

Regular swine flu is a contagious respiratory disease, caused by a type-A influenza virus that affects pigs. The current strain, A(H1N1), is a new variation of an H1N1 virus -- which causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans -- that also contains genetic material of bird and pig versions of the flu.

Interestingly enough, this version has never before been seen in neither human nor animal, which I will discuss a bit later.

This does sound bad. But not so fast. There are a few reasons to not rush to conclusions that this is the deadly pandemic we"ve been told would occur in the near future (as if anyone could predict it without having some sort of inside knowledge).

While in my opinion it is highly likely factory farming is responsible for producing this viral strain, I believe there is still no cause for concern.

You may not know this, but all H1N1 flu"s are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. The reason why the flu shot may or may not work, however, from year to year, is due to mutations. Therefore, there"s no vaccine available for this current hybrid flu strain, and naturally, this is feeding the fear that millions of people will die before a vaccine can be made.

However, let me remind you of one very important fact here.

Just a couple of months ago, scientists concluded that the 1918 flu pandemic that killed between 50-100 million people worldwide in a matter of 18 months -- which all these worst case scenarios are built upon -- was NOT due to the flu itself!4

Instead, they discovered the real culprit was strep infections.

People with influenza often get what is known as a "superinfection" with a bacterial agent. In 1918 it appears to have been Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Since strep is much easier to treat than the flu using modern medicine, a new pandemic would likely be much less dire than it was in the early 20th century, the researchers concluded.

Others, such as evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald,5 claim that a pandemic of this sort simply cannot happen, because in order for it to occur, the world has to change. Not the virus itself, but the world.

In a previous interview for Esquire magazine, in which he discusses the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, he states:

"They think that if a virus mutates, it"s an evolutionary event. Well, the virus is mutating because that is what viruses and other pathogens do. But evolution is not just random mutation. It is random mutation coupled with natural selection; it is a battle for competitive advantage among different strains generated by random mutation.

For bird flu to evolve into a human pandemic, the strain that finds a home in humanity has to be a strain that is both highly virulent and highly transmissible. Deadliness has to translate somehow into popularity; H5N1 has to find a way to kill or immobilize its human hosts, and still find other hosts to infect. Usually that doesn"t happen."

Ewald goes on to explain that evolution in general is all about trade-offs, and in the evolution of infections the trade-off is between virulence and transmissibility.

What this means is that in order for a "bird flu" or "swine flu" to turn into a human pandemic, it has to find an environment that favors both deadly virulence and ease of transmission.

People living in squalor on the Western Front at the end of World War I generated such an environment, from which the epidemic of 1918 could arise.

Likewise, crowded chicken farms, slaughterhouses, and jam-packed markets of eastern Asia provide another such environment, and that environment gave rise to the bird flu -- a pathogen that both kills and spreads, in birds, but not in humans.

Says Ewald:

"We know that H5N1 is well adapted to birds. We also know that it has a hard time becoming a virus that can move from person to person. It has a hard time without our doing anything. But we can make it harder. We can make sure it has no human population in which to evolve transmissibility. There is no need to rely on the mass extermination of chickens. There is no need to stockpile vaccines for everyone.

By vaccinating just the people most at risk -- the people who work with chickens and the caregivers -- we can prevent it from becoming transmissible among humans. Then it doesn"t matter what it does in chickens."

Please remember that, despite the fantastic headlines and projections of MILLIONS of deaths, the H5N1 bird flu virus killed a mere 257 people worldwide since late 2003. As unfortunate as those deaths are, 257 deaths worldwide from any disease, over the course of five years, simply does not constitute an emergency worthy of much attention, let alone fear!

Honestly, your risk of being killed by a lightning strike in the last five years was about 2,300 percent higher than your risk of contracting and dying from the bird flu.6 I"m not kidding! In just one year (2004), more than 1,170 people died from lighting strikes, worldwide.7

So please, as the numbers of confirmed swine flu cases are released, keep a level head and don"t let fear run away with your brains.

On Sunday, April 26, The Independent reported that more than 1,000 people had contracted the swine flu virus in Mexico, 8 but by the afternoon that same day, Mexican President Calderon declared that more than two-thirds of the 1,300 thought to have contracted the disease had been given a clean bill of health and sent home.9

Additionally, the number of actual confirmed cases appears to be far lower than reported in many media outlets, leading me to believe that many reporters are interchanging the terms "suspected cases" and "confirmed cases."

