Heat scanners give cold comfort during flu outbreak 29 Apr 2009 08:23:27 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG, April 29 (Reuters) - Alarmed by the spread of a new swine flu virus, airports around the world have rushed to install temperature scanners to pick out the sick, but the microbe is proving too clever for modern technology.

Experts say an infected person can easily pass through these heat sensors without detection as the incubation period for influenza ranges anywhere between one and three days.

"The scanners won't pick up everyone (with flu), especially if they are too early in the infection ... People who have been infected very, very recently wouldn't show up on the scanner," Mark von Itzstein, director of the Institute for Glycomics at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, told Reuters.

"You can imagine somebody who is just infected boards the plane in Singapore and heads towards Hong Kong. There would not be enough time for the apparatus to pick it up because he would not have developed significant fever."

The new H1N1 swine flu virus, which has killed 159 people in Mexico, has been found in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Israel and Spain, but there have been no deaths outside Mexico so far.

Asian airports, used to looking for H5N1 bird flu and SARS sufferers earlier in the decade, have dusted off their scanners for this latest crisis.

But experts say these cannot help until the person has a fever, and an infected person can spread the virus around by coughing and sneezing a full day before the onset of symptoms.

"Flu is infectious one day before the onset of symptoms, which means you may not have symptoms but you are already infectious while you are coming back to Hong Kong (on a plane)," said Yuen Kwok-yung, a top microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong.

"You are incubating and infecting others without knowing it."

Being cooped up in a place may spell trouble too.

"A person with flu becomes infectious within 12 to 24 hours of infection. If he is travelling from Europe to Australia, a person can develop contagious capability while on the plane," Itzstein said.

"It is an incubation spot, it is like a big incubator. People who are not infected can get infected in the plane."

Yuen urged people to practise "self-quarantine".

"For those coming back from risky areas, you should do some form of self-quarantine and wear a mask for seven days." (Editing by Nick Macfie and Sugita Katyal)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/T188159.htm

Dr. Paul is the man, does what he says he's gonna do and speaks on his principles and the truth.

Last time someone really pushed the Federal reserve... well...

Executive Order 11110

AMENDMENT OF EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 10289 AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE PERFORMANCE OF CERTAIN FUNCTIONS AFFECTING THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY. By virtue of the authority vested in me by section 301 of title 3 of the United States Code, it is ordered as follows:

SECTION 1. Executive Order No. 10289 of September 19, 1951, as amended, is hereby further amended - (a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following subparagraph (j): "(j) The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section 43 of the Act of May 12, 1933, as amended (31 U.S.C. 821 (b)), to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury not then held for redemption of any outstanding silver certificates, to prescribe the denominations of such silver certificates, and to coin standard silver dollars and subsidiary silver currency for their redemption," and (b) By revoking subparagraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 2 thereof. SECTION 2. The amendment made by this Order shall not affect any act done, or any right accruing or accrued or any suit or proceeding had or commenced in any civil or criminal cause prior to the date of this Order but all such liabilities shall continue and may be enforced as if said amendments had not been made.

JOHN F. KENNEDY THE WHITE HOUSE, June 4, 1963


Once again, Executive Order 11110 is still valid. According to Title 3, United States Code, Section 301 dated January 26, 1998:

Indonesia floats idea of man-made swine flu

Press TV
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

As swine flu continues to take its toll, claims surface that the deadly four-part flu virus could have been created for “bio-terror attacks.”

Speaking at a conference to reassure the public over hers government’s response to the swine flu threat, Indonesian Heath Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Tuesday that the controversial virus could have been man-made.

She declined to elaborate on her claim but she had previously accused Western governments of making and spreading viruses in the developing world to boost pharmaceutical companies’ profits, AFP reported.

“I’m not sure whether the virus was genetically engineered but it’s a possibility,” Supari said.

Supari assured Indonesians that the deadly virus could not survive in tropical countries like Indonesia which was the worst hit country by the bird flu virus.

“H1N1 survives in countries with four seasons. The type A H1N1 virus hopefully won’t be able to sustain itself once it enters the tropical climate of Indonesia,” she added.

No cases of swine flu have been reported in Indonesia. It has banned imports of live pigs and pork products.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised its pandemic alert to level four, which means the virus is capable of significant human-to-human transmission. The virus has so far killed nearly 150 people in Mexico and has been reported in eleven countries, including Mexico, the US and Spain.

Several other countries from Colombia to New Zealand are investigating suspected cases.

Health experts say the virus comes from the same strain of virus that causes seasonal outbreaks in humans. They point out that this newly-detected version, which is highly contagious and fast-mutating, also contains genetic material from the types of influenza that afflict swine and birds.

It should tell you everything you need to know, when you face the fact that the Republicrats get together every election to make sure that it's only them allowed in the debates.

Do you really think either McCain or Obama were ready to tangle with the likes of Nader, McKinney or Baldwin?

We wouldn't want to inject any real issues into the campaign would we?

Same reason why guys like Gravel, Kucinich and Paul were treated like Oscar the Grouch, while folks who tow the line, like Biden and Romney were given all the chances in the world to spew their collective rhetoric.

I've done alot of reading on this and I can tell you, they "think" they know what it will do, they "think" that the black holes will be too small and too unstable to stick around, they "think" they'll be able to have a energy replication of the big bang.

