ALERT Comprehensive Flu Thread, Latest reports, States, Countries, Closings.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Cappy - Best guess is around 4 to 5,000.
That's based on a CDC estimate, while you were gone - they threw their hands up in the air and went to an estimate instead of an official as tested number.
Hang in There!
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That's based on a CDC estimate, while you were gone - they threw their hands up in the air and went to an estimate instead of an official as tested number.
Hang in There!
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Mutant H1N1 virus claims first life in the Netherlands
Published: 4 December 2009 09:56 | Changed: 4 December 2009 10:30
RNW
http://www.nrc.nl/international/art...N1_virus_claims_first_life_in_the_Netherlands
A patient has died of a Tamiflu-resistant mutant strain of H1N1, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) announced last Thursday.
The victim, a cancer patient, died at the Groningen University Medical Centre last Sunday. The deceased was one of three patients the RIVM earlier announced had been diagnosed with Tamiflu-resistant H1N1. Tamiflu is an antiviral drug that slows the spread of influenza. All three patients were seriously ill before contracting the flu virus.
Worldwide, about 50 people have been diagnosed with Tamiflu-resistant H1N1. According to the RIVM, the mutations are no surprise.
"It is only normal for a virus to mutate," said professor Marion Koopmans of the RIVM. Last week, two patients in France also died of a mutant strain of H1N1.
and
MUTANT SWINE FLU DEATH
Spain reports mutant swine flu death
Published: December 04, 2009 14:21h
http://www.javno.com/en-world/spain-reports-mutant-swine-flu-death_284857
It is the sixth fatal case of mutated A(H1N1) virus in Europe, after one in the Netherlands and two each in France and Norway.
A patient infected by a mutant strain of the swine flu A(H1N1) virus has died in Spain, the health ministry said Friday.
- We have registered three cases of mutation, including one which was fatal. These are three isolated cases, there has been no transmission to any other person - a ministry spokesman told AFP.
It is the sixth fatal case of mutated A(H1N1) virus in Europe, after one in the Netherlands and two each in France and Norway.
Last month the World Health Organisation said that mutations had been observed in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico --, where the swine flu pandemic began -- Ukraine and the United States as early as April.
Italy also reported a non-fatal case on Monday.
- The mutations appear to occur sporadically and spontaneously. To date, no links between the small number of patients infected with the mutated virus have been found and the mutation does not appear to spread - a WHO statement said on November 20.
The WHO also underlined that there was no evidence of more infections or more deaths as a result, while the mutated virus detected up to that point remained sensitive to antiviral drugs used to treat severe flu, oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza).
Scientists fear that mutations in flu viruses could cause a more virulent and deadly pandemic flu. The global health watchdog reiterated a call for close monitoring.
===
.
Published: 4 December 2009 09:56 | Changed: 4 December 2009 10:30
RNW
http://www.nrc.nl/international/art...N1_virus_claims_first_life_in_the_Netherlands
A patient has died of a Tamiflu-resistant mutant strain of H1N1, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) announced last Thursday.
The victim, a cancer patient, died at the Groningen University Medical Centre last Sunday. The deceased was one of three patients the RIVM earlier announced had been diagnosed with Tamiflu-resistant H1N1. Tamiflu is an antiviral drug that slows the spread of influenza. All three patients were seriously ill before contracting the flu virus.
Worldwide, about 50 people have been diagnosed with Tamiflu-resistant H1N1. According to the RIVM, the mutations are no surprise.
"It is only normal for a virus to mutate," said professor Marion Koopmans of the RIVM. Last week, two patients in France also died of a mutant strain of H1N1.
and
MUTANT SWINE FLU DEATH
Spain reports mutant swine flu death
Published: December 04, 2009 14:21h
http://www.javno.com/en-world/spain-reports-mutant-swine-flu-death_284857
It is the sixth fatal case of mutated A(H1N1) virus in Europe, after one in the Netherlands and two each in France and Norway.
A patient infected by a mutant strain of the swine flu A(H1N1) virus has died in Spain, the health ministry said Friday.
- We have registered three cases of mutation, including one which was fatal. These are three isolated cases, there has been no transmission to any other person - a ministry spokesman told AFP.
It is the sixth fatal case of mutated A(H1N1) virus in Europe, after one in the Netherlands and two each in France and Norway.
Last month the World Health Organisation said that mutations had been observed in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico --, where the swine flu pandemic began -- Ukraine and the United States as early as April.
Italy also reported a non-fatal case on Monday.
- The mutations appear to occur sporadically and spontaneously. To date, no links between the small number of patients infected with the mutated virus have been found and the mutation does not appear to spread - a WHO statement said on November 20.
The WHO also underlined that there was no evidence of more infections or more deaths as a result, while the mutated virus detected up to that point remained sensitive to antiviral drugs used to treat severe flu, oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza).
Scientists fear that mutations in flu viruses could cause a more virulent and deadly pandemic flu. The global health watchdog reiterated a call for close monitoring.
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Ohio
Fatal flu case shocks family
By Ed Runyan (Contact)
Saturday, December 5, 2009
http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/dec/05/fatal-flu-case-shocks-family/?newswatch
Three local H1N1 deaths have been reported to the Ohio Department of Health.
LEAVITTSBURG — Margaret Savitts of Eagle Creek Road in Braceville Township didn’t suspect anything was terribly wrong with her husband, Walter, when he came down with the flu Oct. 23.
“He just said, ‘I’m not feeling very well,’” she remembers. Three days later, he had a fever of 103 and went to a doctor, who advised him to take Motrin and Tylenol and rest.
“I just thought it was the flu like any other flu,” she said.
Two days after that, Oct. 29, however, Margaret awoke at 2:30 a.m. and found her husband out of bed. “He said, ‘I hurt really bad.’” She took him to Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted.
Walter, 44, worked in Twinsburg driving a dump truck and cement mixer, Margaret said. He and Margaret are the parents of three sons, Bobby, 27, Jeramy, 24, and Steven, 18.
Because of the pneumonia, Walter’s lungs were not working well on their own, so doctors put him on oxygen, using a tube in his nose.
Still, doctors were reassuring.
“The doctor said they were hoping to get his oxygen level up and wanted to release him by Monday or before,” Margaret said.
But that Saturday, Walter complained to Margaret that he couldn’t breathe. Margaret became concerned, but the doctors and nurses “just kept telling him to relax,” Margaret said.
Doctors gave Walter an anxiety medicine, which helped, but Walter was still having trouble breathing, Margaret said.
On Sunday, the hospital ordered a chest X-ray and said a pulmonary specialist would check on Walter on Monday, Margaret said. Margaret left the hospital Sunday evening to handle personal matters.
By 2 a.m., however, she was notified that Walter had gone into “total respiratory failure,” Margaret said. “His lungs were so damaged, they couldn’t provide enough oxygen,” Margaret said. He was sedated and never regained consciousness.
Walter was transferred to University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland on Nov. 2. Doctors put Walter on an ECMO machine, which removed Walter’s blood and oxygenated it for him. ECMO stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
Walter died there Nov. 24, with a test later confirming that Walter had died of the H1N1 virus, Margaret said.
Walter is believed to be the first person from Trumbull County to have died as a result of the H1N1 virus, said Dr. James Enyeart, Trumbull County health commissioner. The department does not receive reports of H1N1 deaths, however, Dr. Enyeart said, so his information comes from only what he’s heard and read in the news.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says at least 1,224 Americans have died from the virus, also known as the swine flu, since Aug. 30. Locally, three confirmed deaths have been reported to the Ohio Department of Health, said Robert Jennings, ODH spokesman.
They are a 50-year-old woman and a 55-year-old woman, who both died Nov. 10. A 48-year-old woman died in Columbiana County on Nov. 9, Jennings said, adding that he believes the numbers reflect people who died in those counties, not the county where the person lived. The names of those individuals are not available, he said.
Cathleen Wagner, 55, of Columbiana, a kindergarten teacher in the Columbiana school system, died Nov. 18 in Cleveland Clinic, her family has said.
Jennings said he has no record of any Trumbull County deaths resulting from the H1N1 virus and no record yet of a 44-year-old man having died of the virus in Cuyahoga County on Nov. 24. Such deaths can take a while to be reported, he noted.
Margaret says Walter, who liked hunting and already had made preparations to go deer hunting this year with his youngest son, was “just a good guy. It didn’t matter if he had just worked 12 or 15 hours. He helped everybody.” He was the youngest of 12 children and was born in Ravenna.
She never dreamed that her husband would die from H1N1.
“He didn’t smoke. He was healthy,” she said. “My husband was 44 years old. I didn’t think he had anything to worry about.”
Margaret said she still has no opinion on whether people should get vaccinated against the flu, but she does feel strongly that anyone with the flu this year should be careful to treat it correctly.
“It only takes a couple days before it’s too late,” she said of the damage that pneumonia can do to a person’s lungs. Walter received the standard advice from a doctor — that he should feel better in five to seven days.
“If you don’t feel better in five days, you might want to go back to the doctor or something,” she said.
runyan@vindy.com
===
The doctors should know better in Ohio - It doesn't read where he was administered Tami-flu early on. Seems like the treatment was blase, not too concerned about the well being and proper care. Standard advice doesn't apply.
===
.
Fatal flu case shocks family
By Ed Runyan (Contact)
Saturday, December 5, 2009
http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/dec/05/fatal-flu-case-shocks-family/?newswatch
Three local H1N1 deaths have been reported to the Ohio Department of Health.
LEAVITTSBURG — Margaret Savitts of Eagle Creek Road in Braceville Township didn’t suspect anything was terribly wrong with her husband, Walter, when he came down with the flu Oct. 23.
“He just said, ‘I’m not feeling very well,’” she remembers. Three days later, he had a fever of 103 and went to a doctor, who advised him to take Motrin and Tylenol and rest.
“I just thought it was the flu like any other flu,” she said.
Two days after that, Oct. 29, however, Margaret awoke at 2:30 a.m. and found her husband out of bed. “He said, ‘I hurt really bad.’” She took him to Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted.
Walter, 44, worked in Twinsburg driving a dump truck and cement mixer, Margaret said. He and Margaret are the parents of three sons, Bobby, 27, Jeramy, 24, and Steven, 18.
Because of the pneumonia, Walter’s lungs were not working well on their own, so doctors put him on oxygen, using a tube in his nose.
Still, doctors were reassuring.
“The doctor said they were hoping to get his oxygen level up and wanted to release him by Monday or before,” Margaret said.
But that Saturday, Walter complained to Margaret that he couldn’t breathe. Margaret became concerned, but the doctors and nurses “just kept telling him to relax,” Margaret said.
Doctors gave Walter an anxiety medicine, which helped, but Walter was still having trouble breathing, Margaret said.
On Sunday, the hospital ordered a chest X-ray and said a pulmonary specialist would check on Walter on Monday, Margaret said. Margaret left the hospital Sunday evening to handle personal matters.
By 2 a.m., however, she was notified that Walter had gone into “total respiratory failure,” Margaret said. “His lungs were so damaged, they couldn’t provide enough oxygen,” Margaret said. He was sedated and never regained consciousness.
Walter was transferred to University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland on Nov. 2. Doctors put Walter on an ECMO machine, which removed Walter’s blood and oxygenated it for him. ECMO stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
Walter died there Nov. 24, with a test later confirming that Walter had died of the H1N1 virus, Margaret said.
Walter is believed to be the first person from Trumbull County to have died as a result of the H1N1 virus, said Dr. James Enyeart, Trumbull County health commissioner. The department does not receive reports of H1N1 deaths, however, Dr. Enyeart said, so his information comes from only what he’s heard and read in the news.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says at least 1,224 Americans have died from the virus, also known as the swine flu, since Aug. 30. Locally, three confirmed deaths have been reported to the Ohio Department of Health, said Robert Jennings, ODH spokesman.
They are a 50-year-old woman and a 55-year-old woman, who both died Nov. 10. A 48-year-old woman died in Columbiana County on Nov. 9, Jennings said, adding that he believes the numbers reflect people who died in those counties, not the county where the person lived. The names of those individuals are not available, he said.
Cathleen Wagner, 55, of Columbiana, a kindergarten teacher in the Columbiana school system, died Nov. 18 in Cleveland Clinic, her family has said.
Jennings said he has no record of any Trumbull County deaths resulting from the H1N1 virus and no record yet of a 44-year-old man having died of the virus in Cuyahoga County on Nov. 24. Such deaths can take a while to be reported, he noted.
Margaret says Walter, who liked hunting and already had made preparations to go deer hunting this year with his youngest son, was “just a good guy. It didn’t matter if he had just worked 12 or 15 hours. He helped everybody.” He was the youngest of 12 children and was born in Ravenna.
She never dreamed that her husband would die from H1N1.
“He didn’t smoke. He was healthy,” she said. “My husband was 44 years old. I didn’t think he had anything to worry about.”
Margaret said she still has no opinion on whether people should get vaccinated against the flu, but she does feel strongly that anyone with the flu this year should be careful to treat it correctly.
“It only takes a couple days before it’s too late,” she said of the damage that pneumonia can do to a person’s lungs. Walter received the standard advice from a doctor — that he should feel better in five to seven days.
“If you don’t feel better in five days, you might want to go back to the doctor or something,” she said.
runyan@vindy.com
===
The doctors should know better in Ohio - It doesn't read where he was administered Tami-flu early on. Seems like the treatment was blase, not too concerned about the well being and proper care. Standard advice doesn't apply.
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Pennsylvania
Inmate dies from swine flu
Published December 04, 2009 11:36 pm - Swine flu is being blamed for the death of an inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs — the first reported death due to H1N1 in Crawford County.
http://www.meadvilletribune.com/local/local_story_338233649.html
Swine flu is being blamed for the death of an inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs — the first reported death due to H1N1 in Crawford County.
Pennsylvania Department of Health this week reported the death in its online update. Contacted Friday night, Crawford County Coroner Patrick McHenry confirmed that a prisoner died in the SCI’s infirmary about two weeks ago.
McHenry did not report the name or age of the deceased, and was not certain how long she had been incarcerated in Crawford County. Her death was investigated by Crawford County Assistant Coroner Scott Schell. Calls to Schell were not immediately returned.
McHenry said the victim’s health had been seriously compromised by a condition known as COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a progressive ailment that makes it hard to breathe. Those who suffer from COPD likely acquired the condition from an environmental situation such as work conditions with dangerous air quality, heavy smoking or drug use, for example, McHenry said. Coupled with serious flu symptoms, the combination is often life-threatening.
The medium-security prison at the former Alliance College grounds in Cambridge Springs currently houses just over 1,000 female inmates. McHenry said he has not heard that any other inmates have also tested positive for H1N1.
In a call to the SCI-Cambridge prison Friday night, a shift commander said no one at that time was authorized to comment on the incident and suggested calling back Monday.
McHenry said that his reports show the prisoner with H1N1 was being cared for properly by prison officials and that a first round of tests, before her death, indicated that swine flu was not present. After her death, however, a sample was sent to a more sophisticated testing system and tested positive for the virus, McHenry said.
The prisoner was from another part of the state, and she contracted H1N1 while inside the correctional facility, McHenry said.
Crawford County has had a total of 53 confirmed cases according to the state. Erie and Mercer counties have also reported one death due to the virus this year.
No details about the local victim are being released by the Department of Health because of privacy laws, said Stacy Kriedeman, a state Department of Health spokeswoman.
Swine flu was widespread in only 25 states in the past week — mostly in the Northeast — including Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York — and Southwest, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
In late October, 48 states were reporting widespread cases of swine flu. But since then, there’s been a decline across the country, and it appears that a fall wave of swine flu infections has peaked.
In Pennsylvania, there have been 10,605 confirmed cases, with 60 deaths reported since tracking of the disease began in the spring, according to the state Department of Health.
