Swine Flu Pandemic @ 2 Billion !!!!!

[MrWalshy93]

lmfao :)

biggest hype ever.

2 Billion infected? It was under 20,000 deaths.

[MrYouBill]

Mar 26, 2010 (CIDRAP News) Flu indicators are showing signs of increased and sustained pandemic flu activity in some Southeastern states, though rates remain steady at the national level, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.

[MrYouBill]

The CDC estimates that 55 million Americans became sick with H1N1 swine flu between April and mid-December 2009 and roughly 11,000 people died of the disease.

These numbers represent a middle range in CDC estimates. The actual number of swine flu cases could be as low as 39 million and as high as 80 million cases during this time period, government officials say.

[MrYouBill]

Federal health officials now say nearly 4,000 Americans have died from the H1N1 virus since it first emerged in April.

The CDC estimates that 22 million Americans have gotten the virus and close to 100,000 have been hospitalized.

Last week, the World Health Organization announced that more than 6,000 people worldwide have died from H1N1 flu. The WHO says that, as of November 1, some 200 countries and territories have reported close to a half-million confirmed cases.

[MrYouBill]

As of 25 October 2009, worldwide there have been more than 440,000 laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009 and over 5700 deaths reported to WHO.

[MrYouBill]

Great, now pets w/H1N1:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine confirmed that a 13-year-old cat whose owners had experienced flu-like symptoms contracted H1N1 (swine) flu.

"This may be the first instance where we have documentation that transmission occurred involving cats or dogs," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner told the Associated Press.

[MrYouBill]

Nearly 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic, the World Health Organization said Friday (October 23, 2009).

[MrYouBill]

"We are still in the acceleration phase of H1N1 influenza, the percent of people with influenza-like symptoms seen in doctors' offices increasing from less than 1 percent on July 25 to almost 8 percent on Aug. 29.

and there has been almost logarithmic growth in its incidence," said Dr. Donald Williamson

. "Looking at our schools, three weeks ago 20 percent of schools had more than 5 percent absenteeism, and now 54 percent of schools have absenteeism rates of this level.

[MrYouBill]

The Independent Florida Alligator: Opinion - Lawmakers overzealous in fighting H1N1

The state of Massachusetts, however, is taking the idea of encouraging people to stay home and stay hygienic a little too far. Currently making its way through the state legislature is the Pandemic Response Bill. If passed, the bill will allow the governor to declare a health emergency and allow law enforcement officials to forcibly enter the homes of citizens and quarantine or vaccinate them.

[MrYouBill]

Researchers expect the high incidence of infections because the new flu is dramatically different from strains that have been circulating in recent years, so that the bulk of the population has no residual immunity.

"This isn't the flu that we are used to," said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, at a news conference at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. "We won't know until we are in the middle of the flu season how serious the threat will be."

[MrYouBill]

* The New Brunswick Department of Health is forecasting that 20 per cent of the population - 150,000 - will contract the virus by this winter. That's a lot of sick people.

One or two per cent - 1,500 to 3,000 - will require hospital care. Finally, the health department believes about .1 per cent of the population will die from H1N1 flu

[MrYouBill]

The Government of Canada is working closely with the Province of Saskatchewan to assess the public health risk from a new strain of influenza that has been detected in the province.

The new strain was detected in two workers on a hog farm in Saskatchewan. The workers suffered only mild illness and have recovered fully. A third case is under investigation.

[MrYouBill]

Right now this looks like spontaneous mutation in these patients," Dr. Fukuda told a press conference today. He said all three patients had the same mutation and all three had "uncomplicated" disease from which they made full recoveries.

[MrYouBill]

A subtypes to new variants implies that flu vaccination programs cannot eradicate

them because the target is constantly moving. Completely new A subtypes (antigenic

shift) emerge occasionally from unpredictable recombinations of human with swine or

avian influenza antigens. These new subtypes can lead to major pandemics.

[MrYouBill]

Found this in a cache, which apparently was from Utah Public Health, which is now unavailable, kind of like the Health Minister in Brazil...

Novel Influenza A (H1N1)

Utah Public Health

Situation Report

06/24/2009

Utah is one of 11 states reporting widespread activity, which is "very unusual" at this time of year.

[MrYouBill]

I keep seeing this, but can't confirm it:

CDC is now estimating that the novel H1N1 virus will be Category 2 in severity. They are closely watching the situation in the Southern Hemisphere for validation of this estimate.

A category 2 pandemic has the following characteristics:

Case fatality ratio of 0.1 percent to less than 0.5 percent. Between 90,000 and 450,000 deaths in the U.S. (compared with estimated 36,000 deaths during a typical influenza season).

[MrYouBill]

Certainly when you're actively infecting and coughing and sneezing, that's pretty much how you're going to spread the virus. But you can still have virus in your body without having any symptoms. And children are-- it turns out studies suggest that children can shed the virus longer, probably because of their immune status, for instance.

[MrYouBill]

In the U.K., according to virologist professor John Oxford, the virus may be 300 times more widespread than health authorities have said, with total infections estimated at 30,000 as of 24 May 2009. Professor Michael Osterholm, one of the world's top flu experts and an adviser to the U.S. government, also called the official figures "meaningless,"

[MrYouBill]

Fascinating! In one month, there has been an increase in reported cases amounting to an additional 67,981 people infected with Swine Flu, yet this is now old news, as the pandemic really kicks into high speed. If you go back to June 5, there were 21,940 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection, including 125 deaths. Now (a month later) we have 89,921 cases and 382 deaths. No big deal, right...

[MrYouBill]

"Comparison of the amino acid sequence of the HA protein of A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 with those of other isolates of the current pandemic strain reveals no alterations in the HA protein which would allow the virus to infect new hosts," Racaniello wrote in his blog. "The HA protein of this virus and many other 2009 H1N1 isolates are identical. The few amino acid differences with other 2009 H1N1 isolates are in areas that would not be expected to influence antigenicity or host range."

[MrYouBill]

The Brazilian researchers labeled the isolate A/Sao/Paolo/1454/H1N1. They deposited the nucleotide sequences for the HA and MP genes in GenBank under accession numbers GQ247724 and GQ250156, the MNT report said.

Vincent Racaniello, PhD, a Columbia University virologist who writes Virology Blog, also dismissed the claim of a new strain.

[MrYouBill]

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 was the same as the A(H1N1) flu strain that infected about 344 Filipinos and over 39,000 persons worldwide.

There is no truth there is a new strain of H1N1. Although the Brazil strain has minor modifications depending in its location, the major fragment that constitutes the virus is the same across all H1N1 stains in different countries and its minor modification will not allow it to infect new hosts, Duque said.

[MrYouBill]

The number of confirmed swine flu cases in Chile soared by several hundred to 3,125, the Health Ministry reported Tuesday as South America heads towards a winter potentially beset by the flu pandemic.

"From May 17, the date that Institute of Public Health confirmed the first case of A(H1N1) infection, until June 14 there have been 3,125 cases," according to an official report.

I

[MrYouBill]

"All the experts think that the numbers we've got are a significant underestimate."

He said experts thought there were 20 cases in the US for every confirmed case.

"I don't think we're anywhere near that, but I think it would be very reasonable to say we've got at least twice as many cases as we know about, and it may be more than that," he said.