Interestingly Mexico is the ONLY country in the world where someone has actually died from this disease.Mexico has reported 159 fatalities in flu-like cases in recent days, seven of which have been confirmed as swine flu. Another 19 patients have been confirmed as having swine flu but surviving. Although some insiders at WHO believe these numbers are seriously inflated and could be as low as single digits.

By contrast, the United States has had 91 confirmed cases, five hospitalizations and no deaths from US Citizens. On April 29th CNN reported the first swine fatality in the US, however this was actually a child from Mexico that died in Texas.

According to the World Health Organization"s Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response site; as of April 27, there are:

91 laboratory confirmed cases in U.S. -- 0 deaths (reported by CDC as of April 30)

26 confirmed cases in Mexico -- 7 deaths

6 confirmed cases in Canada -- 0 deaths

1 confirmed case in Spain -- 0 deaths

Additionally, nearly all suspected new cases have been reported as mild.

Personally, I am highly skeptical. It simply doesn"t add up to a real pandemic.

But it does raise serious questions about where this brand new, never before seen virus came from, especially since it cannot be contracted from eating pork products, and has never before been seen in pigs, and contains traits from the bird flu -- and which, so far, only seems to respond to Tamiflu. Are we just that lucky, or... what?

Your Fear Will Make Some People VERY Rich in Today"s Crumbling Economy

According to the Associated Press at least one financial analyst estimates up to $388 million worth of Tamiflu sales in the near future10 -- and that"s without a pandemic outbreak.

More than half a dozen pharmaceutical companies, including Gilead Sciences Inc., Roche, GlaxoSmithKline and other companies with a stake in flu treatments and detection, have seen a rise in their shares in a matter of days, and will likely see revenue boosts if the swine flu outbreak continues to spread.

As soon as Homeland Security declared a health emergency, 25 percent -- about 12 million doses -- of Tamiflu and Relenza treatment courses were released from the nation"s stockpile. However, beware that the declaration also allows unapproved tests and drugs to be administered to children. Many health- and government officials are more than willing to take that chance with your life, and the life of your child. But are you?

Remember, Tamiflu went through some rough times not too long ago, as the dangers of this drug came to light when, in 2007, the FDA finally began investigating some 1,800 adverse event reports related to the drug. Common side effects of Tamiflu include:

Nausea

Vomiting

Diarrhea

Headache

Dizziness

Fatigue

Cough

All in all, the very symptoms you"re trying to avoid.

More serious symptoms included convulsions, delirium or delusions, and 14 deaths in children and teens as a result of neuropsychiatric problems and brain infections (which led Japan to ban Tamiflu for children in 2007). And that"s for a drug that, when used as directed, only reduces the duration of influenza symptoms by 1 to 1 ½ days, according to the official data.

But making matters worse, some patients with influenza are at HIGHER risk for secondary bacterial infections when on Tamiflu. And secondary bacterial infections, as I mentioned earlier, was likely the REAL cause of the mass fatalities during the 1918 pandemic!

Alongside the fear-mongering headlines, I"ve also seen increasing numbers of reports questioning the true nature of this virus. And rightfully so.

Could a mixed animal-human mutant like this occur naturally? And if not, who made it, and how was it released?

Not one to dabble too deep in conspiracy theories, I don"t have to strain very hard to find actual facts to support the notion that this may not be a natural mutation, and that those who stand to gain have the wherewithal to pull off such a stunt.

Just last month I reported on the story that the American pharmaceutical company Baxter was under investigation for distributing the deadly avian flu virus to 18 different countries as part of a seasonal flu vaccine shipment. Czech reporters were probing to see if it may have been part of a deliberate attempt to start a pandemic; as such a "mistake" would be virtually impossible under the security protocols of that virus.

The H5N1 virus on its own is not very airborne. However, when combined with seasonal flu viruses, which are more easily spread, the effect could be a potent, airborne, deadly, biological weapon. If this batch of live bird flu and seasonal flu viruses had reached the public, it could have resulted in dire consequences.

There is a name for this mixing of viruses; it"s called "reassortment," and it is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created in the lab. Some scientists say the most recent global outbreak -- the 1977 Russian flu -- was started by a virus created and leaked from a laboratory.

Another example of the less sterling integrity of Big Pharma is the case of Bayer, who sold millions of dollars worth of an injectable blood-clotting medicine to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the mid-1980s, even though they knew it was tainted with the AIDS virus.