While Crawford County has had 53 confirmed cases with one death, total cases numbers in surrounding counties as of Friday were: Erie, 135 confirmed cases with one death reported; Mercer, 62 confirmed cases with one death reported; Venango, 133 confirmed cases with no deaths reported; and Warren, 10 confirmed cases with no deaths reported.
Meanwhile, a shortage of swine flu vaccine is easing, with 73 million doses now available, roughly twice as much as there was a month ago. And another 10 million doses are expected in the next week, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC’s director.
===
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Inmate dies from swine flu
Published December 04, 2009 11:36 pm - Swine flu is being blamed for the death of an inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs — the first reported death due to H1N1 in Crawford County.
http://www.meadvilletribune.com/local/local_story_338233649.html
Swine flu is being blamed for the death of an inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs — the first reported death due to H1N1 in Crawford County.
Pennsylvania Department of Health this week reported the death in its online update. Contacted Friday night, Crawford County Coroner Patrick McHenry confirmed that a prisoner died in the SCI’s infirmary about two weeks ago.
McHenry did not report the name or age of the deceased, and was not certain how long she had been incarcerated in Crawford County. Her death was investigated by Crawford County Assistant Coroner Scott Schell. Calls to Schell were not immediately returned.
McHenry said the victim’s health had been seriously compromised by a condition known as COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a progressive ailment that makes it hard to breathe. Those who suffer from COPD likely acquired the condition from an environmental situation such as work conditions with dangerous air quality, heavy smoking or drug use, for example, McHenry said. Coupled with serious flu symptoms, the combination is often life-threatening.
The medium-security prison at the former Alliance College grounds in Cambridge Springs currently houses just over 1,000 female inmates. McHenry said he has not heard that any other inmates have also tested positive for H1N1.
In a call to the SCI-Cambridge prison Friday night, a shift commander said no one at that time was authorized to comment on the incident and suggested calling back Monday.
McHenry said that his reports show the prisoner with H1N1 was being cared for properly by prison officials and that a first round of tests, before her death, indicated that swine flu was not present. After her death, however, a sample was sent to a more sophisticated testing system and tested positive for the virus, McHenry said.
The prisoner was from another part of the state, and she contracted H1N1 while inside the correctional facility, McHenry said.
Crawford County has had a total of 53 confirmed cases according to the state. Erie and Mercer counties have also reported one death due to the virus this year.
No details about the local victim are being released by the Department of Health because of privacy laws, said Stacy Kriedeman, a state Department of Health spokeswoman.
Swine flu was widespread in only 25 states in the past week — mostly in the Northeast — including Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York — and Southwest, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
In late October, 48 states were reporting widespread cases of swine flu. But since then, there’s been a decline across the country, and it appears that a fall wave of swine flu infections has peaked.
In Pennsylvania, there have been 10,605 confirmed cases, with 60 deaths reported since tracking of the disease began in the spring, according to the state Department of Health.
While Crawford County has had 53 confirmed cases with one death, total cases numbers in surrounding counties as of Friday were: Erie, 135 confirmed cases with one death reported; Mercer, 62 confirmed cases with one death reported; Venango, 133 confirmed cases with no deaths reported; and Warren, 10 confirmed cases with no deaths reported.
Meanwhile, a shortage of swine flu vaccine is easing, with 73 million doses now available, roughly twice as much as there was a month ago. And another 10 million doses are expected in the next week, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC’s director.
===
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Tom McDowell
BAMN
Florida
Seventh swine flu death in county
From Staff
and Wire Reports
Published:
Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:07 AM EST
http://www.lakewalesnews.com/articles/2009/12/05/news/local/doc4b196cd3ac31a300001200.txt
The Polk County Health Department received notification of the seventh laboratory confirmed H1N1 Swine flu related death in the county.
The patient, a 43 year-old female, had multiple chronic underlying medical conditions, local health officials indicated. An H1N1 Swine flu confirmatory test was reported positive. The patient was not a resident of Polk County but had been living in the area for the last several months.
As of Nov. 24, there have been 172 laboratory confirmed H1N1 Swine flu deaths in Florida.
The first three county deaths all were in southeast Polk, including two in Lake Wales and one in Frostproof. County officials had said the next three were in areas different than the earlier deaths, however, no indication was given on where the seventh victim was residing.
The Florida Flu Information Line (1-877-352-3581) is a toll-free automated help line that can answer general questions about H1N1 and is available in English, Spanish and Creole. Callers also have the option to speak with an operator, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.
Nationally, health officials say the swine flu scare may have peaked in the United States.
It's too soon to think about consigning the H1N1 pandemic to the history books, the World Health Organization's top flu expert said Thursday.
Dr. Keiji Fukuda said though flu activity caused by the pandemic virus appears to have peaked in the United States and Canada, that isn't true for other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. And he said it remains to be seen whether places will experience a third wave of infections.
"In the Northern Hemisphere, we continue to see an up and down pattern by countries. And so what you see in one country is not necessarily what you are seeing in another country," Fukuda, special adviser to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on pandemic influenza, said in a teleconference briefing.
"Still at this point overall it's too early to say whether activity is peaking in the Northern Hemisphere. And at this point it is also not possible to predict what we are going to be seeing in the springtime."
He said the WHO will probably explore the issue of when to declare the pandemic over at some point in 2010.
===
.
Seventh swine flu death in county
From Staff
and Wire Reports
Published:
Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:07 AM EST
http://www.lakewalesnews.com/articles/2009/12/05/news/local/doc4b196cd3ac31a300001200.txt
The Polk County Health Department received notification of the seventh laboratory confirmed H1N1 Swine flu related death in the county.
The patient, a 43 year-old female, had multiple chronic underlying medical conditions, local health officials indicated. An H1N1 Swine flu confirmatory test was reported positive. The patient was not a resident of Polk County but had been living in the area for the last several months.
As of Nov. 24, there have been 172 laboratory confirmed H1N1 Swine flu deaths in Florida.
The first three county deaths all were in southeast Polk, including two in Lake Wales and one in Frostproof. County officials had said the next three were in areas different than the earlier deaths, however, no indication was given on where the seventh victim was residing.
The Florida Flu Information Line (1-877-352-3581) is a toll-free automated help line that can answer general questions about H1N1 and is available in English, Spanish and Creole. Callers also have the option to speak with an operator, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.
Nationally, health officials say the swine flu scare may have peaked in the United States.
It's too soon to think about consigning the H1N1 pandemic to the history books, the World Health Organization's top flu expert said Thursday.
Dr. Keiji Fukuda said though flu activity caused by the pandemic virus appears to have peaked in the United States and Canada, that isn't true for other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. And he said it remains to be seen whether places will experience a third wave of infections.
"In the Northern Hemisphere, we continue to see an up and down pattern by countries. And so what you see in one country is not necessarily what you are seeing in another country," Fukuda, special adviser to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on pandemic influenza, said in a teleconference briefing.
"Still at this point overall it's too early to say whether activity is peaking in the Northern Hemisphere. And at this point it is also not possible to predict what we are going to be seeing in the springtime."
He said the WHO will probably explore the issue of when to declare the pandemic over at some point in 2010.
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
H1N1 Tamiflu Resistant Cluster in Pennsylvania
Recombinomics Commentary 17:40
December 5, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12050901/H274Y_PA.html
The above comments describe another Tamiflu resistant cluster in the US. It is not clear how closely linked these cases are, but the report follows a cluster in the Maryland/Virginia area, as well as human to human transmission at Duke, where three of the four cancer patients died.
These clusters of cases likely represent a very small percentage of the resistance transmitting in the US and worldwide. Recently WHO noted an increase fro 57 to 96 of reported cases in the past 2 weeks and CDC weekly reports show an increase in frequency of almost 10 fold (12/464 tested samples in the past 3 weeks vs 3/1076 in the prior weeks of the current 2009/2010 season).
In addition, the CDC has released sequences with H274Y from Tennessee, Georgia, and Tanzania, providing additional evidence on the spread of the polymorphisms.
These repeated reports of H274Y in geographic clusters, as well as transmission clusters, suggest that H274Y has passed a tipping point, and reports of H274Y will increase in the upcoming weeks.
===
.
Recombinomics Commentary 17:40
December 5, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12050901/H274Y_PA.html
The above comments describe another Tamiflu resistant cluster in the US. It is not clear how closely linked these cases are, but the report follows a cluster in the Maryland/Virginia area, as well as human to human transmission at Duke, where three of the four cancer patients died.
These clusters of cases likely represent a very small percentage of the resistance transmitting in the US and worldwide. Recently WHO noted an increase fro 57 to 96 of reported cases in the past 2 weeks and CDC weekly reports show an increase in frequency of almost 10 fold (12/464 tested samples in the past 3 weeks vs 3/1076 in the prior weeks of the current 2009/2010 season).
In addition, the CDC has released sequences with H274Y from Tennessee, Georgia, and Tanzania, providing additional evidence on the spread of the polymorphisms.
These repeated reports of H274Y in geographic clusters, as well as transmission clusters, suggest that H274Y has passed a tipping point, and reports of H274Y will increase in the upcoming weeks.
===
.
Just DAMN!!
So, he was admitted on Thursday, apparently got worse through Saturday, and they kept telling him "to RELAX"???? And gave him a SEDATIVE??? (almost certainly a CNS suppressant, which is NOT advisable in someone having breathing problems- unless you put them on a vent)
Did ANYone check his blood oxygen levels at any point, I wonder? And gee- "well get a pulmonary specialist in... but it's the weekend, so just stay alive until he can get here ON MONDAY"
Holy cow- and we're going to have socialized medicine, which will be even worse?
What a fustercluck.
Summerthyme
So, he was admitted on Thursday, apparently got worse through Saturday, and they kept telling him "to RELAX"???? And gave him a SEDATIVE??? (almost certainly a CNS suppressant, which is NOT advisable in someone having breathing problems- unless you put them on a vent)
Did ANYone check his blood oxygen levels at any point, I wonder? And gee- "well get a pulmonary specialist in... but it's the weekend, so just stay alive until he can get here ON MONDAY"
Holy cow- and we're going to have socialized medicine, which will be even worse?
What a fustercluck.
Summerthyme
BlueNewton
Membership Revoked
Cappy's back! 
Now, if you would have just brought Sassy back with you.... 
Tom, thanks for these very informative posts. I am very concerned about the Tamiflu-resistant variety spreading. Tamiflu and the heart/lung machines are the lifesavers, from what I have read. Not good at all. What would we do without Dr. Niman? (And this thread, of course.)
Now, if you would have just brought Sassy back with you.... Tom, thanks for these very informative posts. I am very concerned about the Tamiflu-resistant variety spreading. Tamiflu and the heart/lung machines are the lifesavers, from what I have read. Not good at all. What would we do without Dr. Niman? (And this thread, of course.)
BlueNewton
Membership Revoked
Please tell me I didn't kill our brilliant swine flu thread. 
I would be most grateful to our terrific news hounds if they could post some updates.
I would be most grateful to our terrific news hounds if they could post some updates.
Caplock50
I am the Winter Warrior
No, blue. I don't think you killed it. I think it's just that there comes a time when you have just got to walk away from something distasteful or loose your mind. That very well could be what happened to me...I stayed with it a bit too long. But, since I don't have any medical degrees, I'll never know. I do wish Sassy and the others the very best, too. Heh, and I wish I had Tom's stamina.
Cascadians
Leska Emerald Adams
I'm busy battling this pig for the 4th time. Made the mistake of working outside in the bitter sub-freezing cold on Sunday and wham. The vaccine 13 days old no help (well maybe it would have been worse). Scarfing that Elderberry down every 4 hours round the clock plus rest of flu log.
When it started my nose was bleeding a lot. Sneeze sprays of blood everywhere. Have to blow nose, big endless blood clots. But after 3 days that has finally stopped. Sore throat, swollen throat / nose, whole bod puffy, and chills, mostly just can't keep warm now. No fever. Weird how after 4 hours or just before 4 hours feel it getting worse, reach for that Elderberry which stops it.
And the Synergy7, which tastes very peculiar, blasts it away. I'm putting grape juice in that Synergy7 = wine. Boray pre haggufin.
When it started my nose was bleeding a lot. Sneeze sprays of blood everywhere. Have to blow nose, big endless blood clots. But after 3 days that has finally stopped. Sore throat, swollen throat / nose, whole bod puffy, and chills, mostly just can't keep warm now. No fever. Weird how after 4 hours or just before 4 hours feel it getting worse, reach for that Elderberry which stops it.
And the Synergy7, which tastes very peculiar, blasts it away. I'm putting grape juice in that Synergy7 = wine. Boray pre haggufin.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Ukraine Cases Spike - D225G and D225N Found
Recombinomics Commentary 23:55
December 8, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12080902/Ukraine_472_D225N.html
2,187,836 Influenza .ARI
132,178 Hospitalized
472 Dead
The above numbers, from the Ukraine Ministry of Health represent a spike in cases yielding a daily increase of 86,578. The jump was widespread, but the biggest jumps were Donetsk increased 12,586 to 160,212 and Dnipropetrovsk which increased 9.813 to 149,358 (see map). This jump may be signaling a move into the real winter season.
Ukraine is under close scrutiny because sequences released by Mill Hill at GISAID had D225G in all four fatal cases and CDC sequences at GISAID identified D225N in new cases, which were also likely fatal, so all HA sequences from fatal cases in Ukraine have had a receptor binding domain change at position 225 (D changing to either G or N). Since the same changes had been seen previously in Sao Paulo, Brazil over the summer, and now cases were being identified in severe and fatal Scandinavian countries,
The finding D225G or D225N in all fatal cases in Ukraine clearly demonstrates that the changes are transmitting, comments from Scandinavian officials notwithstanding. More detail on the new patients and sequences would be useful.
and
D225N in Ukraine Raises Pandemic Concerns
Recombinomics Commentary 00:05
December 9, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12090901/D225N_Ukraine.html
New sequences from Ukraine have been placed on deposit at GISAID by the CDC. Although the sequences are partials, the receptor binding domain is covered in all 5 HA sequences. Three of the sequences have numbers and ages of patients which match three of the surviving patients tested by Mill Hill and these three sequences have a wild type receptor binding domain.
However, the other two, A/Ukraine/01/2009 and A/Ukraine/02/2009 do not match ages on Mill Hill samples and are likely samples from two fatal cases.
Both of these sequences have a receptor binding domain change at position 225, but both have D225N, while the Mill Hill sequences were D225G. Moreover, one of the D225N sequence is a mixture with the wild type sequence.
All sequences are the same sub-clade and collected within a day of each other. They are likely from six fatal cases, once again highlighting the significance of the receptor binding domain and arguing for transmission, since each change is in at least two samples and a change at position 225 is found in 100% of the fatal samples. Both of these changes had been identified in fatal lung infections in Sao Paulo, further linking recent changes (D225G and D225N) to severe and fatal cases.
More detail on the status of these patients and sample source would be useful, as would sequence data from multiple sites in the same patient.
However, it is increasingly clear that the receptor binding domain changes are transmitting and are associated with severe and fatal infections.
===
I've read some postings which tend to verify the cappy one long wave observation.
Meaning it's possible we're still in the first wave of similar infection types by H1N1. (I think it's probable)
As Leska observed wave 2 may be the dreaded killer wave. Every thing Dr. Niman has been reporting on seems to support the idea that this virus is evolving to become increasingly lethal and possibly more infectious.
Of course this can all be argued until the cows come home. Point is the barn door was left open and we'll have to wait to see which if any - chickens come back to roost.
The whole hypothesis of the vaccine affecting the mutation of H1N1 is disturbing. In simple terms; if the part which reported to make the virus more lethal (D22G in the lungs) is missing from the vaccine strain, the virus evolves to reproduce more of itself - with that component.
Oddly enough the inject-able vaccine did not have the component in the strain, whereas the inhaled nasal version (Flu-mist) did. At least that's what I've been able to glean out of all the data available, however please note this can be a completely wrong observation.
Even stranger, was a paper I read where porcine (swine) virus - will/can/does evolve around live virus vaccine too.
It does seem as we as humans are working against something we really do not have a firm grasp on.
