Swine Flu??

[MinLisa]

Any Thoughts

www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/28/swine.flu/index.html#cnnSTCOther1

Earliest case of swine flu tucked away in Mexico, officials say

Quarantine officials at the Narita, Japan, airport go Wednesday to meet planes arriving from Mexico.

1LA GLORIA, Mexico (CNN) -- Tucked away in this small mountain village, off a dusty road flanked by pig farms, is where the earliest case of swine flu -- a virus spreading globally -- was confirmed.


Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez, known as "patient zero" survived the earliest documented case of swine flu.

1 of 3 more photos » Meet the child known as "patient zero" by his doctors -- 5-year-old Edgar Hernandez, who survived the earliest documented case of swine flu in an outbreak that, officials say, has now spread across four continents.

His family lives in the 3,000-population village of La Gloria in the state of Veracruz, where a flu outbreak was reported on April 2. State officials arrived and took samples from dozens of people.

Lab tests confirmed that Edgar was the only patient in Veracruz to test positive for the swine flu virus; the others had contracted a common flu. Health officials had returned to Edgar's sample only after cases of the new flu strain were spotted around the country.

"In this case, there's a patient who turned out to be positive for the swine-flu virus, with the exception that at that time in no region of the world it had been established as an etiological, epidemic cause," said Mexico Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova.

Edgar has managed to bounce back from his symptoms and playfully credits ice cream for helping him feel better.

His mother blamed the virus on a huge pig farm in the neighborhood. Officials have conducted tests at the farm owned by U.S. company Smithfield Foods, and those tests came back negative.

Meanwhile, Mexican health officials suspect the swine flu outbreak has caused more than 159 deaths and roughly 2,500 illnesses.

The World Health Organization says at least 105 cases have been confirmed worldwide, including 64 in the United States; 26 in Mexico; six in Canada; three in New Zealand; and two each in Spain, the United Kingdom and Israel. WHO has confirmed deaths only in Mexico, where seven people have died from swine flu.

The deadly outbreak in Mexico prompted authorities to order about 35,000 public venues in Mexico City to close or serve only take-out meals as health officials tried to contain the virus. iReport.com: Are you worried about swine flu?

Officials in Mexico City also ordered the closing of bars, clubs, movie theaters, pool halls, theaters, gyms, sport centers and convention halls until May 6, said Juan Jose Garcia Ochoa, one of the city government's top officials.



Officials on Friday closed schools in the city and Monday extended that order nationwide until at least May 6.

"I'm pretty nervous of this whole virus thing," Berta Hernandez said as she touched up her eyeliner inside a packed and humid subway car in Mexico City. She did not dare lift her surgical mask to put on lip gloss.

"I'm nervous of the people who aren't wearing masks. Maybe they will suddenly sneeze or cough," she said.

Governments around the world scrambled to prevent further outbreak.

Some, like China and Russia, banned pork imports from the United States and Mexico, even though the World Health Organization said the disease "has not been shown to be transmissible to people through eating properly handled and prepared pork (pig meat) or other products derived from pigs." Several others, such as Japan and Indonesia, used thermographic devices to test the temperature of passengers arriving from Mexico.

The Philippines' health department urged people to avoid kissing and hugging in public. Argentina announced a five-day ban on flights from Mexico. Four cruise lines -- Holland America, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Princess -- canceled upcoming calls to Mexican ports.

President Obama said the outbreak is a cause for concern, not for alarm. The government urged travelers to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico. iReport.com: "Regular life" in Mexico with masks

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued emergency authorization for the use of two of the most common antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza. The authorization allows the distribution of the drugs by a broader range of health-care workers and loosens age limits for their use.

In Mexico City, however, there is a shortage of such medication. It also became impossible to find protective surgical masks, which the government had handed out to one out of every five residents. Watch Dr. Sanjay Gupta inside a Mexico City hospital »

Worried citizens continue to flood in night and day at hospitals, only to be turned around by armed guards.

