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News Briefs 28-04-2009

WHO knows where swine flu came from. Or pigs might fly.

  • WHO: 40 confirmed swine flu cases in US, no deaths.
  • Swine flu is same strain as the pandemic of 1918.
  • Google swine flu.
  • A search for evidence of interplanetary and atmospheric microbial delivery systems.
  • Freedom of expression, dissenting historians and the holocaust revisionists.
  • The singer not the song.
  • The death of 100%.
  • Economic crisis in the EU: the numbers.
  • Shadow government statistics.
  • Where is all the antimatter?
  • Walnuts may help fight breast cancer.
  • Green is a mirage.
  • Dinosaurs lived in the Arctic. Or maybe ECDs happen.
  • The 2012 Apocalyspe and how to stop it.
  • Dino killing asteroid theory takes a fresh hit.
  • AI cracks 4000 year-old mystery.
  • Sungrazers or an earlier version of them.
  • Questions, not answers, make science the ultimate adventure.
  • Imagine another wet, rocky planet.

Quote of the Day:

The men of future generations will yet win many a liberty of which we do not even feel the want

Max Stirner

  1. LOL
    [quote][…]or pigs might fly[/quote]

    My God! that theory hadn’t crossed my mind yet 🙂

    PS: Another possibility: Manbearpig went traveling to Veracrúz and sneezed on some poor guy —after getting sick with some pollo con mole 😛

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. FOUND
      This is the bugger responsible for the whole mess.

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

  2. Swine flu is same strain as the pandemic of 1918?
    This doesn’t seem to be the case.

    The 1918 outbreak was probably originated by an avian virus.

    This new outbreak originated in pigs —and possibly by pigs, if you’ve been following my posts.

    My feeling is that the people at The Guardian thought it was Ok to recycle that nice interactive flash presentation from the 2007 avian flu episode in China.

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

      1. Yeah… *scratch heads*
        If you read my last three blog posts, you’ll notice I’m having a hard time understanding all these rumors about the pig farm in Veracruz being the ‘ground zero’ of the disease. There are three things I’m certain:

        * The Mexican government doesn’t know —and at this point doesn’t seem to care— about the origin of the outbreak. As far as they are concerned, the infection might have come from California from a person who traveled to Mexico city or Veracruz due to the Easter holidays.

        * The people in the town of La Gloria had been complaining about respiratory infections at least two months before the outbreak, and they blame the pig farm Granjas Carroll. The government did go out to investigate, and they did find a 4-year-old child who had the H1N1 strand —they confirmed this, according to them, after other cases were appearing elsewhere in the country and sent the samples for analysis abroad.

        * The government insists they confirmed the outbreak on April 23d. The Health Secretary gets angry everytime anyone mentions the company Veratect, which went out and claimed they informed about the outbreak to the CDC and the Panamerican branch of the Who. According to the Reforma newspaper, they didn’t contact the Mexican government, because that doesn’t concern them. “We are just a private company, we don’t have relationships with other governments. It was up to the WHO to inform Mexico”.

        I read in the paper this morning that the governor of Veracruz went to the town of La Gloria for a 10-minute visit (!) of the little child who was infected with the flu virus (but survived). He then left on his helicopter leaving the town folks angry because once again they weren’t listened to. They claim that the company Granjas Carroll leaves dead animals lying out in the open, but now that the Governor came, they cleaned up everything to keep appearances. They also claim that two children died during the outbreak they suffered.

        What’s going on?

        As I pointed out, Wired has run the Veratect story. I wrote a —terribly written— comment asking questions about the disparity of dates (in the Wired article, Veratect contacted the CDC on April 16th, on other reports, the date they claim is April 2nd, having detected the outbreak threat in late March). My questions have not been answered on the Wired forum yet.

        As you can plainly see, I’m a bit obsessed right now with this issue. I want to find out the god damned truth.

        —–
        It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
        It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

        Red Pill Junkie

      1. Thanks amigo
        I’m doing fine, although my hypochondria makes me feel I’m about to collapse with the symptoms any time.

        None of my family members is sick either *knock on wood*

        —–
        It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
        It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

        Red Pill Junkie

        1. Keep washing your hands
          One of the best things you can do to prevent infection is to keep washing your hands, as the virus can spread on such things as coins, for example.

          Simple surgical masks are effective only for around 20 minutes, until the moisture of your breath penetrates through the mask. Wash your hands before putting one on, and wash your hands after taking it off.