The numbers we're working with in respect to vaccinations, past, on-going and planned - are staggering. The WHO wants to vaccinate everyone in the world against bid-flu, H1N1 may hit a half billion or more vaccinated.
Working against vaccines - the numbers of the opportunities for the virus to evolve are so large they're near infinite.
Pushed out into the zone of the possible, over time, we might be creating a monster.
~
I stopped in to visit a neighbor lady a few nights ago. Wanted to flirt with her a bit and see if she'd have a use for some scrap lumber for her business.
She has no idea I spend a few hours here and there studying this stuff.
She answered the door looking pretty rough. Turns out she'd had the inject-able vaccine eight days prior and on night seven she went out for a few with some of her girlfriends.
Instead of a slight hangover she became ill with a swine flu type immune reaction. Most of the mild sickness signs, except the splitting headache. Sick, knocked down hard sick, for a few days. I was vising on day three.
She was a bit concerned - I told her I thought the vaccines are supposed to trigger a immune response to get the body producing antibodies and it's all probably within a normal course of events after a vaccination.
I checked on her yesterday and she's doing better.
Not much flirting occurred.
Now posted here so people will have the ability to again see why you might be an advocate for yourself - or for another:
Area H1N1 death finally confirmed
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Illinois
By Tom Collins
courtreporter@newstrib.com
http://www.newstrib.com/articles/ne...D5A568F30ED2D9CB714D675F3DA64BCAD9DF816D57233
Bureau County health officials finally confirmed Monday there has been an H1N1 flu death — plus another 11 cases reported — and also said the fatal diagnosis was reported and confirmed some time after the fact.
The health department declined to identify the patient or confirm his or her identity.
However, the NewsTribune has learned the flu victim was 42-year-old Dawn Barroso Brown of DePue, who died Nov. 11 in St. Francis Medical Center, Peoria. Brown had been hospitalized in Peoria since Nov. 2.
It was not immediately clear whether Brown’s death was included among the 12 new H1N1 deaths reported Nov. 13 by the Illinois Department of Public Health. As of this morning, IDPH reported the total number of Illinoisans killed by H1N1 flu has risen to 67; among the victims was an 18-year-old La Salle County woman who remains unidentified.
IDPH said another 2,187 patients have been hospitalized. The majority of deaths (26) and a lesser majority of hospitalizations (554) have occurred among patients in Brown’s age group, 25 years to 49 years.
Brown’s immediate family could not be reached for comment and there was no reply to a message forwarded through the funeral home in charge of Brown’s arrangements.
A cousin of Brown’s, however, contacted the NewsTribune on Dec. 3 seeking an explanation for why Brown’s death had not been publicized as resulting from H1N1.
Linny Seibech of DePue also said a local hospital misdiagnosed Brown’s infirmity and was sent home twice (the second time with antibiotics) after seeking medical treatment.
“The third time my aunt said, ‘You are not sending her home with a temperature of 104.6 because she can’t breathe,’” Seibech said. “The next day they waited all day until a heart doctor was called in and (she was) Life-Flighted out of there. It was too late.”
Seibech said the family was alerted to Brown’s diagnosis “after her passing.” The health department, she said, contacted the family on or about Dec. 2 to inquire about the diagnosis.
“What started as a simple cold turned into pneumonia, then double pneumonia,” she said. “Nope, it was H1N1. There are way too many errors with our local doctors and it has to be known. Everyone should be very careful about spreading germs because there is more out there than we know.”
Seibech said the Brown family was deeply shaken by Brown’s passing.
===
.
BlueNewton
Membership Revoked
I understand, Cappy. But this is a doomer board. We read news to be prepared for the worst. No sense hiding our heads in the sand. Sassy is long gone it seems, by the way.
Cascadians, very sorry to hear it. Take good care of yourself. It is interesting that the vaccine did not seem to help you after 13 days. I think some protection after two weeks would be expected. The bleeding nose is something I have heard about before, but not quite to that degree.
Thanks, Tom. That is a huge jump in the Ukraine.
Cascadians, very sorry to hear it. Take good care of yourself. It is interesting that the vaccine did not seem to help you after 13 days. I think some protection after two weeks would be expected. The bleeding nose is something I have heard about before, but not quite to that degree.
Thanks, Tom. That is a huge jump in the Ukraine.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
British researchers: little evidence Tamiflu works
By MARIA CHENG (AP) – 19 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j6k-bDAc-e_naG8cEQeWIaLkBi5wD9CFATSG0
LONDON — British researchers say there is little evidence Tamiflu stops complications in healthy people who catch the flu, though public health officials contend the swine flu drug reduces flu hospitalizations and deaths.
Researchers at the Cochrane Review, an international nonprofit that reviews health information, looked at previously published papers on Tamiflu as used for seasonal flu. They found insufficient data to prove whether the antiviral reduces complications like pneumonia in otherwise healthy people but concluded the drug shortens flu symptoms by about a day. The papers were published online Tuesday in the British journal, BMJ.
The researchers said the benefits of Tamiflu were small and that authorities should consider its side effects before using the drug in healthy people. While the reviewed studies only looked at Tamiflu use for seasonal flu, the experts said their conclusions raised questions about the widespread use of the drug in people with any flu-like illness, including swine flu.
Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor, said the papers cast doubt not only on how safe and effective Tamiflu is, but on the drug regulatory system that approved it. "Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds (dollars) on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge," she said in a statement.
But the World Health Organization disagreed. They said data from countries around the world show that when given early, Tamiflu can reduce the severity of swine flu symptoms, though the agency recommends the drug be saved for people at risk of complications, like pregnant women, the elderly, children, and those with underlying medical problems.
"This will not change our (Tamiflu) guidelines," said Charles Penn, a WHO antivirals expert. Penn said that while past studies show Tamiflu only has a modest benefit, when patients with severe illness or at risk of complications are treated early, there are fewer hospitalizations and deaths.
And Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, defended the drug, saying in a statement that they "firmly believe in the robustness of the data."
Both the British researchers and WHO said there is little evidence to support the widespread use of Tamiflu in otherwise healthy people — precisely the policy Britain has adopted to fight swine flu.
In addition to recommending Tamiflu be saved for at-risk groups, WHO recommends Tamiflu only be used on a doctor's recommendation.
In Britain, however, Tamiflu is regularly dispensed to healthy people who catch the flu. The drug is given out via a national swine flu hotline by call center workers with no medical training.
====
It may be a situation where the public perception is better served by the concept it doesn't work, than the virus mutated to become resistant.
After all there's the notion this time was coming for quite a while.
====
.
By MARIA CHENG (AP) – 19 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j6k-bDAc-e_naG8cEQeWIaLkBi5wD9CFATSG0
LONDON — British researchers say there is little evidence Tamiflu stops complications in healthy people who catch the flu, though public health officials contend the swine flu drug reduces flu hospitalizations and deaths.
Researchers at the Cochrane Review, an international nonprofit that reviews health information, looked at previously published papers on Tamiflu as used for seasonal flu. They found insufficient data to prove whether the antiviral reduces complications like pneumonia in otherwise healthy people but concluded the drug shortens flu symptoms by about a day. The papers were published online Tuesday in the British journal, BMJ.
The researchers said the benefits of Tamiflu were small and that authorities should consider its side effects before using the drug in healthy people. While the reviewed studies only looked at Tamiflu use for seasonal flu, the experts said their conclusions raised questions about the widespread use of the drug in people with any flu-like illness, including swine flu.
Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor, said the papers cast doubt not only on how safe and effective Tamiflu is, but on the drug regulatory system that approved it. "Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds (dollars) on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge," she said in a statement.
But the World Health Organization disagreed. They said data from countries around the world show that when given early, Tamiflu can reduce the severity of swine flu symptoms, though the agency recommends the drug be saved for people at risk of complications, like pregnant women, the elderly, children, and those with underlying medical problems.
"This will not change our (Tamiflu) guidelines," said Charles Penn, a WHO antivirals expert. Penn said that while past studies show Tamiflu only has a modest benefit, when patients with severe illness or at risk of complications are treated early, there are fewer hospitalizations and deaths.
And Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, defended the drug, saying in a statement that they "firmly believe in the robustness of the data."
Both the British researchers and WHO said there is little evidence to support the widespread use of Tamiflu in otherwise healthy people — precisely the policy Britain has adopted to fight swine flu.
In addition to recommending Tamiflu be saved for at-risk groups, WHO recommends Tamiflu only be used on a doctor's recommendation.
In Britain, however, Tamiflu is regularly dispensed to healthy people who catch the flu. The drug is given out via a national swine flu hotline by call center workers with no medical training.
====
It may be a situation where the public perception is better served by the concept it doesn't work, than the virus mutated to become resistant.
After all there's the notion this time was coming for quite a while.
====
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
World Health Organisation ‘Mr Swine Flu’ Under Investigation for Gross Conflict of Interest
Politics / Global Pandemic Dec 08, 2009 - 02:08 PM
By: F_William_Engdahl
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article15655.html
The man with the nickname “Dr Flu”, Professor Albert Osterhaus, of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam Holland has been named by Dutch media researchers as the person at the center of the worldwide Swine Flu H1N1 Influenza A 2009 pandemic hysteria. Not only is Osterhaus the connecting person in an international network that has been described as the Pharma Mafia, he is THE key advisor to WHO on influenza and is intimately positioned to personally profit from the billions of euros in vaccines allegedly aimed at H1N1.
Earlier this year the Second Chamber of the Netherland Parliament undertook an investigation into alleged conflicts of interest and financial improprieties of the well-known Dr. Osterhaus. Outside Holland and a mention at the time in the Dutch media, the only note of the sensational investigation into Osterhaus’ business affairs came in a tiny note in the respected British magazine, Science.
Osterhaus's credentials and expertise in his field were not in question. What is according to a short report published by the journal Science, are his links to corporate interests that stand to potentially profit from the swine flu pandemic. Science carried the following brief note in its October 16 2009 issue about Osterhaus:
" For the past 6 months, one could barely switch on the television in the Netherlands without seeing the face of famed virus hunter Albert Osterhaus talking about the swine flu pandemic. Or so it has seemed. Osterhaus, who runs an internationally renowned virus lab at Erasmus Medical Center, has been Mr. Flu. But last week, his reputation took a nosedive after it was alleged that he has been stoking pandemic fears to promote his own business interests in vaccine development.Last week, his reputation took a nosedive after it was alleged that he has been stoking pandemic fears to promote his own business interests in vaccine development. As Science went to press, the Dutch House of Representatives had even slated an emergency debate about the matter."1
On November 3, 2009 it appeared that Osterhaus emerged with at least the damage somewhat under control. An updated Science blog noted, “The House of Representatives of the Netherlands today rejected a motion asking the government to sever all ties with virologist Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, who had been accused of conflicts of interest in his role as a government adviser. But Dutch health minister Ab Klink, meanwhile, announced a "Sunshine Act" compelling scientists to disclose their financial ties to companies.” 2
The Minister, Ab Klink, reportedly a personal friend of Osterhaus,3 subsequently issued a statement on the ministry’s website, claiming that Osterhaus was but one of many scientific advisers to the ministry on vaccines for H1N1, and that the Ministry “knew” about the financial interests of Osterhaus.4 Nothing out of the ordinary, merely pursuit of science and public health so it seemed.
More careful investigation into the Osterhaus Affair suggests that the world-renowned Dutch Virologist may be at the very center of a multi-billion Euro pandemic fraud which has used human beings in effect as human guinea pigs with untested vaccines and in cases now emerging resulting in deaths or severe bodily paralysis or injury.
The ‘Bird Shit Hoax’
Albert Osterhaus is no small fish. He stands at the global nexus of every major virus panic of the past two decades from the mysterious SARS deaths in HongKong, where current WHO Director Margaret Chan got her start in her career as a local health official. According to his official bio at the European Commission, Osterhaus was engaged in April 2003, at the height of the panic over SARS (Severe Acquired Respiratory Syndrome) in Hong Kong. The EU report states, “he again showed his skill at moving fast to tackle a serious problem. Within three weeks he had proved that the disease was caused by a newly discovered coronavirus that resides in civet cats, other carnivorous animals or bats.” 5
Then Osterhaus moved on, this time publicizing dangers of what he claimed was H5N1 Avian Flu. In 1997 he already began sounding the alarm following the death in Hong Kong of a three-year-old who Osterhaus learned had had direct contact with birds. Osterhaus went into high gear lobbying across Holland and Europe claiming that a deadly new mutation of avian flu had jumped to humans and that drastic measures were required. He claimed to be the first scientist in the world to show that H5N1 could be transferred into humans. 6 In a BBC interview in October 2005 on the danger of Avian Flu, Osterhaus declared, “…if the virus manages indeed to, to mutate itself in such a way that it can transmit from human to human, then we have a completely different situation, we might be at the start of the pandemic.” He added, “there is a real chance that this virus could be trafficked by the birds all the way to Europe. There is a real risk, but nobody can estimate the risk at this moment, because we haven't done the experiments.”7 It never did manage to mutate, but he was ready to “do the experiments,” presumably for a hefty fee.
To bolster his frightening pandemic scenario, Osterhaus and his lab assistants in Rotterdam began assiduously assembling and freezing samples of, well, bird shit, in an attempt to build a more scientific argument. He claimed that at certain times of the year up to 30% of all European birds acted as carriers of the deadly avian virus, H5N1. He also claimed that farmers working with hens and chickens were then exposed. Osterhaus briefed journalists who dutifully noted his alarm. Politicians were alerted. He wrote papers proposing that the far away deaths in Asia from what he termed H5N1 were coming to Europe. He claimed that migratory birds were carrying the deadly new disease as far west as Rügen and Ukraine.8 Osterhaus’ Avian Flu alarm campaign really took off in 2003 when a Dutch veterinary doctor became ill and died. Osterhaus claimed the death was from H5N1. He convinced the Dutch government to order slaughter of millions of chickens. Yet no other infected persons died from the alleged H5N1. Osterhaus claimed that that was simply proof of the effectiveness of the preemptive slaughter campaign.9
Osterhaus claimed that bird feces were the source, via air bombardment or droppings, onto populations and birds below, of the spread of the deadly new Asian strain of H5N1. There was only one problem with the now voluminous frozen samples of diverse bird excrement he and his associated had collected and frozen at his institute. There was not one single confirmed example of H5N1 virus found in any of his samples. At a May 2006 Congress of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), Osterhaus and his Erasmus colleagues were forced to admit that in testing 100,000 samples of their assiduously saved bird feces, they had discovered not one single case of H5N1 virus. 10
At a WHO conference in Verona in 2008 titled “Avian influenza at the Human-Animal Interface,” in a presentation to scientific colleagues undoubtedly less impressed by appeals to pandemic emotion than the non-scientific public, Osterhaus admitted that “A proper risk assessment of H5N1 as the cause of a new pandemic cannot be made with the currently available information.” 11 By then, however, his sights were already firmly on other possible pandemic triggers to focus his vaccination activities.
Swine Flu and WHO corruption
When no mass wave of human deaths from Avian Flu materialized and after Roche, maker of Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline had banked billions of dollars in profits from worldwide government stockpiling of their dangerous and reportedly ineffective antiviral drugs, Tamiflu by Roche, and Relenza by GlaxoSmithKline, Osterhaus and other WHO advisers turned to other greener pastures.
By April 2009 their search seemed rewarded as a small Mexican village in Veracruz reported a case of a small child ill with what had been diagnosed as “Swine Flu” or H1N1. With indecent haste the propaganda apparatus of the World Health Organization in Geneva went into gear anth statements from the director-general Dr Margaret Chan, about a possible danger of a global pandemic. Chan made such irresponsible statements as declaring “a public health emergency of international concern.” 12 The further cases of outbreak at La Gloria Mexico were reported on one medical website as, “a ‘strange’ outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm.” 13
Notably those were symptoms which would make sense in terms of the proximity of one of the world’s largest pig industrial feeding concentrations at La Gloria owned by Smithfield Farms of the USA. Residents had picketed the Smithfield Farms site in Mexico for months complaining of severe respiratory problems from the fecal waste lagoons. That possible cause of the diseases in La Gloria apparently did not interest Osterhaus and his colleagues advising the WHO. The long-awaited “pandemic” that Osterhaus had predicted ever since his involvement with SARS in the Guandgong Province of China in 2003, was now finally at hand.
