- Hello Jeff - Don't tell me that they are going to try
to fool the public into believing that the 1976 vaccine will protect agains
this resurrected Spanish Flu bug? No way. People should NEVER take the
1976 vaccine.
-
- It appears that the pharma industry is readying itself
for the vaccine bandwagon...and huge profits
-
- Patty
-
-
- "1976 Swine Flu
- The CDC is conducting studies now that might show whether
seasonal vaccination might protect people against swine flu. It's also
possible that people who were vaccinated in the 1976 swine flu outbreak,
which many flu experts believed was the beginning of a pandemic at the
time, are protected, he said.
-
- Vaccine makers are taking the initial steps toward making
shots against swine flu. Baxter International Inc., a maker of both seasonal
and pandemic vaccines, has requested samples of the swine virus for laboratory
testing, said Christopher Bona, a spokesman for Deerfield, Illinois-based
Baxter. GlaxoSmithKline Plc, based in London, has had conversations with
WHO's flu division that's responsible for distributing flu virus samples
to drugmakers, said Deborah Alspach, a spokeswoman.
-
- Other companies that make flu vaccine include Novartis
AG, of Basel, Switzerland, and Sanofi-Aventis SA, of Paris."
-
-
- Swine Flu Emergency Caused By New Variant of Old Bug
(Update2)
- By John Lauerman and Jason Gale
-
- April 26 (Bloomberg) -- International health officials
are wrestling with how to respond to a swine flu from Mexico that's infecting
people, causing a range of illnesses, and even death.
-
-
- The World Health Organization called the outbreak a "public
health emergency of international concern" yesterday, and as many
as 81 deaths in Mexico were linked to the virus, normally transmitted among
pigs. Eleven cases in California, Kansas and Texas, all of them mild, have
been connected as well, and at least eight students in New York are being
tested for whether they match the Mexico strain, health officials said.
-
-
- Fears of a lethal pandemic lie in the nature of flu germs,
which mutate readily and can become virulent by exchanging genes with related
influenza viruses. While the H5N1 bird virus that spread across Asia in
the last few years, killing millions of fowl and several hundred people,
never gained genes to spread easily among humans, the Mexican swine flu
already has, said Malik Peiris, a microbiologist from the University of
Hong Kong.
-
-
- "The concern is that this virus has the ability
to transmit from humans to humans because a number of the cases who got
infection have had no direct exposure to swine," said Peiris, who
has studied the SARS and avian flu viruses. "That is certainly a cause
for concern."
-
-
- Health officials said they are trying to determine how
the virus gained its ability to infect and spread among humans.
-
-
- Swine-Flu Emergency
-
-
- Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared a swine-flu
emergency, giving him powers to order quarantines and suspend public events
in the nation, where 1,324 patients are hospitalized with flu-like symptoms.
-
-
- Authorities closed schools until May 6 in Mexico City
and the states of Mexico and San Luis Potosi, where infections have been
concentrated, and canceled most public and official activities.
-
-
- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
an Atlanta-based agency, is leading the search for more cases than the
11 it has confirmed as of yesterday.
- The latest U.S. tally includes two adults residing at
the same address in Dickinson County, Kansas. Neither of the patients was
hospitalized, the state's <http://www.kdheks.gov/>health department
said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. One is still ill and being
treated, and one is recovering, it said. One of the patients had recently
traveled to Mexico, flying in and out of Wichita, according to the statement.
-
-
- New Zealand Students
-
-
- Three teachers and 22 students from Auckland's Rangitoto
high school are being tested for swine flu after returning to New Zealand's
most populous city from Los Angeles following a three week trip to Mexico,
Stuff.co.nz reported on its Web site. Some of the travelers had symptoms
of flu-like illness and were being isolated as a precaution pending test
results, it said, citing Auckland's public health service.
-
-
- Japan began screening for fever in travelers returning
from Mexico fevers, the country's health ministry said in a statement yesterday.
A British Airways Plc crewmember was hospitalized in north London with
suspected swine flu after arriving yesterday on a flight from Mexico City.
Tests showed he doesn't have the bug, Agence France-Presse said, citing
a hospital spokesman.
-
-
- Outbreaks in Mexico and the U.S. warrant an urgent assessment
of its potential to spark the first influenza pandemic in 41 years, the
WHO said yesterday. The Geneva-based United Nations agency held an emergency
meeting and found that more evidence is needed to determine whether the
level of pandemic alert should be increased, it said.