"I was looking for a mask at my local pharmacy, but they sold out," supermarket worker Rafael Martinez said as he rode the subway. "I know it's a risk, but I can't find one."

Swine influenza, or flu, is a contagious respiratory disease that affects pigs.

When the flu spreads person-to-person, instead of from animals to humans, it can continue to mutate, making it harder to treat or fight, because people have no natural immunity.

Symptoms include fever, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Common seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people every year worldwide, far more than the current outbreak of swine flu. Learn more about swine flu and how to treat it »

But there is no vaccine for the new disease, and little natural immunity, an expert said.

"I think the reason to be concerned is ... we had a vaccine for regular flu," said Dr. Carlos del Rio of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. "This is a totally new virus. ... You have a virus to which there's no pre-vaccination, there's no prior immunity. And, therefore, the mortality rate may be higher than other influenza viruses." Watch why swine flu is a "sloppy virus" »

Researchers do not know how the virus is jumping relatively easily from person to person, or why it's affecting what should be society's healthiest demographic.


Meanwhile, Mexico's largest city saw the the government close universities, postpone sporting events and cancel church services in an effort to try to stem the spread of the virus.

"I don't think it's feasible or advisable to shut down the city," said Jose Luis Suarez, a newspaper vendor. "People would try and get out somehow, and that would make a bad situation worse."
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CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in La Gloria, Mexico, contributed to this report.

All About Mexico • Influenza


The story
Tucked away in this small mountain village, off a dusty road flanked by pig farms, is where the earliest case of swine flu -- a virus spreading globally -- was confirmed.

Meet the child known as "patient zero" by his doctors -- 5-year-old Edgar Hernandez, who survived the earliest documented case of swine flu in an outbreak that, officials say, has now spread across four continents.

His family lives in the 3,000-population village of La Gloria in the state of Veracruz, where a flu outbreak was reported on April 2. State officials arrived and took samples from dozens of people. Read full article »

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in La Gloria, Mexico, contributed to this report.

All About
Mexico • Influenza
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[anointedteacher]

GOP Stripped Flu Pandemic Preparedness From Stimulus

www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/27/gop-stripped-flu-pandemic_n_191732.html

Remember way back in the day, President Obama delivered his Not Really The State Of The Union address, and the GOP trotted out Future Of The Republican Party Supra-Genius Bobbly Jindal to provide a rebuttal? Well, we all had some laughs, didn't we? Mainly because Jindal was all: "They want to spend stimulus money on volcano monitoring? Why everyone knows that the Hill Witch keeps tabs on our volcanoes by floating chicken bones in her own intestinal ichor!" And then Alaska's Mount Redoubt erupted, suggesting there might be something to this "let's monitor volcanoes with government-funded science" idea.

Well, as it turns out, volcano monitoring wasn't the only worthwhile public safety program that was deemed extravagant in the stimulus package, funding for pandemic preparation was axed as well. And playing a critical role was Susan Collins -- for whom the necessity of obtaining her vote is in inverse proportion to the intelligence she shows in policy making.

Via The Nation:
Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not."

Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate's version of the stimulus measure

Naturally, it's tough to keep an economy stimulated if productivity gets diminished by a pandemic. And, hey, it turns out that the lack of a stable and well-funded public health infrastructure may ">not be so good for economic recovery as a whole:
On Monday, the question began to be answered, as Associated Press reported -- under the headline: "World Markets Struck By Swine Flu Fears" -- that: "World stock markets fell Monday as investors worried that a deadly outbreak of swine flu in Mexico could go global and derail any global economic recovery."

Before U.S. markets opened, the Wall Street Journal reported: "U.S. stock futures fell sharply Monday as the outbreak of deadly swine flu stoked fears that a possible recovery in the global economy could be derailed."