On June 11, 2009 Margaret Chan of WHO made the declaration of a Phase 6 “Pandemic Emergency” regarding the spread of H1N1 Influenza. Curiously in announcing she noted, “On present evidence, the overwhelming majority of patients experience mild symptoms and make a rapid and full recovery, often in the absence of any form of medical treatment.” She then added, ”Worldwide, the number of deaths is small…we do not expect to see a sudden and dramatic jump in the number of severe or fatal infections.”
It later was learned that Chan acted, following heated debates inside WHO, on the advice of the scientific advisory group of WHO, or SAGE, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts. One of the members of SAGE at the time and today was Dr. Albert “Mr Flu” Osterhaus. Not only was Osterhaus in a key position to advocate the panic-inducing WHO “Pandemic emergency” declaration. He was also chairman of the leading private European Scientific Working group on Influenza, which describes itself as a “multidisciplinary group of key opinion leaders in influenza [that] aims to combat the impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza.” Osterhaus’ ESWI is the vital link as they themselves describe it “between the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and the University of Connecticut, USA.”
What is more significant about the ESWI is that its work is entirely financed by the same pharma mafia companies that make billions on the pandemic emergency as governments around the world are compelled to buy and stockpile vaccines on declaration of a WHO Pandemic. The funders of ESWI include H1N1 vaccine maker Novartis, Tamiflu distributor, Hofmann-La Roche, Baxter Vaccines, MedImmune, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur and others.
Not to lose the point, the world-leading virologist, official adviser on H1N1 to the governments of the UK and Holland, Dr Albert Osterhaus, head of the Department of Virology at the Erasmus MC of Rotterdam, also sat on the WHO’s elite SAGE and served as chairman at the same time of the pharma industry-sponsored ESWI which urged dramatic steps to vaccinate the world against the grave danger of a new Pandemic they insisted could rival the feared 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
The Wall Street bank, JP Morgan estimated that in large part as a result of the WHO pandemic decision, the giant pharma firms that also finance Osterhaus’ ESWI work, stand to reap some €7.5 to €10 billion in profits. 14
A fellow member of WHO’s SAGE is Dr Frederick Hayden, of Britain’s Wellcome Trust and reportedly a close friend of Osterhaus. Hayden also receives money for “advisory” services from Roche and GlaxoSmithKline among other pharma giants involved in producing products related to the H1N1 panic.
Chairman of WHO’s SAGE is another British scientist, Prof. David Salisbury of the UK Department of Health. He also heads the WHO H1N1 Advisory Group. Salisbury is a robust defender of the pharma industry. He has been accused by UK health citizen health group One Click of covering up the proven links between vaccines and an explosive rise in infant autism as well as links between Gardasil and palsy and even death.15
Then on September 28, 2009 the same Salisbury stated, “Professor David Salisbury, the department of health’s director of immunisation, said: “There is a very clear view in the scientific community that there is no risk from the inclusion of Thiomersal.” The vaccine being used for H1N1 in Britain is primarily produced by GlaxoSmithKlilne and contains the mercury preservative Thiomersol. Because of growing evidence that Thiomersol in vaccines might be related to autism in children in the United States, in 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Public Health Service called for it to be removed from vaccines.16
Yet another SAGE member at WHO with intimate financial ties to the vaccine makers that benefit from SAGE’s recommendations to WHO is Dr. Arnold Monto, a paid consultant to vaccine maker MedImmune, Glaxo and ViroPharma.
Even more the meetings of the “independent” scientists of SAGE are attended by “observers” who include, yes, the very vaccine producers GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Baxter and company. In the past decade the WHO, in order to boost funds at its disposal entered into what it calls “public private partnerships.” Instead of receiving its funds solely from member United Nations governments as its original purpose had been, WHO today receives almost double its normal UN budget in the form of grants and financial support from private industry. The industry? The very drug and vaccine makers who benefit from decisions like the June 2009 H1N1 Pandemic emergency declaration. As the main financiers of the WHO bureaucracy, naturally the Pharma Mafia and their friends receive what has been called “open door red carpet treatment” in Geneva.17
In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine in Germany, epidemiologist Dr. Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Collaboration, an organization of independent scientists evaluating all flu related studies, noted the implications of the privatization of WHO and the commercialization of health:
“…one of the extraordinary features of this influenza -- and the whole influenza saga -- is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn't stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur. SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)? Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They've built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there's a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding...18 When asked if the WHO had deliberately declared the Pandemic Emergency in order to create a huge market for H1N1 vaccines and drugs, Jefferson replied,
“Don't you think there's something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic? The old definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn't have immunity, and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been dropped, and that's how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.”19
Conveniently enough, the WHO published the new Pandemic definition in April 2009 just in time to allow WHO, on advice of SAGE and others like Albert “Dr Flu” Osterhaus and David Salisbury, to declare the mild cases of flu dubbed H1N1 Influenza A to be declared Pandemic.20
In a relevant footnote, the Washington Post on December 8 in an article on the severity, or lack of same, of the world H1N1 „pandemic“ reported that “with the second wave of H1N1 infections having crested in the United States, leading epidemiologists are predicting that the pandemic could end up ranking as the mildest since modern medicine began documenting influenza outbreaks.” 21
Russian Parliamentarian and chairman of the Duma Health Committee, Igor Barinow has called on the Russian Representative to WHO in Geneva to order an official investigation into the growing evidence of massive corruption of the WHO by the pharmaceutical industry. “There are grave accusations of corruption within the WHO,” said Barinow. “An international commission of inquiry is urgently required.” 22
Endnotes:
1 Martin Enserink, In Holland, the Public Face of Flu Takes a Hit, Science, 16 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5951, pp. 350 – 351; DOI: 10.1126/science.326_350b.
2 Science, November 3, 2009, Roundup 11/3 The Brink Edition, accessed on ScienceMag.org.
3 Article from Dutch, De Farma maffia Deel 1 Osterhaus BV, 28 november 2009, accessed in Hetonderzoek.blogspot.com.
4 Ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport, Financiële belangen Osterhaus waren bekend Nieuwsbericht, 30 september 2009, accessed in Minvws.nl
5 European Commission, „Research“, Dr Albert Osterhaus, accessed in Ec.europa.eu
6 Ibid.
7 Jane Corbin, Interview with Dr Albert Osterhaus, BBC Panorama, 4 October, 2005.
8 Karin Steinberger, Vogelgrippe: Der Mann mit der Vogelperspektive, Seuddeutsche Zeitung, 20 October, 2005, accessed in Seuddeutsche.de.
9 Ibid.
10 Schweinegrippe—Geldgieriger Psychopath Auslöser der Pandemie?, accessed in Polskaweb.eu
11 Ab Osterhaus, External factors influencing H5N1 mutation/reassortment events with pandemic potential, OIE, 7-9 October 2008, Verona, Italy, accessed in Oie.int
12 WHO Health Advisory, April 2009, accessed in Swine-flu-vaccine.info/.
13 Biosurveillance, Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events, April 24, 2009, accessed in Biosurveillance.typepad.com.
14 Cited in Louise Voller, Kristian Villesen, Stærk lobbyisme bag WHO-beslutning om massevaccination , Information, Copenhagen, 15 November 2009 accessed in . Information.dk/215355.
15 Jane Bryant, et al, The One Click Group Response: Prof. David Salisbury Threatens Legal Action, 4 March, 2009, accessed in Theoneclickgroup.co.uk.
16 Prof. David Salisbury cited in, Swine flu vaccine to contain axed additive, London Evening Standard, 28 September 2009, accessed in . Gulf-times.com
17 Bert Ehgartner, Schwindel mit der Schweinegrippe Ist die Aufregung ein Coup der Pharmaindustrie? Accessed in Profil.at.
18 Tom Jefferson, Interview with Epidemiologist Tom Jefferson: 'A Whole Industry Is Waiting For A Pandemic' Der Spiegel, 21 July 2009, accessed in Spiegel.de.
19 Ibid.
20 Louise Voller, Kristian Villesen, Mystisk ændring af WHO's definition af en pandemi,Copenhagen Information, 15 November 2009, accessed in Information.dk/215341.
21 Rob Stein, Flu Pandemic Could Be Mild, Washington Post, December 8, 2009.
22 Polskanet, Russland fordert internationale Untersuchung, 5 December 2009, accessed in Polskaweb.eu
By F. William Engdahl
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net
===
Interesting Reading.
Still looking for a reason why the WHO let this virus circulate world wide. If one may recall there was a chance to slow it down out of Mexico by enforcing travel restrictions. Then another chance before the USA exported it globally, the another chance to slow the spread thorough a more restrictive school policy.
It appeared to many who've been watching this from the beginning there seemed to be a concentrated effort to expand the reach of the virus, not contain it.
WHO knows - maybe another whistle blower, leak or hack will surface.
====
.
.
Politics / Global Pandemic Dec 08, 2009 - 02:08 PM
By: F_William_Engdahl
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article15655.html
The man with the nickname “Dr Flu”, Professor Albert Osterhaus, of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam Holland has been named by Dutch media researchers as the person at the center of the worldwide Swine Flu H1N1 Influenza A 2009 pandemic hysteria. Not only is Osterhaus the connecting person in an international network that has been described as the Pharma Mafia, he is THE key advisor to WHO on influenza and is intimately positioned to personally profit from the billions of euros in vaccines allegedly aimed at H1N1.
Earlier this year the Second Chamber of the Netherland Parliament undertook an investigation into alleged conflicts of interest and financial improprieties of the well-known Dr. Osterhaus. Outside Holland and a mention at the time in the Dutch media, the only note of the sensational investigation into Osterhaus’ business affairs came in a tiny note in the respected British magazine, Science.
Osterhaus's credentials and expertise in his field were not in question. What is according to a short report published by the journal Science, are his links to corporate interests that stand to potentially profit from the swine flu pandemic. Science carried the following brief note in its October 16 2009 issue about Osterhaus:
" For the past 6 months, one could barely switch on the television in the Netherlands without seeing the face of famed virus hunter Albert Osterhaus talking about the swine flu pandemic. Or so it has seemed. Osterhaus, who runs an internationally renowned virus lab at Erasmus Medical Center, has been Mr. Flu. But last week, his reputation took a nosedive after it was alleged that he has been stoking pandemic fears to promote his own business interests in vaccine development.Last week, his reputation took a nosedive after it was alleged that he has been stoking pandemic fears to promote his own business interests in vaccine development. As Science went to press, the Dutch House of Representatives had even slated an emergency debate about the matter."1
On November 3, 2009 it appeared that Osterhaus emerged with at least the damage somewhat under control. An updated Science blog noted, “The House of Representatives of the Netherlands today rejected a motion asking the government to sever all ties with virologist Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, who had been accused of conflicts of interest in his role as a government adviser. But Dutch health minister Ab Klink, meanwhile, announced a "Sunshine Act" compelling scientists to disclose their financial ties to companies.” 2
The Minister, Ab Klink, reportedly a personal friend of Osterhaus,3 subsequently issued a statement on the ministry’s website, claiming that Osterhaus was but one of many scientific advisers to the ministry on vaccines for H1N1, and that the Ministry “knew” about the financial interests of Osterhaus.4 Nothing out of the ordinary, merely pursuit of science and public health so it seemed.
More careful investigation into the Osterhaus Affair suggests that the world-renowned Dutch Virologist may be at the very center of a multi-billion Euro pandemic fraud which has used human beings in effect as human guinea pigs with untested vaccines and in cases now emerging resulting in deaths or severe bodily paralysis or injury.
The ‘Bird Shit Hoax’
Albert Osterhaus is no small fish. He stands at the global nexus of every major virus panic of the past two decades from the mysterious SARS deaths in HongKong, where current WHO Director Margaret Chan got her start in her career as a local health official. According to his official bio at the European Commission, Osterhaus was engaged in April 2003, at the height of the panic over SARS (Severe Acquired Respiratory Syndrome) in Hong Kong. The EU report states, “he again showed his skill at moving fast to tackle a serious problem. Within three weeks he had proved that the disease was caused by a newly discovered coronavirus that resides in civet cats, other carnivorous animals or bats.” 5
Then Osterhaus moved on, this time publicizing dangers of what he claimed was H5N1 Avian Flu. In 1997 he already began sounding the alarm following the death in Hong Kong of a three-year-old who Osterhaus learned had had direct contact with birds. Osterhaus went into high gear lobbying across Holland and Europe claiming that a deadly new mutation of avian flu had jumped to humans and that drastic measures were required. He claimed to be the first scientist in the world to show that H5N1 could be transferred into humans. 6 In a BBC interview in October 2005 on the danger of Avian Flu, Osterhaus declared, “…if the virus manages indeed to, to mutate itself in such a way that it can transmit from human to human, then we have a completely different situation, we might be at the start of the pandemic.” He added, “there is a real chance that this virus could be trafficked by the birds all the way to Europe. There is a real risk, but nobody can estimate the risk at this moment, because we haven't done the experiments.”7 It never did manage to mutate, but he was ready to “do the experiments,” presumably for a hefty fee.
To bolster his frightening pandemic scenario, Osterhaus and his lab assistants in Rotterdam began assiduously assembling and freezing samples of, well, bird shit, in an attempt to build a more scientific argument. He claimed that at certain times of the year up to 30% of all European birds acted as carriers of the deadly avian virus, H5N1. He also claimed that farmers working with hens and chickens were then exposed. Osterhaus briefed journalists who dutifully noted his alarm. Politicians were alerted. He wrote papers proposing that the far away deaths in Asia from what he termed H5N1 were coming to Europe. He claimed that migratory birds were carrying the deadly new disease as far west as Rügen and Ukraine.8 Osterhaus’ Avian Flu alarm campaign really took off in 2003 when a Dutch veterinary doctor became ill and died. Osterhaus claimed the death was from H5N1. He convinced the Dutch government to order slaughter of millions of chickens. Yet no other infected persons died from the alleged H5N1. Osterhaus claimed that that was simply proof of the effectiveness of the preemptive slaughter campaign.9
Osterhaus claimed that bird feces were the source, via air bombardment or droppings, onto populations and birds below, of the spread of the deadly new Asian strain of H5N1. There was only one problem with the now voluminous frozen samples of diverse bird excrement he and his associated had collected and frozen at his institute. There was not one single confirmed example of H5N1 virus found in any of his samples. At a May 2006 Congress of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), Osterhaus and his Erasmus colleagues were forced to admit that in testing 100,000 samples of their assiduously saved bird feces, they had discovered not one single case of H5N1 virus. 10
At a WHO conference in Verona in 2008 titled “Avian influenza at the Human-Animal Interface,” in a presentation to scientific colleagues undoubtedly less impressed by appeals to pandemic emotion than the non-scientific public, Osterhaus admitted that “A proper risk assessment of H5N1 as the cause of a new pandemic cannot be made with the currently available information.” 11 By then, however, his sights were already firmly on other possible pandemic triggers to focus his vaccination activities.
Swine Flu and WHO corruption
When no mass wave of human deaths from Avian Flu materialized and after Roche, maker of Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline had banked billions of dollars in profits from worldwide government stockpiling of their dangerous and reportedly ineffective antiviral drugs, Tamiflu by Roche, and Relenza by GlaxoSmithKline, Osterhaus and other WHO advisers turned to other greener pastures.
