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Swine Flu epidemic in Mexico (and possibly US)
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Anonymous
Good to hear! I hope they didn't give you any grief about being "the worried well" -- You had classic symptoms. |
Anonymous
Those are just the confirmed cases. There are more likely to be tens of thousands of cases all over the world. The death statistic (10) is meaningless too. I do think it's going to be a mild flu in the U.S., but your post is inaccurate and misleading. And your tone is juvenile. |
Anonymous
My post was a direct quote from the WHO this morning. Take up the accuracy with them. Continue watching CNN and reading the Onion. No need to get defensive just because I don't want to wallow in hysterics with you. |
Anonymous
Oh, I'm not hysterical. I believe this is going to be a mild flu going around the country. But your post mocking all the other posters is pathetic. And I don't see any hysteria here on this thread, so I think that you just like to start trouble and feel superior to all the people around you - at least anonymously! 
If you feel everyone here is hysterical, and there is no reason to worry about the flu when you are pregnant or have babies and young children, then go and start your own sarcastic thread. I have a feeling you won't have a lot of fellow posters. |
Anonymous
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Isn't the pattern that the first wave is mild while the new virus is adapting to the new human host and the second wave in the fall is the real disaster? With the Spanish and the HK flu both had a six month period where it fizzled out and then came back in a mutated form more contagious and more deadly. I read something about a cytokine reaction (doesn't occur in regulat flu) where the virus infects the lung tissue and causes a massive immune reaction, flooding the ling tissue. While there are a number of deaths from regular flu in high risk individuals from developing secondary pneumonia and having compromised respieratory systems, this is different as it could also affect health populations (and still kill the high risk group).
People who catch the weaker version have some immunity to the second wave. Is anyone thinking it might be better to catch it now? |
Anonymous
I was going to ask if that was the case. I wouldn't go so far as to try to catch it, but I was wondering if the people in the US so far who have had the mild cases would be immune to the more deadly type in Mexico. |
Anonymous
I'm not the poster you were addressing. But the WHO numbers are, frankly, way behind the times and woefully unreliable. If I could take it up with them, I sure would. Because there are a lot of otherwise very smart people who just plain aren't aware at how misleading the "official WHO statistics" are. Just as one example, Mexico has a backlog of some 35 THOUSAND samples. And even the US admits we have stopped testing every case. According to this article Mexico has 35,000 samples waiting to be tested. And the comment by the spokesperson shows that the WHO absolutely knows this. So when they say "only 331 confirmed cases" in Mexico, but fail to mention, "Oh, by the way, we have 35,000 samples waiting to be tested because there is such a backlog " (that's 100x the offical confirmed cases, I believe) --- it kind of makes you question the value of the numbers they are giving you. At least, it sure does to me. I'm no Onion reader, you know? But it just seems a bit off to believe the 331 number, knowing there is such a backlog. I mean, reading the news and all, do you ever get the sense that there is SUCH a backlog in testing? http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aCq75QoLBuDo&refer=home
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Anonymous
I don't think the Mexico strain is more deadly than what is here in the US. I think they just haven't tested and reported all their more mild cases (because of aforementioned backlog). I think we in the US will also see a lot of mild cases, and some severe cases, including deaths, including deaths of healthy young people. That said, personally, I believe as long as there is functioning health care for people, and access to Tamiflu and hospitals, I would not go to great efforts to avoid contracting the virus at this time. For communities as a whole, I would support actions that reduce the spread of the virus generally -- like closing schools -- as a way of slowing the spread of disease in general. |
Anonymous
| The scenario that it most worrisome is that there isn't necessarily a more deadly form in Mexico right now but one will emerge as the virus mutates over the next few months. |
Anonymous
They were great about it. Said it sounded like the flu or a terrible cold. The flu test came back negative, thank goodness. |
Anonymous
One WILL emerge? How do you know this? Is there some sort of Oracle of the swine flu you are consulting? I don't see why people don't understand that the flu is Mexico is not more deadly. ANYTHING in Mexico is more deadly, including childbirth, driving, appendicitis, and tooth decay. In case you have never been there, there is a lot of poverty in Mexico and little access to medical care. If you doubt this, just look at how many people flee her for a better life. Half of the population is living in poverty and only 80% of the population has access to sanitation. Of course the flu is worse in Mexico. If 20% of hte population does not have access to sanitation, what do you expect? |
Anonymous
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It doesn's sound like "lack of sanitation" was responsible for this victim's severe case. H ewas rushed to the ER and recieved appropriate care.