          ——

          I don’t believe in belief!

          Perceval

          1. Check
            Nothing like a good pandemic to bring out the OCD in you! 😛

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          2. True that
            Well it looks like pandemic time. Cases of the flu are now all over America, and really most of the world. Locally here in the midwest, a school was closed today when 20% of the children were absent all with likely swine flu. The question now is really how deadly is it going to be, not if it will be a pandemic. In my opinion it’s clearly going to be a pandemic. It’s been transmitted to way too many people to supress it.

          3. How deadly?
            It looks like this new outbreak has a death rate of 5-6%, which is very high compared to the common seasonal flu.

            Children and elderly seem to be more likely so survive this virus, whereas young adults in the 20s , 30s and 40s are the ones that show in the death charts. This seems to have something to do with something called cytokine bursts, an over stimulation of the immune system —meaning the stronger your immune system, the most aggressive reaction from the virus :-/

            The first case of the swine virus, a 4-year-old child, survived and is doing well now. The first death was a 49-year-old woman, who was also a tax inspector making door-to-door visits —meaning she could have infected a lot of people.

            The doctors keep telling the people that Tamiflu is only effective is its administered during the first 48 hours of the disease. They keep advising that if you or your family members show a temp of over 38° C, you need to go to a hospital ASAP; so doctors keep blaming the difference in death rates in Mexico with the slow response of the public to assess the risk of their situation last week. This in contrast with what’s happening now, with people coughing in the shower and immediately thinking they have the flu and rushing to the hospital!

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          4. dont wait
            I suspect that the relatively high infection rate in Mexico it due to long waiting times, once you are in the hospital.

            Plenty of time to infect other patients who are there for unrelated reasons.

            And perhaps the bad air in Mexico city contributes too – many people must have respiratory problems, coughing and sneezing. A good way to spread the virus. And plenty of particulate matter for the virus to ride on in the air.

            There are not enough cases outside of Mexico to tell what the death rate is in those places.

            —-
            It is not how fast you go
            it is when you get there.

          5. Well…
            There might be soon. 🙁

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          6. How deadly?
            >> It looks like this new outbreak has a death rate of 5-6%, which is very high compared to the common seasonal flu.

            I haven’t seen much written, during this panic, about the usual/typical annual flu death-rate.

            The only article I’ve seen, at Yahoo, said about 36,000 people a year die from flu in the US. I don’t remember the article mentioning the total number of flu cases annually in the US, or the percentage that 36,000 deaths respresents.

            For all we know, this so-called pandemic of H1N1 may not be nearly as deadly as a typical winter flu season.

  3. Swine flu
    So, what I’d like to know is this: if the scientific community found that a strain of H5N1 Avian flu had hybridised with the Swine flu, would they pass up the opportunity, or would they prove that they still have a sense of humour in the face of adversity, by calling it ‘Flying Pig flu’?

    Any scientists out there care to shine a light on that one?

    yer ol’ pal,

    Xibalba
    (This post was brought to you by “Realm of the Dead”)

    1. I found this
      I found this article on New Scientist.

      Mongrelised mix

      On Thursday, Canadian public health officials warned Canadians travelling to Mexico of clusters of severe flu-like illness there. Then on Friday the WHO in Geneva said in a statement there have been around 900 suspected cases of swine flu in Mexico City and two other regions of Mexico, with around 60 suspected deaths. Of those, 18 have been confirmed as H1N1 swine flu, says the WHO, and tests so far have shown that 12 of those are “genetically identical” to the California virus.

      On Friday, Richard Besser, head of the CDC, confirmed that Mexican samples tested at CDC were also “similar” to the US virus. “From everything we know to date, this virus appears to be the same,” he said.

      On Saturday and Sunday, the CDC confirmed eight cases of swine flu had been confirmed at a girl’s school in New York, two cases in Kansas and a case in Ohio.

      To be declared a pandemic, Besser said, the virus must be new, cause severe disease, and transmit easily enough to be sustained.

      It is new. Anne Schuchat, head of science and public health at the CDC, said that the US virus is an unusually mongrelised mix of genetic sequences from North American pigs, Eurasian pigs, birds and humans. The H protein on its surface, having hitherto circulated only in pigs, is one most human immune systems have never seen, the crucial requirement for a pandemic flu.

      [UPDATE] But now new studies say it’s all pig *sigh*

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

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