By April 2009 their search seemed rewarded as a small Mexican village in Veracruz reported a case of a small child ill with what had been diagnosed as “Swine Flu” or H1N1. With indecent haste the propaganda apparatus of the World Health Organization in Geneva went into gear anth statements from the director-general Dr Margaret Chan, about a possible danger of a global pandemic. Chan made such irresponsible statements as declaring “a public health emergency of international concern.” 12 The further cases of outbreak at La Gloria Mexico were reported on one medical website as, “a ‘strange’ outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm.” 13
Notably those were symptoms which would make sense in terms of the proximity of one of the world’s largest pig industrial feeding concentrations at La Gloria owned by Smithfield Farms of the USA. Residents had picketed the Smithfield Farms site in Mexico for months complaining of severe respiratory problems from the fecal waste lagoons. That possible cause of the diseases in La Gloria apparently did not interest Osterhaus and his colleagues advising the WHO. The long-awaited “pandemic” that Osterhaus had predicted ever since his involvement with SARS in the Guandgong Province of China in 2003, was now finally at hand.
On June 11, 2009 Margaret Chan of WHO made the declaration of a Phase 6 “Pandemic Emergency” regarding the spread of H1N1 Influenza. Curiously in announcing she noted, “On present evidence, the overwhelming majority of patients experience mild symptoms and make a rapid and full recovery, often in the absence of any form of medical treatment.” She then added, ”Worldwide, the number of deaths is small…we do not expect to see a sudden and dramatic jump in the number of severe or fatal infections.”
It later was learned that Chan acted, following heated debates inside WHO, on the advice of the scientific advisory group of WHO, or SAGE, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts. One of the members of SAGE at the time and today was Dr. Albert “Mr Flu” Osterhaus. Not only was Osterhaus in a key position to advocate the panic-inducing WHO “Pandemic emergency” declaration. He was also chairman of the leading private European Scientific Working group on Influenza, which describes itself as a “multidisciplinary group of key opinion leaders in influenza [that] aims to combat the impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza.” Osterhaus’ ESWI is the vital link as they themselves describe it “between the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and the University of Connecticut, USA.”
What is more significant about the ESWI is that its work is entirely financed by the same pharma mafia companies that make billions on the pandemic emergency as governments around the world are compelled to buy and stockpile vaccines on declaration of a WHO Pandemic. The funders of ESWI include H1N1 vaccine maker Novartis, Tamiflu distributor, Hofmann-La Roche, Baxter Vaccines, MedImmune, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur and others.
Not to lose the point, the world-leading virologist, official adviser on H1N1 to the governments of the UK and Holland, Dr Albert Osterhaus, head of the Department of Virology at the Erasmus MC of Rotterdam, also sat on the WHO’s elite SAGE and served as chairman at the same time of the pharma industry-sponsored ESWI which urged dramatic steps to vaccinate the world against the grave danger of a new Pandemic they insisted could rival the feared 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
The Wall Street bank, JP Morgan estimated that in large part as a result of the WHO pandemic decision, the giant pharma firms that also finance Osterhaus’ ESWI work, stand to reap some €7.5 to €10 billion in profits. 14
A fellow member of WHO’s SAGE is Dr Frederick Hayden, of Britain’s Wellcome Trust and reportedly a close friend of Osterhaus. Hayden also receives money for “advisory” services from Roche and GlaxoSmithKline among other pharma giants involved in producing products related to the H1N1 panic.
Chairman of WHO’s SAGE is another British scientist, Prof. David Salisbury of the UK Department of Health. He also heads the WHO H1N1 Advisory Group. Salisbury is a robust defender of the pharma industry. He has been accused by UK health citizen health group One Click of covering up the proven links between vaccines and an explosive rise in infant autism as well as links between Gardasil and palsy and even death.15
Then on September 28, 2009 the same Salisbury stated, “Professor David Salisbury, the department of health’s director of immunisation, said: “There is a very clear view in the scientific community that there is no risk from the inclusion of Thiomersal.” The vaccine being used for H1N1 in Britain is primarily produced by GlaxoSmithKlilne and contains the mercury preservative Thiomersol. Because of growing evidence that Thiomersol in vaccines might be related to autism in children in the United States, in 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Public Health Service called for it to be removed from vaccines.16
Yet another SAGE member at WHO with intimate financial ties to the vaccine makers that benefit from SAGE’s recommendations to WHO is Dr. Arnold Monto, a paid consultant to vaccine maker MedImmune, Glaxo and ViroPharma.
Even more the meetings of the “independent” scientists of SAGE are attended by “observers” who include, yes, the very vaccine producers GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Baxter and company. In the past decade the WHO, in order to boost funds at its disposal entered into what it calls “public private partnerships.” Instead of receiving its funds solely from member United Nations governments as its original purpose had been, WHO today receives almost double its normal UN budget in the form of grants and financial support from private industry. The industry? The very drug and vaccine makers who benefit from decisions like the June 2009 H1N1 Pandemic emergency declaration. As the main financiers of the WHO bureaucracy, naturally the Pharma Mafia and their friends receive what has been called “open door red carpet treatment” in Geneva.17
In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine in Germany, epidemiologist Dr. Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Collaboration, an organization of independent scientists evaluating all flu related studies, noted the implications of the privatization of WHO and the commercialization of health:
“…one of the extraordinary features of this influenza -- and the whole influenza saga -- is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn't stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur. SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)? Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They've built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there's a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding...18 When asked if the WHO had deliberately declared the Pandemic Emergency in order to create a huge market for H1N1 vaccines and drugs, Jefferson replied,
“Don't you think there's something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic? The old definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn't have immunity, and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been dropped, and that's how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.”19
Conveniently enough, the WHO published the new Pandemic definition in April 2009 just in time to allow WHO, on advice of SAGE and others like Albert “Dr Flu” Osterhaus and David Salisbury, to declare the mild cases of flu dubbed H1N1 Influenza A to be declared Pandemic.20
In a relevant footnote, the Washington Post on December 8 in an article on the severity, or lack of same, of the world H1N1 „pandemic“ reported that “with the second wave of H1N1 infections having crested in the United States, leading epidemiologists are predicting that the pandemic could end up ranking as the mildest since modern medicine began documenting influenza outbreaks.” 21
Russian Parliamentarian and chairman of the Duma Health Committee, Igor Barinow has called on the Russian Representative to WHO in Geneva to order an official investigation into the growing evidence of massive corruption of the WHO by the pharmaceutical industry. “There are grave accusations of corruption within the WHO,” said Barinow. “An international commission of inquiry is urgently required.” 22
Endnotes:
1 Martin Enserink, In Holland, the Public Face of Flu Takes a Hit, Science, 16 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5951, pp. 350 – 351; DOI: 10.1126/science.326_350b.
2 Science, November 3, 2009, Roundup 11/3 The Brink Edition, accessed on ScienceMag.org.
3 Article from Dutch, De Farma maffia Deel 1 Osterhaus BV, 28 november 2009, accessed in Hetonderzoek.blogspot.com.
4 Ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport, Financiële belangen Osterhaus waren bekend Nieuwsbericht, 30 september 2009, accessed in Minvws.nl
5 European Commission, „Research“, Dr Albert Osterhaus, accessed in Ec.europa.eu
6 Ibid.
7 Jane Corbin, Interview with Dr Albert Osterhaus, BBC Panorama, 4 October, 2005.
8 Karin Steinberger, Vogelgrippe: Der Mann mit der Vogelperspektive, Seuddeutsche Zeitung, 20 October, 2005, accessed in Seuddeutsche.de.
9 Ibid.
10 Schweinegrippe—Geldgieriger Psychopath Auslöser der Pandemie?, accessed in Polskaweb.eu
11 Ab Osterhaus, External factors influencing H5N1 mutation/reassortment events with pandemic potential, OIE, 7-9 October 2008, Verona, Italy, accessed in Oie.int
12 WHO Health Advisory, April 2009, accessed in Swine-flu-vaccine.info/.
13 Biosurveillance, Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events, April 24, 2009, accessed in Biosurveillance.typepad.com.
14 Cited in Louise Voller, Kristian Villesen, Stærk lobbyisme bag WHO-beslutning om massevaccination , Information, Copenhagen, 15 November 2009 accessed in . Information.dk/215355.
15 Jane Bryant, et al, The One Click Group Response: Prof. David Salisbury Threatens Legal Action, 4 March, 2009, accessed in Theoneclickgroup.co.uk.
16 Prof. David Salisbury cited in, Swine flu vaccine to contain axed additive, London Evening Standard, 28 September 2009, accessed in . Gulf-times.com
17 Bert Ehgartner, Schwindel mit der Schweinegrippe Ist die Aufregung ein Coup der Pharmaindustrie? Accessed in Profil.at.
18 Tom Jefferson, Interview with Epidemiologist Tom Jefferson: 'A Whole Industry Is Waiting For A Pandemic' Der Spiegel, 21 July 2009, accessed in Spiegel.de.
19 Ibid.
20 Louise Voller, Kristian Villesen, Mystisk ændring af WHO's definition af en pandemi,Copenhagen Information, 15 November 2009, accessed in Information.dk/215341.
21 Rob Stein, Flu Pandemic Could Be Mild, Washington Post, December 8, 2009.
22 Polskanet, Russland fordert internationale Untersuchung, 5 December 2009, accessed in Polskaweb.eu
By F. William Engdahl
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net
===
Interesting Reading.
Still looking for a reason why the WHO let this virus circulate world wide. If one may recall there was a chance to slow it down out of Mexico by enforcing travel restrictions. Then another chance before the USA exported it globally, the another chance to slow the spread thorough a more restrictive school policy.
It appeared to many who've been watching this from the beginning there seemed to be a concentrated effort to expand the reach of the virus, not contain it.
WHO knows - maybe another whistle blower, leak or hack will surface.
====
.
.
BlueNewton
Membership Revoked
I am not convinced that Tamiflu is not effective, as effective as elderberry, perhaps, fi it is given early enough. That is the key. We have heard a lot of stories about how Tamiflu is not started until the patient is already so sick that they have to be checked into the hospital and put on a respirator. The guidelines required only giving it to very sick people. So, automatically, the guidelines called for improper prescription and would have rendered it rather ineffective.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Fatal Tamiflu Resistance in Delaware
Recombinomics Commentary 17:05
December 9, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12090902/H274Y_DE.html
The above comments describe another fatal case of H1N1 swine flu in the United States. The Delaware case follows reports of clusters at the Duke Medical Center in North Carolina, a Virginia/Maryland cluster involving at least two patients at Johns Hopkins, and two cases in eastern Pennsylvania. These individual geographic clusters create one large cluster in the east coast since all states involved are contiguous.
Recent reports of resistance signaled the crossing of a tipping point. Human to human transmission was noted at Duke and Wales and WHO warned of a recent spike in cases. Similarly, the report rate by the CDC in the past three weeks is almost 10 fold higher than the prior weeks in the current season.
However, this explosion of cases has also been associated with fatalities, raising concerns that not only was the H1N1 with H274Y efficiently transmitted, but that it was lethal. At Duke the epidemiology supported human to human transmission and three of the four cases died, raising concerns that the H1N1 was more lethal. The Delaware case raises the number of fatal outcomes for the 10 recent cases to four. Similarly, the Netherlands has just reports its their fatality in six recent cases with H274Y, and France has indicated that one of the two fatal cases with D225G was also resistant.
The association of H274Y with a receptor binding domain change at position 225 was been reported previously. The first case of H274Y with associated Tamiflu treatment had D225E and a second cases with H274Y and D225E has recently been seen in Tennessee.
Thus, concerns that the transmission of H274Y has passed a tipping has been increased by the association of receptor binding domain changes with resistance as well as a trend toward fatal outcomes in these cases.
===
.
Recombinomics Commentary 17:05
December 9, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12090902/H274Y_DE.html
The above comments describe another fatal case of H1N1 swine flu in the United States. The Delaware case follows reports of clusters at the Duke Medical Center in North Carolina, a Virginia/Maryland cluster involving at least two patients at Johns Hopkins, and two cases in eastern Pennsylvania. These individual geographic clusters create one large cluster in the east coast since all states involved are contiguous.
Recent reports of resistance signaled the crossing of a tipping point. Human to human transmission was noted at Duke and Wales and WHO warned of a recent spike in cases. Similarly, the report rate by the CDC in the past three weeks is almost 10 fold higher than the prior weeks in the current season.
However, this explosion of cases has also been associated with fatalities, raising concerns that not only was the H1N1 with H274Y efficiently transmitted, but that it was lethal. At Duke the epidemiology supported human to human transmission and three of the four cases died, raising concerns that the H1N1 was more lethal. The Delaware case raises the number of fatal outcomes for the 10 recent cases to four. Similarly, the Netherlands has just reports its their fatality in six recent cases with H274Y, and France has indicated that one of the two fatal cases with D225G was also resistant.
The association of H274Y with a receptor binding domain change at position 225 was been reported previously. The first case of H274Y with associated Tamiflu treatment had D225E and a second cases with H274Y and D225E has recently been seen in Tennessee.
Thus, concerns that the transmission of H274Y has passed a tipping has been increased by the association of receptor binding domain changes with resistance as well as a trend toward fatal outcomes in these cases.
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
H5N1 H1N1 Cluster in Dien Bien Vietnam
Recombinomics Commentary 03:52
December 10, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12100902/H5N1_H1N1_Dien_Bien.html
The above translation suggests a family in Dien Bien, Vietnam has tested positive for H5N1 and H1N1. Poultry belonging to the family has also tested positive for H5N1.
Vietnam represents a hot zone where H1N1 and H5N1 are co-circulating. H1N1 is very promiscuous and has been isolated from a variety of mammalian species as well as turkeys. Thus, Vietnam would offer an environment for co-infections in a wide range of host including human.
===
.
Recombinomics Commentary 03:52
December 10, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12100902/H5N1_H1N1_Dien_Bien.html
The above translation suggests a family in Dien Bien, Vietnam has tested positive for H5N1 and H1N1. Poultry belonging to the family has also tested positive for H5N1.
Vietnam represents a hot zone where H1N1 and H5N1 are co-circulating. H1N1 is very promiscuous and has been isolated from a variety of mammalian species as well as turkeys. Thus, Vietnam would offer an environment for co-infections in a wide range of host including human.
===
.
BlueNewton
Membership Revoked
Well, it had to happen, didn't it? Let's hope they didn't combine and spread.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Oregon
Second Oregon cat dies after catching swine flu from its owner
By Lynne Terry, The Oregonian
December 09, 2009, 7:17PM
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/12/second_oregon_cat_dies_after_c.html
Various diseases in animals have long been a threat to humans. Take rabies, for example, or West Nile virus. Animals carrying salmonella and E. coli also can infect humans.
But with swine flu, veterinarians are seeing a relatively rare phenomenon: The transmission is going the other way.
And in Oregon, that has proved fatal.
Emilio DeBess, public health veterinarian, announced that a cat died on the Oregon coast after catching the H1N1 virus from its owner.
This is the second death of a cat from swine flu in Oregon, and the second nationwide.
"It's interesting that it's being passed from humans to animals," DeBess said. "We've had two cats, and both of them have died. Are cats more sensitive to H1N1? That's the question that has to be looked into."
DeBess is working with researchers at the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Oregon State University in hopes of unveiling clues about why cats might be susceptible to the virus.
The lab, which has run H1N1 tests on nasal swabs from potentially infected pets, will be studying the lung tissue from the two Oregon cats.
In the first case, a cat died Nov. 7 in Lebanon.It got sick about a week after a child in the household came down with swine flu. The second cat, which caught the H1N1 virus from its owner on the coast, died Nov. 24.
That cat, an 8-year-old spayed female, had a history of allergies and chronic sinusitis, possibly making it more susceptible to the virus.
Pet cats in Pennsylvania, Utah, Colorado, Iowa and France have also developed swine flu from their owners, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Just as in human transmission of the flu virus, people pass H1N1 to cats through close contact. At least four pet ferrets in Oregon came down with the virus after people in their households became sick, and one ferret in Nebraska died.
So far, no dogs in the U.S. have been diagnosed with swine flu. Chinese authorities have reported two canine cases in Beijing, but the AVMA has not been able to confirm them.