- Pandemic Threat
-
-
- The WHO's pandemic threat level, a six-stage measure,
is currently at 3. Evidence of increased human-to-human spread of a new
virus would move it to level 4, according to the WHO Web site.
-
-
- Health officials in the U.S. are asking both doctors
and patients to be on the lookout for suspicious cases of flu. The lung
virus normally causes symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, and can also
bring on muscle and joint aches, headaches, and even diarrhea and vomiting,
according to the CDC.
-
-
- At a time when scientists can tailor drugs to match a
patient's genetic profile and people live longer than ever, the flu, first
described by Hippocrates 2,400 years ago, still has the power to make millions
bed-bound for a week and kill the very young, the elderly and those weakened
by chronic disease.
-
-
- The CDC estimates the germ is linked to more than 30,000
U.S. deaths annually.
-
-
- In most cases, adults can resist succumbing to flu viruses
that are identical or very similar to those they've been exposed to before.
"New" viruses that the human immune system hasn't seen earlier
are the most dangerous, because they can overwhelm the body's defenses.
-
-
- 1918 Pandemic
-
-
- Flu germs are classified by two proteins, one known by
the letter H, for hemagglutinin, and the other N, for neuraminidase. The
Mexican swine flu is an H1N1 flu, the same subtype that caused the pandemic
of 1918. Many less-dangerous descendants of that virus are seasonal H1N1
viruses circulating worldwide today, scientists said.
- The dominant form of flu circulating in the U.S. in the
most recent flu season was an H1N1, said Frederick Hayden, professor of
clinical virology at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center
in Charlottesville. That suggests that people who got this year's flu vaccine,
which gave protection against the H1N1 virus, might also have some protection
against the swine flu, he said.
-
-
- "We need to take the [blood] of individuals who
got last season's vaccine and see whether there's any evidence of cross-
reactivity for this new strain," he said in a telephone interview.
"We need to do the same thing with patients who have had recent infection
with the human H1N1 strain."
-
-
- 1976 Swine Flu
-
-
- The CDC is conducting studies now that might show whether
seasonal vaccination might protect people against swine flu. It's also
possible that people who were vaccinated in the 1976 swine flu outbreak,
which many flu experts believed was the beginning of a pandemic at the
time, are protected, he said.
- Vaccine makers are taking the initial steps toward making
shots against swine flu. Baxter International Inc., a maker of both seasonal
and pandemic vaccines, has requested samples of the swine virus for laboratory
testing, said Christopher Bona, a spokesman for Deerfield, Illinois-based
Baxter. GlaxoSmithKline Plc, based in London, has had conversations with
WHO's flu division that's responsible for distributing flu virus samples
to drugmakers, said Deborah Alspach, a spokeswoman.
- Other companies that make flu vaccine include Novartis
AG, of Basel, Switzerland, and Sanofi-Aventis SA, of Paris.
-
-
- Roche's Tamiflu
-
-
- Roche Holding AG, of Basel, has an ample supply of Tamiflu,
which can reduce the symptoms of swine flu. Roche has donated a "Rapid
Response Stockpile" of 5 million treatment courses to the WHO that's
on 24-hour stand-by to be sent around the world, said Terence Hurley, a
spokesman for the company. No request has been made to deploy the stockpile,
he said in an email.
-
-
- Glaxo also has ample supplies of its inhaled Relenza
antiviral, which also appears to be effective against the swine flu in
CDC tests, Alspach said.
- The virus has already evaded the first line of defense
that health officials had hoped to use against a pandemic. International
flu experts preparing for a pandemic had planned to contain the initial
outbreak of a new, lethal strain of flu. The swine flu virus has already
spread so far in Mexico and the U.S. that the containment strategy is out
of the question, said Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science
and public health programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
the Atlanta-based U.S. agency.
- "We don't think we can contain the spread of this
virus," she said yesterday in a conference call with reporters.
-
-
- To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman
in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net; Jason Gale in Singapore at .gale@bloomberg.net
- Last Updated: April 26, 2009 04:27 EDT
-
-
- http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aD0VK0_oNmw4&refer=home
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural
Economics
- Univ of West Indies Please visit my "Emerging Diseases"
message board at: http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website: http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/ Zhan
le Devlesa tai sastimasa Go with God and in Good Health
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