Swine flu: a Mexican survivor's tale http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/5262077/Swine-flu-a-Mexican-survivors-tale.html For Moises Bonilla, watching the life of a feverish fellow patient slip away was the depressing low point of his five days in the quarantine ward. Tubes had been inserted into her throat in a futile effort to help her breathe and as her body was wheeled away, he feared he too might never leave the hospital alive. The jobless Mexican maintenance worker has an unprecedented insight on the flu epidemic that has swept the globe, with confirmed cases in 15 countries and a warning of a possible pandemic from the World Health Organisation. Struck down with presumed swine flu as the outbreak erupted in Mexico, Mr Bonilla is the first adult survivor to describe the terrifying ordeal. "When you watch someone die in front of you and you don't know if the same thing might await you, it's a shocking experience," he told The Sunday Telegraph from his flat in the working-class Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa. The 46-year-old was released last week after treatment for flu-induced pneumonia in a local hospital where the outbreak was so bad that even a doctor and nurse ended up as patients. Although he has not heard the results of the tests, he is being treated with oseltamivir, the generic name for the Tamiflu antiviral tablets that have been successfully deployed against swine flu. Mr Bonilla started to feel sick on April 22 with a headache, running nose and sore throat. "By the next day, I felt so bad that I thought my lungs were going to burst and my throat was closing up," he said. That evening, he was watching the television news when the first reports emerged that a new mutant flu virus had been identified in Mexico. Mr Bonilla rushed to hospital where he was put straight into the emergency ward. As other victims arrived, they were placed in seclusion and on the second day, the 39-year-old woman lost her fight for life. Mr Bonilla was treated at first with antibiotics but improved dramatically when he was given oseltamivir. Cut off from the outside world, he had no idea that he was at the centre of a flu outbreak that was dominating attention around the globe. [snip] He is a healthy strong man in his mid-forties – the classic profile for victims of swine flu which, like the notorious Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, has been striking down people in the prime of life. And he is in no doubt what brought him so close to death. "I'm sure it was swine flu," he said. "And if anybody has any doubt about how serious that it, I can tell you it's very real, awful and very dangerous." Yet some Mexicans have reacted angrily to being identified with the swine flu virus, feeling it will stain their name and make them pariahs. Such is the case with the family of Gerardo Leyva, a 39-year old craftsman from the tight-knit village of Xonocatlan, where herds of sheep walk the sun-scorched streets. He fell sick in the second week of last month and died from influenza-induced pneumonia on April 20, when Mexicans had still heard nothing about swine flu. But after news of the mutant virus hit the world three days later, his family was horrified to find that Mr Leyva was on the government list of presumed victims. [snip] The truth about Mr Leyva's death will almost certainly never be known. He certainly fits the profile of swine flu victims, as a youngish otherwise healthy man who was struck down as the epidemic was bubbling – like Mr Bonilla. But he was buried before Mexico had identified it that H1N1 virus was seeping through the nation's streets. And the health secretary, Jose Cordova, told The Sunday Telegraph that the corpses of such victims were being left to rest as they now offered few medical clues. "There is no use exhuming corpses of people that have died in this way, because they will be contaminated with bacteria," he said. "In fact, for the tests to be useful they have to be taken in the first days of the illness." Even after Mexican health officials had identified that swine flu was present – through labs in the United States – they did not have their facilities to test the hundreds of new sick people swarming into clinics for the new strain. So in the initial panic-ridden days, they could only count presumed swine flu victims – a toll that reached 178 dead and almost 2,000 in hospital before they finally opened their own lab on Wednesday. By Saturday, the lab had certified that there have been a definite 16 swine flu deaths and a total of 397 people sickened by the virus but medical staff still had samples from many more victims to test. Another 511 tests showed negative for the virus. Officials did not make clear how many of these cases had previously been recorded as suspected swine flu, but they do believe the dramatic measures to close down Mexico City are bringing results. |
Anonymous
The litle two year old Mexican boy who came here from Mexico on a trip, then fell ill and died, was most decidedly NOT poor or suffering from bad nutrition, lack of hygiene:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/health/6404032.html |
Anonymous
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World Health Organisation on latest flu pandemic
May 3, 2009 - Reuters "Scientists say predicting the timescale and impact of any flu pandemic is extremely difficult, but the United Nations World Health Organisation has several “suggested assumptions” outlined in its pandemic guidance. How long any pandemic lasts would be key to its economic impact. The world is already struggling with the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, straining budgets of governments, some of which are trying to cut spending. * An influenza pandemic can occur when a new influenza virus subtype emerges and spreads easily among human beings. * An influenza pandemic can begin at any time of the year and any place in the world, and is expected to spread to the rest of the world within several weeks or months. * A single wave of pandemic could last several weeks to a few months, but will likely vary from country to country and even by community. * Most communities are expected to experience multiple waves of a pandemic. * Increased hospitalisations, deaths and other effects are expected to vary widely among countries and communities. Vulnerable populations are expected to be affected more severely. http://tinyurl.com/dmjnnj |
Anonymous
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http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/pregnant-hcw-educators.htm
Considerations for [b]Pregnant Women Who are More Likely to be Exposed to Novel H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) at Work: Information for Women in Education, Child Care, and Health Care[/b] (Guidance from the CDC) |