"It may be that dogs are more resistant to the virus," said Kim May, a veterinarian with the AVMA.
The organization has confirmed cases of farm animals catching swine flu. Pigs in herds around the globe -- from Ireland to Indonesia to Argentina to the U.S. -- have become infected along with turkeys in Chile, Canada and the U.S. Even a cheetah living on a wildlife preserve in Northern California tested positive for H1N1. Scientists are not sure how the cheetah became infected.
While the AVMA continues to document cases, little is known about transmission of the virus from humans to animals.
DeBess said that more is known about human-to-animal transmission of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which is a staph infection often associated with hospitals.
Kim May, a veterinarian with the AVMA, said that a number of dogs and cats have gotten MRSA from their owners in the past decade.
MRSA can be transmitted through skin contact -- but H1N1 is a respiratory ailment.
"If a person has some sort of bacteria on their skin, they could pass it on," May said. "But viruses are less likely to do that. They usually adapt to one species and stick to it."
There is one other virus known to have spread among species -- so-called avian flu. Both people and birds have come down with H5N1, as have pet cats.
But there have been no cases in the U.S., which has yet to see an H5N1 infection in any species.
As for H1N1, the virus appears to be waning in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But DeBess still advises pet owners to wash their hands frequently, especially if they are sick.
If a pet comes down with flulike symptoms, take it to a veterinarian. And don't panic. So far, relatively few cats and ferrets have gotten sick.
It's not clear why Oregon has seen the only feline deaths, but it may be related to an extensive reporting network set up by DeBess.
No cases of animal-to-human transmission of the H1N1 virus have been recorded either.
"There's been no sign of cats or animals passing it back to people," said Michael San Filippo, spokesman for the AVMA. "It seems like this is all coming from humans to animals, not the other way around. We can't say it's impossible, but we've not seen it yet."
Lynne Terry
===
.
Second Oregon cat dies after catching swine flu from its owner
By Lynne Terry, The Oregonian
December 09, 2009, 7:17PM
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/12/second_oregon_cat_dies_after_c.html
Various diseases in animals have long been a threat to humans. Take rabies, for example, or West Nile virus. Animals carrying salmonella and E. coli also can infect humans.
But with swine flu, veterinarians are seeing a relatively rare phenomenon: The transmission is going the other way.
And in Oregon, that has proved fatal.
Emilio DeBess, public health veterinarian, announced that a cat died on the Oregon coast after catching the H1N1 virus from its owner.
This is the second death of a cat from swine flu in Oregon, and the second nationwide.
"It's interesting that it's being passed from humans to animals," DeBess said. "We've had two cats, and both of them have died. Are cats more sensitive to H1N1? That's the question that has to be looked into."
DeBess is working with researchers at the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Oregon State University in hopes of unveiling clues about why cats might be susceptible to the virus.
The lab, which has run H1N1 tests on nasal swabs from potentially infected pets, will be studying the lung tissue from the two Oregon cats.
In the first case, a cat died Nov. 7 in Lebanon.It got sick about a week after a child in the household came down with swine flu. The second cat, which caught the H1N1 virus from its owner on the coast, died Nov. 24.
That cat, an 8-year-old spayed female, had a history of allergies and chronic sinusitis, possibly making it more susceptible to the virus.
Pet cats in Pennsylvania, Utah, Colorado, Iowa and France have also developed swine flu from their owners, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Just as in human transmission of the flu virus, people pass H1N1 to cats through close contact. At least four pet ferrets in Oregon came down with the virus after people in their households became sick, and one ferret in Nebraska died.
So far, no dogs in the U.S. have been diagnosed with swine flu. Chinese authorities have reported two canine cases in Beijing, but the AVMA has not been able to confirm them.
"It may be that dogs are more resistant to the virus," said Kim May, a veterinarian with the AVMA.
The organization has confirmed cases of farm animals catching swine flu. Pigs in herds around the globe -- from Ireland to Indonesia to Argentina to the U.S. -- have become infected along with turkeys in Chile, Canada and the U.S. Even a cheetah living on a wildlife preserve in Northern California tested positive for H1N1. Scientists are not sure how the cheetah became infected.
While the AVMA continues to document cases, little is known about transmission of the virus from humans to animals.
DeBess said that more is known about human-to-animal transmission of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which is a staph infection often associated with hospitals.
Kim May, a veterinarian with the AVMA, said that a number of dogs and cats have gotten MRSA from their owners in the past decade.
MRSA can be transmitted through skin contact -- but H1N1 is a respiratory ailment.
"If a person has some sort of bacteria on their skin, they could pass it on," May said. "But viruses are less likely to do that. They usually adapt to one species and stick to it."
There is one other virus known to have spread among species -- so-called avian flu. Both people and birds have come down with H5N1, as have pet cats.
But there have been no cases in the U.S., which has yet to see an H5N1 infection in any species.
As for H1N1, the virus appears to be waning in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But DeBess still advises pet owners to wash their hands frequently, especially if they are sick.
If a pet comes down with flulike symptoms, take it to a veterinarian. And don't panic. So far, relatively few cats and ferrets have gotten sick.
It's not clear why Oregon has seen the only feline deaths, but it may be related to an extensive reporting network set up by DeBess.
No cases of animal-to-human transmission of the H1N1 virus have been recorded either.
"There's been no sign of cats or animals passing it back to people," said Michael San Filippo, spokesman for the AVMA. "It seems like this is all coming from humans to animals, not the other way around. We can't say it's impossible, but we've not seen it yet."
Lynne Terry
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Ohio
Flu victim 'knew he was going to die,' widow says
By Mary McCarty, Staff writer Updated 11:16 PM Wednesday, December 9, 2009
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news...ew-he-was-going-to-die-widow-says-441561.html
Like most people, Michelle Thornsberry believed the H1N1 virus posed little threat to healthy adults.
She brushed it off when her husband, Mike, suggested his persistent cough might be the swine flu.
“Don’t say that!” she said. Several tests for the virus came back negative.
On Sunday, Oct. 25, the 38-year-old Preble County sheriff’s captain staggered into the living room complaining that he couldn’t breathe.
“Do you want me to call a squad?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied — and that’s when she knew it was bad. Mike Thornsberry was a cop’s cop, a stoic person who resisted doctor’s visits.
He was taken by ambulance to Reid Hospital in Richmond, Ind. Michelle sat dazed as ER doctors placed him on a ventilator.
“I love you, and you’re going to be OK,” she said.
He nodded, she said, “But I think he knew he was going to die.” Thornsberry was flown to Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis, where he was diagnosed with viral and bacterial pneumonia and the H1N1 virus — after four negative tests for the swine flu.
“For the first four days, he would raise his eyebrows when I told him I loved him,” Michelle said. “After that, nothing. I would sit by his side and hold his hand. One time I told him, ‘This is just like being at home, with me doing all the talking.’ ”
It seemed unreal that her husband of 17 years — who seemed afflicted by nothing worse than a bad cold — could be near death.
“Here he’s a big, strong, healthy man, 38 years old, lying there helpless,” she recalled.
Thornsberry died Nov. 6 — after appearing stable enough for Michelle to spend a “mommy-daughter” day with their 5-year-old daughter, Allie Grace.
When she got the word that he was slipping away, she prayed, “Don’t let him die until I get there.”
She arrived with seconds to spare.
“God still answers prayers,” she said. “There were two things I asked God: Don’t make me make the decision to turn off life support, and please don’t make him suffer. I never had to make that call. He’s not suffering. God did heal him.”
Michelle is grateful for the outpouring from the community and from the Preble County Sheriff’s Department, where Thornsberry had worked for 15 years. His co-workers put a new roof on the couple’s New Paris home because Mike had mentioned recently that he planned to do that.
Strangers have donated money to help pay the family’s bills and to contribute to an education fund for Allie. The kids at the Preble County YMCA, where Thornsberry worked the popular monthly “slam jam” party, raised money for the family.
“It’s touching how many people care,” Michelle said. “They’re taking money out of their pockets and giving it to my family.”
The staff of the Preble County Sheriff’s Department was vaccinated after Thornsberry’s hospitalization. Sheriff Mike Simpson believes that law enforcement officers and emergency personnel should be on the Center for Disease Control’s “priority list” for the vaccine.
The list currently includes pregnant women, parents of infants, health care workers and EMS personnel and people with medical conditions.
“We don’t know how Mike contracted the virus, but getting the vaccine certainly would have helped his chances,” Simpson said.
Thornsberry’s widow hopes the public stops treating the swine flu like a punch line.
“Pay attention to the signs and symptoms.” Michelle urged. “Don’t assume it will just go away. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how healthy you are — it’s very real. But we didn’t realize it until it was too late.”
Share your condolences
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty@Dayton DailyNews.com.
===
.
Flu victim 'knew he was going to die,' widow says
By Mary McCarty, Staff writer Updated 11:16 PM Wednesday, December 9, 2009
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news...ew-he-was-going-to-die-widow-says-441561.html
Like most people, Michelle Thornsberry believed the H1N1 virus posed little threat to healthy adults.
She brushed it off when her husband, Mike, suggested his persistent cough might be the swine flu.
“Don’t say that!” she said. Several tests for the virus came back negative.
On Sunday, Oct. 25, the 38-year-old Preble County sheriff’s captain staggered into the living room complaining that he couldn’t breathe.
“Do you want me to call a squad?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied — and that’s when she knew it was bad. Mike Thornsberry was a cop’s cop, a stoic person who resisted doctor’s visits.
He was taken by ambulance to Reid Hospital in Richmond, Ind. Michelle sat dazed as ER doctors placed him on a ventilator.
“I love you, and you’re going to be OK,” she said.
He nodded, she said, “But I think he knew he was going to die.” Thornsberry was flown to Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis, where he was diagnosed with viral and bacterial pneumonia and the H1N1 virus — after four negative tests for the swine flu.
“For the first four days, he would raise his eyebrows when I told him I loved him,” Michelle said. “After that, nothing. I would sit by his side and hold his hand. One time I told him, ‘This is just like being at home, with me doing all the talking.’ ”
It seemed unreal that her husband of 17 years — who seemed afflicted by nothing worse than a bad cold — could be near death.
“Here he’s a big, strong, healthy man, 38 years old, lying there helpless,” she recalled.
Thornsberry died Nov. 6 — after appearing stable enough for Michelle to spend a “mommy-daughter” day with their 5-year-old daughter, Allie Grace.
When she got the word that he was slipping away, she prayed, “Don’t let him die until I get there.”
She arrived with seconds to spare.
“God still answers prayers,” she said. “There were two things I asked God: Don’t make me make the decision to turn off life support, and please don’t make him suffer. I never had to make that call. He’s not suffering. God did heal him.”
Michelle is grateful for the outpouring from the community and from the Preble County Sheriff’s Department, where Thornsberry had worked for 15 years. His co-workers put a new roof on the couple’s New Paris home because Mike had mentioned recently that he planned to do that.
Strangers have donated money to help pay the family’s bills and to contribute to an education fund for Allie. The kids at the Preble County YMCA, where Thornsberry worked the popular monthly “slam jam” party, raised money for the family.
“It’s touching how many people care,” Michelle said. “They’re taking money out of their pockets and giving it to my family.”
The staff of the Preble County Sheriff’s Department was vaccinated after Thornsberry’s hospitalization. Sheriff Mike Simpson believes that law enforcement officers and emergency personnel should be on the Center for Disease Control’s “priority list” for the vaccine.
The list currently includes pregnant women, parents of infants, health care workers and EMS personnel and people with medical conditions.
“We don’t know how Mike contracted the virus, but getting the vaccine certainly would have helped his chances,” Simpson said.
Thornsberry’s widow hopes the public stops treating the swine flu like a punch line.
“Pay attention to the signs and symptoms.” Michelle urged. “Don’t assume it will just go away. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how healthy you are — it’s very real. But we didn’t realize it until it was too late.”
Share your condolences
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty@Dayton DailyNews.com.
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
New Jersey
N.J. reports three more swine flu deaths
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
BY LINDY WASHBURN
The Record
STAFF WRITER
http://www.northjersey.com/news/120909_NJ_reports_three_more_swine_flu_deaths.html
Swine flu has caused three more deaths in New Jersey, all in middle-aged men, the state Department of Health reported Wednesday. The total now stands at 34 deaths since the H1N1 flu epidemic began.
Two of the men, a 45-year-old from Monmouth County and a 46-year-old from Camden County, had underlying medical conditions. The third, a 52-year-old Gloucester County resident, did not have any known conditions that would have made him more susceptible to the virus, state health officials said.
All three were hospitalized for several days before their deaths. They died on Nov. 26, 29 and 22, respectively.
The epidemic remains widespread in New Jersey even as it abates elsewhere in the country. Only 25 states had widespread flu last week, seven fewer than the previous week. While the epidemic may have peaked, experts caution that a third wave of disease may occur later this winter.
snip
===
.
N.J. reports three more swine flu deaths
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
BY LINDY WASHBURN
The Record
STAFF WRITER
http://www.northjersey.com/news/120909_NJ_reports_three_more_swine_flu_deaths.html
Swine flu has caused three more deaths in New Jersey, all in middle-aged men, the state Department of Health reported Wednesday. The total now stands at 34 deaths since the H1N1 flu epidemic began.
Two of the men, a 45-year-old from Monmouth County and a 46-year-old from Camden County, had underlying medical conditions. The third, a 52-year-old Gloucester County resident, did not have any known conditions that would have made him more susceptible to the virus, state health officials said.
All three were hospitalized for several days before their deaths. They died on Nov. 26, 29 and 22, respectively.
The epidemic remains widespread in New Jersey even as it abates elsewhere in the country. Only 25 states had widespread flu last week, seven fewer than the previous week. While the epidemic may have peaked, experts caution that a third wave of disease may occur later this winter.
snip
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Minnesota
H1N1 Activity Stays Low In MN, But 5 New Deaths
ST. PAUL (AP) ― Dec 9, 2009 12:36 pm US/Central
http://wcco.com/health/flu/h1n1.flu.outbreak.2.1359642.html
New statistics from the state Health Department show that swine flu activity in the state remains at a low ebb, although five new deaths were reported.
The department says Wednesday that only one school reported an outbreak of influenza-like illness for the week of Nov. 29 to Dec. 5.
That's about the same as the previous week and a far cry from the numbers in October, when more 200 schools reported outbreaks three weeks in a row.
However, the department confirmed five more deaths from swine flu. There have now been 44 swine flu deaths in the state and six deaths from seasonal or unspecified influenzas this year.
Health officials caution that although the second wave of illness is nearly over, a third wave could be in the future and residents should still get vaccinated.
===
.
H1N1 Activity Stays Low In MN, But 5 New Deaths
ST. PAUL (AP) ― Dec 9, 2009 12:36 pm US/Central
http://wcco.com/health/flu/h1n1.flu.outbreak.2.1359642.html
New statistics from the state Health Department show that swine flu activity in the state remains at a low ebb, although five new deaths were reported.
The department says Wednesday that only one school reported an outbreak of influenza-like illness for the week of Nov. 29 to Dec. 5.
That's about the same as the previous week and a far cry from the numbers in October, when more 200 schools reported outbreaks three weeks in a row.
However, the department confirmed five more deaths from swine flu. There have now been 44 swine flu deaths in the state and six deaths from seasonal or unspecified influenzas this year.
Health officials caution that although the second wave of illness is nearly over, a third wave could be in the future and residents should still get vaccinated.
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
California
Five more deaths in county linked to swine flu
Dec 9, 2009
By City News Service
http://www.delmartimes.net/news/263586-five-more-deaths-in-county-linked-to-swine-flu
The deaths of five more people in San Diego County have been linked to the swine flu outbreak, health officials announced Wednesday.
The latest victims included a 54-year-old woman, 36-year-old woman, 54- year-old man, 16-year-old girl and 11-year-old girl, according to the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency.
All had underlying medical conditions, according to the HHSA.
