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| Celtic Radio Community > Politics & Current Events > WHO Says Swine Flu Near Pandemic!? |
| Posted by: Patch 03-Jun-2009, 12:58 PM |
| The WHO says that swine flu is nearing pandemic status?? There are 20K reported cases world wide and 117 deaths. This is just the smallest fraction of a percent of flu cases and deaths in a normal flu season. Where they came up with this idea is totally without merit. Their warped thinking certainly arouses suspicion! The bird flu in China was worse and that was NOT a pandemic. Slàinte, Patch |
| Posted by: RebeccaAnn 03-Jun-2009, 02:10 PM |
| Pandemic? Some fancy, new word to go with 100 year flood, global warming, etc. It's just a new strain of flu. No worse than the 1918 flu that wiped out many villages and much of our military. Sure it is bad, but nothing new. I was reading about WWI and more of our young men died of the flu that hit in 1918 than those that were killed in battle during the entire war. My grandmother was a little girl at the time. Schools were closed. Most every family was affected by the flu. Infact it got so bad they had to put the bodies in the icehouse til they could get someone to bury them because the undertaker died. RebeccaAnn |
| Posted by: TheCarolinaScotsman 03-Jun-2009, 06:42 PM |
| Patch, what has the WHO, CDC, and others so spooked is the similarity in the way this flu has started with the pandemics of 1918, 1957, and 1968. In regular seasonal flu, a new variety appears in the fall, builds during the normal flu season and then tapers off in the spring. In this case and that of all the known pandemics, the new strain showed up in the spring, had a mild run and then, in the case of the historical pandemics, came back in the fall with a new virulence. Also, this flu is H1N1, the same as the 1918 pandemic. It is in fact a "cousin" of that flu. This strain hasn't been seen since the fifties when the 1957 strain, H2N2, replaced it. The 1968 pandemic was H3N2, replacing the H2N2 seasonal flu with its derivetives. Each new pandemic replaces the current seasonal flu with a new basic type. The different strains that show up every year are just variiations of the same type. Experts say that people born befoire 1957 may have some residual immunity to H1N1 flu. RebeccaAnn, yes, this is not as bad as 1918. But the officials believe it has a good possibility of coming back this fall in a much more virulent version that would kill many more people world wide than it has so far. Pandemic simply means that the disease has become embedded world wide. Endemic means it is embedded locally (numonic plague is endemic to the US southwest. There are two or three deaths annually.) It does not refer to the actual deadliness of a disease. An epidemic is an actual outbreak of massive proportions. One must blame the news media for sensationalizing the pandemic to the point that people get the impression that it means the same thing as an epidemic. It doesn't. For a short history of flu pandemics, go to http://cns.miis.edu/flu_watch/history.htm |
| Posted by: Patch 04-Jun-2009, 03:14 AM |
| I see this as BS. The new strain of flu (Swine flu) will be covered in the next flu shot being developed now. I do not recall that there was a flu shot available when the swine flu was here the last time. I caught it and, It was like the rest of the strains of flu to me at that time. It seemed no worse than in previous years. Were it not for Smithfield Farms of Smithfield Va. and it's entity, R. Carroll Ranch in Mexico, we would not have swine flu today. They moved to Mexico to avoid ecological standards in the US. Our next health crisis probably involves Mega Dairy farms moved here from Holland to avoid their restrictive laws. We have somewhere around 15,000 cattle in my small community and are pushing the limits on sanitation. Bird flu came about because of poor sanitation and others will too. I would recommend a boycott of Smithfield Farms products and Mexican meat products. Not that the products spread flu, as they do not, but the agricultural procedures do! We have been successful in having the products removed from local groceries. The greed of those two companies brought us this strain of flu and the first case was an employee of R.Carroll Ranch who recovered and was aged 5(!) at the time. Not only are there no restrictions re; massive livestock operations in Mexico but they have few child labor laws and do not enforce those they do have. So long as we have corporate greed in agriculture we will have disease. I will get the flu shot when it becomes available (estimated to be in 45 days per my MD) and may get two over the flu season to extend coverage if necessary. If someone is willing to pay the cost, there will be vaccine available to even third world countries. Slàinte, Patch |