Karl Rove, from his perch at the Wall Street Journal, criticized the inclusion of "$462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations," on the grounds that "health care also added jobs" in the previous year. Such expenditures were, to Rove, "disturbing" and an example of President Obama's "lack of engagement and leadership."

All of this is playing out at a time when HHS nominee sits on the sidelines, her nomination held up at the behest of pro-life organizations who want to paint her as the "Abortion Queen." The hold up is pointless - merely delaying the inevitable for "another week." Maybe the swine flu would be good enough to wait!


UPDATE: HuffPost's Ryan Grim has been chasing down comments today, in an attempt to measure the effect the swine flu outbreak is having on everyone's hindsight:
"We had $870 million in the committee-reported stimulus bill for buying anti-virals, vaccines, planning, etc. It was dropped in Collins-Nelson because it was 'not stimulative,'" said a Senate leadership aide.

"We did put over $500 million in the omnibus, and HHS/DHS are fairly well-supplied, but it was an opportunity lost for being appropriately prepared."

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) was among those who had pushed for the pandemic money after pressing the Bush administration to take bird flu seriously.

"The Senator was disappointed that the money was taken out of the economic recovery package because that money was to develop the capacity to produce pandemic vaccines quickly in the U.S. in response to any pandemic," said his spokeswoman Kate Cyrul. "This capacity is not there yet and would not be if we had appropriated the money, but the current outbreak reminds us that we need to be prepared."


Susan Collins' office offered a statement to Glenn Thrush:
As Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Senator Collins has led hearings on pandemic flu preparedness, worked on "bioshield" legislation and funding, and helped strengthen our nation's preparedness for a pandemic flu.

Claims that she is opposed to increased funding for pandemic flu research are blatantly false and politically motivated. In fact, in December 2008, Senator Collins joined in a letter to Senate leaders requesting a $905 million increase for the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund at the Department of Health and Human Services.

There is no evidence that federal efforts to address the swine flu outbreak have been hampered by a lack of funds. Senator Collins does, however, believe that it is a problem that the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services still do not have top positions filled. She hopes the Senate will move promptly to confirm Governor Sebelius for HHS Secretary.

Dave Obey (D-Wisc.), who backed the pandemic preparedness funding in the stimulus package, also released a statement today:
"We have been trying to get adequate funding to prepare the nation for a pandemic outbreak since 2005. We tried again as recently as January in the economic recovery package. Whether or not this influenza strain turns out to have pandemic potential, sooner or later some strain will."

"We are not prepared today. Let's hope we don't need to be. Because we need to become prepared as soon as possible, I intend to again request additional funds in the upcoming supplemental."

Here's what Obey said about pandemic funding in the report that accompanied the House version of the recovery package:
Pandemic influenza poses a major threat to the nation's public health, security, and economy. CBO has estimated that an influenza pandemic might cause a decline in U.S. gross domestic product of between 1 and 4.25 percent depending on the severity of the pandemic. Providing additional funding to prepare for and respond to a pandemic will ameliorate the morbidity and mortality associated with worst case scenarios of an influenza pandemic thereby reducing the potential economic burden. Another program funded in this recovery package is BARDA, which supports advanced development and procurement of medical countermeasures, such as vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear agents, as well as other emerging infectious diseases. According to a recent independent economic analysis of BARDA, in order to develop countermeasures for all biodefense requirements identified in HHS's Public Health Emergency Countermeasures Enterprise Implementation Plan, significant increased investment in advanced development is required. BARDA also provides for the expansion of the domestic manufacturing infrastructure to support new vaccines and other countermeasures, where an expansion of domestic manufacturing is desired to provide sufficient quantities of products in a timely manner.

[krazeeboi]

Well, thus far there's only been one death here in the U.S., a Mexican toddler. I think it's also worth pointing out that a few thousand people die from "regular" influenza every year. But I think health officials with the World Health Organization are saying that this does have pandemic potential. This isn't good, especially when we're in the middle of a global recession.