All five tested positive for H1N1, but the virus might not be the cause of death, the HHSA reported.
So far, there have been 52 deaths in San Diego County linked to the H1N1 influenza, according to the HHSA. Forty-five of the victims were from San Diego County and seven were visiting the area.
Locally, 713 people have been hospitalized with the virus, according to the HHSA.
====
.
Five more deaths in county linked to swine flu
Dec 9, 2009
By City News Service
http://www.delmartimes.net/news/263586-five-more-deaths-in-county-linked-to-swine-flu
The deaths of five more people in San Diego County have been linked to the swine flu outbreak, health officials announced Wednesday.
The latest victims included a 54-year-old woman, 36-year-old woman, 54- year-old man, 16-year-old girl and 11-year-old girl, according to the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency.
All had underlying medical conditions, according to the HHSA.
All five tested positive for H1N1, but the virus might not be the cause of death, the HHSA reported.
So far, there have been 52 deaths in San Diego County linked to the H1N1 influenza, according to the HHSA. Forty-five of the victims were from San Diego County and seven were visiting the area.
Locally, 713 people have been hospitalized with the virus, according to the HHSA.
====
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Texas
San Patricio County confirms third swine flu death
41-year old corrections officer died Tuesday
* By Jaime Powell
* Posted December 10, 2009 at 1:03 p.m. , updated December 10, 2009 at 1:05 p.m.
http://www.caller.com/news/2009/dec/10/san-patricio-county-confirms-third-swine-flu/
BEEVILLE — A third San Patricio County resident died from complications related to the swine flu, health officials confirmed.
A 41-year-old Aransas Pass man died Tuesday in Christus Spohn Hospital Beeville, said Dr. James Mobley, the county health department’s medical director.
The man, who worked as a corrections officer, was admitted to the hospital Nov. 21 and left Nov. 25. He was readmitted Dec. 1 in serious condition.
The man was considered obese, Mobley said.
===
.
San Patricio County confirms third swine flu death
41-year old corrections officer died Tuesday
* By Jaime Powell
* Posted December 10, 2009 at 1:03 p.m. , updated December 10, 2009 at 1:05 p.m.
http://www.caller.com/news/2009/dec/10/san-patricio-county-confirms-third-swine-flu/
BEEVILLE — A third San Patricio County resident died from complications related to the swine flu, health officials confirmed.
A 41-year-old Aransas Pass man died Tuesday in Christus Spohn Hospital Beeville, said Dr. James Mobley, the county health department’s medical director.
The man, who worked as a corrections officer, was admitted to the hospital Nov. 21 and left Nov. 25. He was readmitted Dec. 1 in serious condition.
The man was considered obese, Mobley said.
===
.
Tom McDowell
BAMN
Commentary
Hidden Transmission of H1N1Tamiflu Resistance
Recombinomics Commentary 16:39
December 10, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12100903/H274Y_Hidden.html
The above comment from the WHO Oct 30 Weekly Epidemiology Record appears to be missing the cluster of seven patients who were infected with pandemic H1N1 with H274Y during a train trip in Vietnam.
The train trip was in July and the first three cases were confirmed on Sept 9, yet there has been no mention of this large cluster until publication in the current New England Journal of Medicine.
However, the WER compilation has no category for cases who were treated with Tamiflu, but had H274Y in samples collected prior to treatment. It is common for samples to be collected prior to treatment, although the resistance is frequently detected long after the patients have been treated and recovered, yet the only grouping of such cases would be in the patients "associated" with Tamiflu treatment.
As seen in the cluster from Vietnam, the "association" of Tamiflu treatment has no relevance because the patients were resistant prior to treatment.
However, the reporting by WHO leaves the impression that the association with treatment was relevant, when the vast majority of the time it is not (because the patients are resistant prior to treatment).
This clear slanting of the data is not limited to WHO reports. Weekly reports from the CDC also do not distinguish between patients treated with Tamiflu even though they are already Tamiflu resistant, and those patients who present with resistance during treatment.
In cases where H274Y is detected after treatment has begun, the relationship between the treatment and the generation of resistance is likely to be more related to detection of resistance than creation of resistance. In the first cases in Singapore, the patient initially tested as wild type, but was H274Y positive two days later, suggesting H274Y was already circulating as a minor species.
The presence of H274Y as a minor species also explains the rapid appearance of H274Y on patients being treated prophylactically with Tamiflu (5 or 6 days after the start of treatment).
Moreover, WHO and the CDC have yet to show a single case supporting H274Y emergence via a spontaneous mutation. In the cases of two immune-suppressed patients in Washington, no data was present to exclude detection as early as 5 days after the start of treatment. One patient had wild type at day 4, and had H274Y at day 11, but could have had detectable levels as early as day 5. Similarly a second case had wild type at day 1 and H274Y at day 18, but results from samples collected at day 3 and 6 were not disclosed. Thus, there was no data presented that would exclude the presence of H274Y as a minor species, and since the two Washington patients were infected with the same sub-clade, it is likely that these patients also did not develop H274Y via spontaneous mutation.
Thus, neither WHO, CDC, nor Roche have presented data supporting a spontaneous mutation in seasonal H1N1 or pandemic H1N1, although all frequently cite random mutation as the underlying basis of antigenic drift.
However, all cases of Tamiflu resistance in H1N1 involve H274Y and there are no recent examples of Tamiflu resistance in H3N2, indicating early reports of resistance in Japanese children treated with sub-optimal dosages of Taniflu were an anomaly which has been eliminated by proper dosing.
Thus, the report of seven passengers in Vietnam in July strongly suggest that reports by WHO and the CDC seriously underestimate the frequency of H274Y transmission by combining hospital cases with H274Y prior to treatment with cases where H274Y is detected during treatment.
This slanted reporting and poor surveillance continue to be hazardous to the world's health.
===
.
Hidden Transmission of H1N1Tamiflu Resistance
Recombinomics Commentary 16:39
December 10, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12100903/H274Y_Hidden.html
The above comment from the WHO Oct 30 Weekly Epidemiology Record appears to be missing the cluster of seven patients who were infected with pandemic H1N1 with H274Y during a train trip in Vietnam.
The train trip was in July and the first three cases were confirmed on Sept 9, yet there has been no mention of this large cluster until publication in the current New England Journal of Medicine.
However, the WER compilation has no category for cases who were treated with Tamiflu, but had H274Y in samples collected prior to treatment. It is common for samples to be collected prior to treatment, although the resistance is frequently detected long after the patients have been treated and recovered, yet the only grouping of such cases would be in the patients "associated" with Tamiflu treatment.
As seen in the cluster from Vietnam, the "association" of Tamiflu treatment has no relevance because the patients were resistant prior to treatment.
However, the reporting by WHO leaves the impression that the association with treatment was relevant, when the vast majority of the time it is not (because the patients are resistant prior to treatment).
This clear slanting of the data is not limited to WHO reports. Weekly reports from the CDC also do not distinguish between patients treated with Tamiflu even though they are already Tamiflu resistant, and those patients who present with resistance during treatment.
In cases where H274Y is detected after treatment has begun, the relationship between the treatment and the generation of resistance is likely to be more related to detection of resistance than creation of resistance. In the first cases in Singapore, the patient initially tested as wild type, but was H274Y positive two days later, suggesting H274Y was already circulating as a minor species.
The presence of H274Y as a minor species also explains the rapid appearance of H274Y on patients being treated prophylactically with Tamiflu (5 or 6 days after the start of treatment).
Moreover, WHO and the CDC have yet to show a single case supporting H274Y emergence via a spontaneous mutation. In the cases of two immune-suppressed patients in Washington, no data was present to exclude detection as early as 5 days after the start of treatment. One patient had wild type at day 4, and had H274Y at day 11, but could have had detectable levels as early as day 5. Similarly a second case had wild type at day 1 and H274Y at day 18, but results from samples collected at day 3 and 6 were not disclosed. Thus, there was no data presented that would exclude the presence of H274Y as a minor species, and since the two Washington patients were infected with the same sub-clade, it is likely that these patients also did not develop H274Y via spontaneous mutation.
Thus, neither WHO, CDC, nor Roche have presented data supporting a spontaneous mutation in seasonal H1N1 or pandemic H1N1, although all frequently cite random mutation as the underlying basis of antigenic drift.
However, all cases of Tamiflu resistance in H1N1 involve H274Y and there are no recent examples of Tamiflu resistance in H3N2, indicating early reports of resistance in Japanese children treated with sub-optimal dosages of Taniflu were an anomaly which has been eliminated by proper dosing.
Thus, the report of seven passengers in Vietnam in July strongly suggest that reports by WHO and the CDC seriously underestimate the frequency of H274Y transmission by combining hospital cases with H274Y prior to treatment with cases where H274Y is detected during treatment.
This slanted reporting and poor surveillance continue to be hazardous to the world's health.
===
.
BlueNewton
Membership Revoked
Another one of those cases.
From Niman:
I am glad we here are not the only ones thinking that.
Be Well
may all be well
Hat tip to Urgent on PFI.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AO3Z420091210?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
Swine flu has killed 10,000 Americans since April
Julie Steenhuysen
Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:02pm EST
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Swine flu has killed nearly 10,000 Americans, including 1,100 children and 7,500 younger adults, and infected one in six people in the United States since arriving last April, health officials said on Thursday.
"What we've seen for months is this is a flu that is much harder on younger people," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a media briefing.
He estimated that between April and November 14 there had been nearly 50 million cases of H1N1 influenza in the United States, mostly in younger adults and children. That was more than double the CDC's estimate in November of 22 million Americans.
Frieden said more than 200,000 Americans had been hospitalized -- about the same number who are affected by seasonal flu in an entire year.
"About 15 percent of the entire country has been infected with H1N1 influenza, or about one in six people," Frieden told a media briefing.
"That still leaves most people not having been infected and still remaining susceptible to H1N1 influenza," he said.
He said supplies of H1N1 vaccine had continued to improve, and some 85 million doses of the vaccine had been made available for distribution so far, with 12 million more doses added this week.
That is up from 73 million doses a week ago -- but still far fewer than had been hoped for by this week.
Even so, Frieden said vaccine supplies had opened up enough that states were beginning to distribute the vaccine to the general population.
He urged people not to be complacent about getting the vaccine because of reports the current wave of H1N1 influenza is waning.
"This is still a good window of opportunity to be vaccinated," he said. "Vaccination remains the most important thing you can do to protect yourself and your family from H1N1 influenza."
He said the seasonal flu season was beginning and it was not clear what would happen with H1N1 or whether there would be a third wave of the virus in the spring.
"We know that the more people who get vaccinated, the lower the likelihood will be of additional cases or a third wave," Frieden said.
In a typical year, seasonal influenza kills 36,000 Americans and puts 200,000 into the hospital.
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
[My comments: It would certainly be interesting to know how they came up with their numbers. I will copy something Montreme from PFI wrote the other day about counting all "ILI's" as flu. About 5% in one study were actually flu. The CDC did some phone surveys and from what they said (and I remember) they counted anyone who had flu like symptoms as a flu case. This of course brings the CFR way down, keeps people unalarmed etc. IMO (fwiw) I think they are underestimating deaths and way overestimating cases. I also think that they know bad news is coming soon and don't want to be accused of not knowing or warning people. All their pronouncements are highly managed.]
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AO3Z420091210?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
Swine flu has killed 10,000 Americans since April
Julie Steenhuysen
Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:02pm EST
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Swine flu has killed nearly 10,000 Americans, including 1,100 children and 7,500 younger adults, and infected one in six people in the United States since arriving last April, health officials said on Thursday.
"What we've seen for months is this is a flu that is much harder on younger people," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a media briefing.
He estimated that between April and November 14 there had been nearly 50 million cases of H1N1 influenza in the United States, mostly in younger adults and children. That was more than double the CDC's estimate in November of 22 million Americans.
Frieden said more than 200,000 Americans had been hospitalized -- about the same number who are affected by seasonal flu in an entire year.
"About 15 percent of the entire country has been infected with H1N1 influenza, or about one in six people," Frieden told a media briefing.
"That still leaves most people not having been infected and still remaining susceptible to H1N1 influenza," he said.
He said supplies of H1N1 vaccine had continued to improve, and some 85 million doses of the vaccine had been made available for distribution so far, with 12 million more doses added this week.
That is up from 73 million doses a week ago -- but still far fewer than had been hoped for by this week.
Even so, Frieden said vaccine supplies had opened up enough that states were beginning to distribute the vaccine to the general population.
He urged people not to be complacent about getting the vaccine because of reports the current wave of H1N1 influenza is waning.
"This is still a good window of opportunity to be vaccinated," he said. "Vaccination remains the most important thing you can do to protect yourself and your family from H1N1 influenza."
He said the seasonal flu season was beginning and it was not clear what would happen with H1N1 or whether there would be a third wave of the virus in the spring.
"We know that the more people who get vaccinated, the lower the likelihood will be of additional cases or a third wave," Frieden said.
In a typical year, seasonal influenza kills 36,000 Americans and puts 200,000 into the hospital.
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
[My comments: It would certainly be interesting to know how they came up with their numbers. I will copy something Montreme from PFI wrote the other day about counting all "ILI's" as flu. About 5% in one study were actually flu. The CDC did some phone surveys and from what they said (and I remember) they counted anyone who had flu like symptoms as a flu case. This of course brings the CFR way down, keeps people unalarmed etc. IMO (fwiw) I think they are underestimating deaths and way overestimating cases. I also think that they know bad news is coming soon and don't want to be accused of not knowing or warning people. All their pronouncements are highly managed.]
Be Well
may all be well
My Comments: Monotreme's new blog entry - he posts on PFI (he's the main moderator, well him and Pixie both) and on his own blog. There are embedded links in the article which don't show up here, so feel free to read it in the original!
http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewtopic.php?t=3818
Turning ILI cases into H1N1 cases – How the Lipsitch paper redefines reality
In Science, it is important to use words in very precise ways. This leads to specialised vocabularies which may be difficult for laymen to follow but a godsend to pseudoscientists who can either use real terms incorrectly or simply make up their own. However, nothing is more dangerous than for scientists to misuse words in their publications and then spread this misinformation to the press.
And that is exactly what has happened in a paper recently published in PLoS Medicine by a group of scientists working with Dr. Marc Lipsitch.
There are several ways to determine if someone is infected with the new H1N1 virus. Real time PCR is the most commonly used, but virus can also be cultured and sequenced. [Flu A tests fail about 50% of the time and are not considered reliable]. Seroprevalence studies could be done to determine whether people have been infected with H1N1 in the past by looking for antibodies to it, but no results from such studies have been released.
Influenza-like illness (ILI) is a dumping ground for a wide variety symptoms and diseases. Although some people with ILI actually have influenza, most do not. This is well known and has been experimentally verified, as I discussed previously – Estimates of case fatality rates based on influenza-like illness are wrong. I had written that blog in response to statements to the press by Dr. Lipsitch back in September. Apparently, those comments in September relate to the paper which has just now appeared in PLoS Medicine. As I pointed out back in September, an empirical study done in Sweden found that only 5% of ILI cases actually had pandemic H1N1. Most were infected with rhinoviruses or had other diseases. So, it should be clear to anyone that ILI does not equal an H1N1 case.
Should be, but apparently isn’t.
From the Lipsitch study:
We estimate the severity of pH1N1 infection from data from spring–summer 2009 wave of infections in the United States. The New York City and Milwaukee health departments pursued differing surveillance strategies that provided high-quality data on complementary aspects of pH1N1 infection severity, with Milwaukee documenting medically attended cases and hospitalizations, and New York documenting hospitalizations, ICU/ventilation use, and fatalities. These are the numerators of the ratios of interest. The denominator for these ratios is the number of symptomatic pH1N1 cases in a population, which cannot be assessed directly. We use two different approaches to estimate this quantity. In the first (Approach 1), we use self-reported rates of patients seeking medical attention for ILI from several CDC investigations to estimate the number of symptomatic cases from the number of medically attended cases, which are estimated from data from Milwaukee. In the second (Approach 2), we use self-reported incidence of ILI in New York City, and making the assumption that these ILI cases represent the true denominator of symptomatic cases, we directly estimate the ratio between hospitalizations, ICU admissions/mechanical ventilation, and deaths (adjusting for ascertainment) in New York City.