So while it is morally unthinkable that a drug company would knowingly contaminate flu vaccines with a deadly flu virus such as the bird- or swine flu, it is certainly not impossible. It has already happened more than once.

But there seems to be no repercussions or hard feelings when industry oversteps the boundaries of morality and integrity and enters the arena of obscenity. Because, lo and behold, which company has been chosen to head up efforts, along with WHO, to produce a vaccine against the Mexican swine flu?

Baxter!11 Despite the fact that ink has barely dried on the investigative reports from their should-be-criminal "mistake" against humanity.

According to other sources,12 a top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, has concluded that the current swine flu virus possesses certain transmission "vectors" that suggest the new strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.

The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents.

In addition, Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick -- the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released, according to a recent article in the Fredrick News Post.13 In February, the top biodefense lab halted all its research into Ebola, anthrax, plague, and other diseases known as "select agents," after they discovered virus samples that weren"t listed in its inventory and might have been switched with something else.

Another theory as to the cause of Swine Flu might be factory farming. In the United States, pigs travel coast to coast. They can be bred in North Carolina, fattened in the corn belt of Iowa, and slaughtered in California.

While this may reduce short-term costs for the pork industry, the highly contagious nature of diseases like influenza (perhaps made further infectious by the stresses of transport) needs to be considered when calculating the true cost of long-distance live animal transport.

The majority of U.S. pig farms now confine more than 5,000 animals each. With a group of 5,000 animals, if a novel virus shows up it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm.

With massive concentrations of farm animals within which to mutate, these new swine flu viruses in North America seem to be on an evolutionary fast track, jumping and reassorting between species at an unprecedented rate.

[Maxel]

My husband mentioned to me yesterday that part of the blowing-out-of-proportion-ness of the swine flu is that right now is regular flu season in Mexico anyway. This is just a strain that isn't protected by a typical flu vaccine, so when it spreads, it freaks people out. It's perfectly treatable if people visit their doctor, though.

Exactly. And I saw that rationale being employed as the reason Swine Flu isn't a major crisis (and why there were not yet any reported deaths in the U.S.) as early as Monday.

Of course, that doesn't stop the current administration from letting "a serious crisis go to waste" (Rahm Emanuel), and using rationale such as "we find ourselves in the midst of what appears to be a global crisis... What we have been missing in all of this is the head of the Health and Human Services Department" (Chris Dodd) to put public figures with controversial records in public office- despite what would be protest in regular situations. And, despite the fact that the "response [to the Swine Flu] is in no way hindered or hampered by not having a permanent secretary at HHS right now... We feel confident with the team that is there now." (Robert Gibbs. I tried finding the quote in context, but it seems the article in which it was originally appeared, at MSNBC, has expired.)

[Just_A_Guy]

Folks, there's a simple reason for all this hubbub.

Remember Rahm Emmanuel's statement about never letting a good crisis go to waste?

Remember that Obama's HHS nominee still hadn't been confirmed?

She's been confirmed now.

The 65-31 vote came after Democrats urged quick action so that Sebelius could get to work leading the federal response to the flu outbreak.

"We find ourselves in the midst of a global crisis," Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said. "What we've been missing in all of this is the head of the Health and Human Services Department."

Obama has gotten what he wants. Look for the media furor to die down soon.

[john doe]

I heard three confirmed cases in Park City, Utah today. Schools are closed. So....I guess it is officially in Utah now.

The report I read was that they were suspected cases, and not confirmed yet. The sick were kids who had gone to Mexico during Spring Break.

I haven't read all the threads fully on this, but I was reading an interview today with a doctor familiar with the disease, and one of the reasons they think it has not hit the US very hard yet is due to the ongoing flu vaccinations here. Apparently, the N1 portion of the virus has been part of flu vaccinations for years. So while you may get infected with the H1N1, if you have had a flu shot in recent years you may be more able to fight it off than someone who has not had the shot. Also, they say Relenza and Tamiflu are effective aginst this if you take them early on in your sickness. You may get sick, but your chances of survival are much greater with flu shots and taking one of those medications.

[Just_A_Guy]

And our veep manages to step in it . . . again.

Glenn Reynolds' take over at Instapundit is classic:

They told me that if I voted for McCain we’d have a Vice President who was a moron… and they were right!

(Though I personally voted for Bob Barr.)