[emphasis, mine]
Given that we already know that in one empirical study 95% of ILI cases were not due to influenza, it is obvious that the Lipsitch study has made a fatally incorrect assumption. The fact that the rest of the study involves complicated statistics is irrelevant (although quite impressive to gullible reporters). If your assumptions are wrong, your model cannot produce valid results.
Some may forgive Dr. Lipsitch his extensive (and quite wrong) assumptions on the grounds that that is the best that we can do. However, this is simply not true. We could test vast numbers of people with high-throughput Real Time PCR, if the CDC wished to (or perhaps, knew how to). We could have done seroprevalence tests months ago, if the CDC wished to (or perhaps knew how to). The decision not to gather actual, real data was a decision on the part of the CDC, not a limitation in technology, as Dr. Lipsitch implies.
We should not blame Dr. Lipsitch for the CDC’s failings. However, he can be blamed for grossly overinterpreting his own data:
From, The Age, December 9, 2009
‘I think it is very likely to be the mildest pandemic on record,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, who led a federally funded analysis with researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Such a broad statement about a new virus based on such a shaky foundation (actually, no foundation at all) would be inappropriate at any time. Making this statement in the middle of pandemic is irresponsible.
So far over 500 children are estimated to have died in the US from this virus. Doomed pregnant women on ventilators have had emergency C-sections to save their babies. Teachers and health care workers are dying.
And flu season is just beginning.
I don’t claim to know the future. I do know that those who cannot tell the difference between ILI and an actual case of H1N1 have no business talking to reporters about what is going to happen.
No business at all.
Reference
Presanis et al. (2009) The Severity of Pandemic H1N1 Influenza in the United States, from April to July 2009: A Bayesian Analysis. PLoS Medicine.
http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewtopic.php?t=3818
Turning ILI cases into H1N1 cases – How the Lipsitch paper redefines reality
In Science, it is important to use words in very precise ways. This leads to specialised vocabularies which may be difficult for laymen to follow but a godsend to pseudoscientists who can either use real terms incorrectly or simply make up their own. However, nothing is more dangerous than for scientists to misuse words in their publications and then spread this misinformation to the press.
And that is exactly what has happened in a paper recently published in PLoS Medicine by a group of scientists working with Dr. Marc Lipsitch.
There are several ways to determine if someone is infected with the new H1N1 virus. Real time PCR is the most commonly used, but virus can also be cultured and sequenced. [Flu A tests fail about 50% of the time and are not considered reliable]. Seroprevalence studies could be done to determine whether people have been infected with H1N1 in the past by looking for antibodies to it, but no results from such studies have been released.
Influenza-like illness (ILI) is a dumping ground for a wide variety symptoms and diseases. Although some people with ILI actually have influenza, most do not. This is well known and has been experimentally verified, as I discussed previously – Estimates of case fatality rates based on influenza-like illness are wrong. I had written that blog in response to statements to the press by Dr. Lipsitch back in September. Apparently, those comments in September relate to the paper which has just now appeared in PLoS Medicine. As I pointed out back in September, an empirical study done in Sweden found that only 5% of ILI cases actually had pandemic H1N1. Most were infected with rhinoviruses or had other diseases. So, it should be clear to anyone that ILI does not equal an H1N1 case.
Should be, but apparently isn’t.
From the Lipsitch study:
We estimate the severity of pH1N1 infection from data from spring–summer 2009 wave of infections in the United States. The New York City and Milwaukee health departments pursued differing surveillance strategies that provided high-quality data on complementary aspects of pH1N1 infection severity, with Milwaukee documenting medically attended cases and hospitalizations, and New York documenting hospitalizations, ICU/ventilation use, and fatalities. These are the numerators of the ratios of interest. The denominator for these ratios is the number of symptomatic pH1N1 cases in a population, which cannot be assessed directly. We use two different approaches to estimate this quantity. In the first (Approach 1), we use self-reported rates of patients seeking medical attention for ILI from several CDC investigations to estimate the number of symptomatic cases from the number of medically attended cases, which are estimated from data from Milwaukee. In the second (Approach 2), we use self-reported incidence of ILI in New York City, and making the assumption that these ILI cases represent the true denominator of symptomatic cases, we directly estimate the ratio between hospitalizations, ICU admissions/mechanical ventilation, and deaths (adjusting for ascertainment) in New York City.
[emphasis, mine]
Given that we already know that in one empirical study 95% of ILI cases were not due to influenza, it is obvious that the Lipsitch study has made a fatally incorrect assumption. The fact that the rest of the study involves complicated statistics is irrelevant (although quite impressive to gullible reporters). If your assumptions are wrong, your model cannot produce valid results.
Some may forgive Dr. Lipsitch his extensive (and quite wrong) assumptions on the grounds that that is the best that we can do. However, this is simply not true. We could test vast numbers of people with high-throughput Real Time PCR, if the CDC wished to (or perhaps, knew how to). We could have done seroprevalence tests months ago, if the CDC wished to (or perhaps knew how to). The decision not to gather actual, real data was a decision on the part of the CDC, not a limitation in technology, as Dr. Lipsitch implies.
We should not blame Dr. Lipsitch for the CDC’s failings. However, he can be blamed for grossly overinterpreting his own data:
From, The Age, December 9, 2009
‘I think it is very likely to be the mildest pandemic on record,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, who led a federally funded analysis with researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Such a broad statement about a new virus based on such a shaky foundation (actually, no foundation at all) would be inappropriate at any time. Making this statement in the middle of pandemic is irresponsible.
So far over 500 children are estimated to have died in the US from this virus. Doomed pregnant women on ventilators have had emergency C-sections to save their babies. Teachers and health care workers are dying.
And flu season is just beginning.
I don’t claim to know the future. I do know that those who cannot tell the difference between ILI and an actual case of H1N1 have no business talking to reporters about what is going to happen.
No business at all.
Reference
Presanis et al. (2009) The Severity of Pandemic H1N1 Influenza in the United States, from April to July 2009: A Bayesian Analysis. PLoS Medicine.
*WAVING* I'm not long gone, nor fallen off the face of the earth.
Thank you all so much for keeping this thread alive and for the continuous updates (this was the first place and thread I headed too)!!!!
I got sick a month or so ago, never did develop anything in my lungs (that I attribute to elderberry). I did however have gastrointestional symptoms that seemed to go from bad to worse then better again, extreme fatigue and lethargy and massive weight loss...anyway, long sickness made short, eventually my blood pressure crashed and I couldn't breathe with chest pain, was hospitalized for 17 days (just released) with acute renal failure, a few stints with dialysis and blood transfusions later and by the grace of God, here I still am.
I missed you all and appreciate your pm's, I promise I will be back to contributing and updating once I get a stronger.
Thank you all for your concerns, well wishes and prayers -- they were most needed and appreciated and touched me deeply.
Stay healthy!!! Ya'll are awesome, truly awesome!!!
Thank you all so much for keeping this thread alive and for the continuous updates (this was the first place and thread I headed too)!!!!
I got sick a month or so ago, never did develop anything in my lungs (that I attribute to elderberry). I did however have gastrointestional symptoms that seemed to go from bad to worse then better again, extreme fatigue and lethargy and massive weight loss...anyway, long sickness made short, eventually my blood pressure crashed and I couldn't breathe with chest pain, was hospitalized for 17 days (just released) with acute renal failure, a few stints with dialysis and blood transfusions later and by the grace of God, here I still am.
I missed you all and appreciate your pm's, I promise I will be back to contributing and updating once I get a stronger.
Thank you all for your concerns, well wishes and prayers -- they were most needed and appreciated and touched me deeply.
Stay healthy!!! Ya'll are awesome, truly awesome!!!
Tom McDowell
BAMN
:-)
@pQlrppl
w8nNw8n. Popcom read[y]
OMG It is Soooooo good to see you back. I knew something was terribly wrong.. had been wondering about and praying for you. Looked yesterday to see just when it was you fell off the face of TB2K... OVER a month.... last posts 11/5 IIRC.
Take it EZ..... Welcome Back!
Sky
Inactive
Sassy, we missed you!
I'm very sorry to hear about your long illness. I had no idea you were sick. Sending well wishes
Hope you're able to get plenty of rest and soak up some of that Arizona sunshine.
Welcome back!
take care,
sky
Sassy, we missed you too!
I'm very sorry to hear about your long illness. I had no idea you were sick. Sending well wishes
Hope you're able to get plenty of rest and soak up some of that Arizona sunshine. Welcome back!
take care,
sky
Cascadians
Leska Emerald Adams
Whoa SassyinAZ! So many times when ppl stop posting for a while it's computer issues or just busy ... I kept praying, hoping you didn't encounter the Pig Flew.
This convinces me I gotta get real life names and phone numbers for some of the posters I care about. It's just awful when somebody disappears.
Sassy thx for checking in and more prayers for complete recovery!
This convinces me I gotta get real life names and phone numbers for some of the posters I care about. It's just awful when somebody disappears.
Sassy thx for checking in and more prayers for complete recovery!
Hansa44
Justine Case
Thrilled to see Sassy back and look forward to seeing her post again.
BUT...Leska. This situation goes for you too. Several times you've been gone quite a while and your constant relapses with this flu is worrisome.
Usually I'll go check at Niman's board and you'll be over there, but a couple of times you weren't anywhere to be found and it did turn out you were sick again.
Would be nice if someone trusted had some names and phone numbers of who are usually here and then suddenly aren't.
Wow! Sassy, you've had people worried... and apparently with good reason! So good to see you back!
Was it H1N1? Or do they have another plausible explanation? Very scary...
Hubby is sick- again- and I'm praying it's not another bout with that blasted flu. Because this time it is in his lungs, although so far just a nasty bronchitis. He sounds terrible, though, with a cough that sounds like it's ripping out the lining of his chest. No real fever, and a lot of cold symptoms, so hopefully it's just a bad cold. I've been taking 5000 IU of D3 daily, and I'm doubling that for a week or so, plus adding zinc to my supplements- I can NOT afford to get sick at this time.
What a year!
Summerthyme
Was it H1N1? Or do they have another plausible explanation? Very scary...
Hubby is sick- again- and I'm praying it's not another bout with that blasted flu. Because this time it is in his lungs, although so far just a nasty bronchitis. He sounds terrible, though, with a cough that sounds like it's ripping out the lining of his chest. No real fever, and a lot of cold symptoms, so hopefully it's just a bad cold. I've been taking 5000 IU of D3 daily, and I'm doubling that for a week or so, plus adding zinc to my supplements- I can NOT afford to get sick at this time.
What a year!
Summerthyme
BlueNewton
Membership Revoked
Sassy's back!!!!
But that illness!!!!
I was worried about you and still am. Get well!
But that illness!!!!
I was worried about you and still am. Get well!
Sky
Inactive
D225G and D225N Diversity Confirmed in Fatal Utah Case
Recombinomics Commentary 22:22
December 11, 2009
A 28-year-old Utah woman who died this summer of H1N1 swine flu had a mutated form of the novel virus.
The state routinely sends samples to the CDC for it to sequence to look for significant mutations -- ones that would be resistant to the vaccine, for example.
That is not the case with the Utah mutation. Even if the mutated virus was passed from this woman to someone else, and there is no evidence it has, "the vaccine would still be protective," Herlihy said.
"Mutations occur very regularly in influenza," she said. "We are monitoring for genetic mutations of significance. We do not believe this is a genetic mutation of clinical significance."
The above comments confirm that A/Utah/42/2009 with D225G and D225N was from a fatal (28F) case. However, the additional comments regarding significance and effect on the vaccine are curious. The two receptor binding domain changes have been noted at increased frequencies since the summer and almost all cases were severe or fatal. In Sao Paulo, D225G was identified in two patients and D225N was in two others and all four were fatal. A case in China recovered after a month in the hospital and was described as the first severe cases in the province. In Ukraine, Mill Hill sequenced H1N1 from four fatal cases, and all four had D225G. The CDC sequenced two more, which were also likely to be from fatal cases, and both had D225N. The Ukraine data was followed by a review of samples in Norway and three patients with D225G were identified. Two were fatal and one severe. France also found two patients with D225G and both were fatal (and one also had H274Y).
The above confirmation extends the changes to the US and again involves a fatal case who was 28 and not said to have an underlying condition.
Although the CDC has placed these sequences on deposit, they have not released an antigenic characterization. Similarly, the two samples from Ukraine were said to be California/7-like based on PCR instead of neutralizing titer generated by ferret reference sera.
Mill Hill tested one of the Ukraine sequences with D225G and classified it as a "low reactor" indicting the titer was at least four fold lower than the positive control, raising vaccine reactivity concerns. Thus, the basis for the statement that the vaccine would "be protective" is unclear.
Similarly, after the WHO called the changes in sequences from fatal cases in Ukraine insignificant, the finding of D225G in dead and severe cases in Norway led to a revision of the "not significant" statement.
In June and July there was a spike in Utah deaths. 10% of the US fatalities in that timeframe were from Utah. The presence of D225G and D225N in the above fatal case suggests that these changes were circulating in the area and may have contributed to the spike in fatalities.
Release of sequence data from samples collected at the site of infection, such as lung, would be useful.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12110903/D225G_D225N_Utah_Fatal_Conf.html
Recombinomics Commentary 22:22
December 11, 2009
A 28-year-old Utah woman who died this summer of H1N1 swine flu had a mutated form of the novel virus.
The state routinely sends samples to the CDC for it to sequence to look for significant mutations -- ones that would be resistant to the vaccine, for example.
That is not the case with the Utah mutation. Even if the mutated virus was passed from this woman to someone else, and there is no evidence it has, "the vaccine would still be protective," Herlihy said.
"Mutations occur very regularly in influenza," she said. "We are monitoring for genetic mutations of significance. We do not believe this is a genetic mutation of clinical significance."
The above comments confirm that A/Utah/42/2009 with D225G and D225N was from a fatal (28F) case. However, the additional comments regarding significance and effect on the vaccine are curious. The two receptor binding domain changes have been noted at increased frequencies since the summer and almost all cases were severe or fatal. In Sao Paulo, D225G was identified in two patients and D225N was in two others and all four were fatal. A case in China recovered after a month in the hospital and was described as the first severe cases in the province. In Ukraine, Mill Hill sequenced H1N1 from four fatal cases, and all four had D225G. The CDC sequenced two more, which were also likely to be from fatal cases, and both had D225N. The Ukraine data was followed by a review of samples in Norway and three patients with D225G were identified. Two were fatal and one severe. France also found two patients with D225G and both were fatal (and one also had H274Y).
The above confirmation extends the changes to the US and again involves a fatal case who was 28 and not said to have an underlying condition.
Although the CDC has placed these sequences on deposit, they have not released an antigenic characterization. Similarly, the two samples from Ukraine were said to be California/7-like based on PCR instead of neutralizing titer generated by ferret reference sera.
Mill Hill tested one of the Ukraine sequences with D225G and classified it as a "low reactor" indicting the titer was at least four fold lower than the positive control, raising vaccine reactivity concerns. Thus, the basis for the statement that the vaccine would "be protective" is unclear.
Similarly, after the WHO called the changes in sequences from fatal cases in Ukraine insignificant, the finding of D225G in dead and severe cases in Norway led to a revision of the "not significant" statement.
In June and July there was a spike in Utah deaths. 10% of the US fatalities in that timeframe were from Utah. The presence of D225G and D225N in the above fatal case suggests that these changes were circulating in the area and may have contributed to the spike in fatalities.
Release of sequence data from samples collected at the site of infection, such as lung, would be useful.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12110903/D225G_D225N_Utah_Fatal_Conf.html