What they do know is that it's going to require a massive amount of energy and that it's going to be an exciting thing.

What they don't know is what if any real progessive scientific information they're going to receive, or exactly what is going to happen... they have alot of ideas, but until they switch the sucker on, it's all just theory.

Nogames has it here, if we burn the Bush, we have to burn Pelosi, Obama, Rockefeller and anyone else who in government who knew and ran interference to the rule of law.

They're all accomplices to torture and murder.

Yep.
Different races do in fact carry different markers.

There we go, something to look at, thanks Winx!

Where's the proof we have the most? When was the last time Fort Knox was audited?

Where's the theory in anything I've posted? Are you saying Government has no history of using biologicals against their "enemies"?

Point is, why is it only killing the mexicans?

I understand the percent over all is small, but the evidence suggests it's not just some random, natural phenomena.

No one ever said that it is a Government plot, but if you understand government history and it's use of false flags, it's preparation to used those things, then you have to look at that as a possibility.

What's the logical explanation for 159 deaths of mexicans vs. None for other groups?

Thats the thing, I'm saying, where are the dead Europeans, the dead Americans, the dead Australians or Kiwis?

They're not there, it's just the mexicans that have been dying and that's what strikes me as odd. We have slums, dirty areas, polluted areas, we have substandard health care, where are our dead from the same flu?

Big Bang machine detectors will be 'even more perfect'


By Elizabeth Landau
CNN


(CNN) -- On a recent episode of "South Park," Mr. Marsh steals a particle accelerator magnet so his son, Stan, can win the Pinewood Derby. The magnet's power results in an alien encounter, and chaos ensues.

While the magnets at the real-life Large Hadron Collider may not reach extraterrestrials, scientists hope they will help lead to encounters with never-before-seen phenomena and answers to fundamental questions about the universe.

The collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, is being repaired after an electrical failure in September. Once it is fixed, the collider will circulate beams of particles with unprecedented energy. When these particles crash into each other, the resulting activity may help scientists figure out why the submicroscopic stuff that makes up our universe behaves the way it does.

The Large Hadron Collider will start receiving current again in July, and will circulate this year's first proton beam by the end of September, said Lyn Evans, former project leader for the collider who is currently involved with the machine's repairs. The collider is located more than 300 feet below the French-Swiss border at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. See it on a map »

Scientists have been improving two of the main experiments, called ATLAS and CMS, by taking advantage of cosmic rays, which naturally occur and contain the same high-energy particles that will be used when the collider restarts. This has helped experts better align and calibrate the detectors.

"They'll be even more perfect than before," said Bob Cousins, deputy to the scientific leader of the CMS experiment.

ATLAS and CMS were designed to carry out their full physics programs with some parts that don't function properly, Cousins said. With the delay, scientists have been able to fix more of that small percentage that did not work. Learn more about the six experiments »

"The excitement's building in a similar way that it was a year ago, and, in fact, everybody is working hard to be even more ready than we were a year ago," Cousins said.

Enthusiasm for the Large Hadron Collider built last summer as the world anticipated the startup of the colossal machine, which will re-create conditions of the universe shortly after it was created in the Big Bang so scientists can study how the universe evolved.

Interest grew as rumors circulated on the Internet that the collider's power would generate a black hole which would swallow the Earth. These rumors were widely discredited by the scientific community. CERN scientists released a report explaining that any black hole created would be tiny, and would not have enough energy to stick around very long before dissolving.

Scientists and skeptics alike eagerly awaited the circulation of the first proton beam around the 17-mile tunnel, which happened successfully on September 10.

But just days after this success, disaster struck. While about 9,999 out of 10,000 electrical connections between magnets in the accelerator worked well, one did not, which "made a mess of the magnets," said Joseph Lykken, theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, who works on CMS.

Repairing the collider costs about 40 million Swiss francs (nearly $35 million), although that's a pittance compared with the overall cost of the collider and its construction (nearly $10 billion), Evans said. The project has not been affected by the worldwide economic recession, he said.

Currently there are about 20 or 30 people in the tunnel welding, conducting electrical tests, and otherwise repairing, Evans said.

For an accelerator of this magnitude -- CMS has twice as much iron as the Eiffel Tower -- the problems in September were "typical growing pains," Lykken said. Given that thousands of parts have to work together under extreme conditions of high power, "it's a wonder that these things work at all," he said.

"Somehow they have managed to get thousands of gigantic magnets, get them arranged so that they're within a few microns of where they're supposed to be, and then cool it down to a couple degrees above absolute zero," Lykken said.

One of the mysteries scientists seek to uncover at the Large Hadron Collider is the existence of the Higgs boson, sometimes called the "God particle" because, if real, it would help explain the origin of mass. Finding evidence of this elusive particle will likely take two to three years, he said. Read about a young scientist testing theories at the accelerator

"It is the thing that gives a being to all the other particles," Evans said.

While the particles that scientists hope to find are not visible to the naked eye, the detectors are designed to find evidence of them. Cousins likens this to a Geiger counter, used to detect radiation even though it cannot be seen.

The reach of the Large Hadron Collider project extends beyond the complex itself. CMS alone requires about 100,000 computers worldwide, linked together in a network, Lykken said.

With thousands of scientists around the globe working on it, the Large Hadron Collider is also an opportunity for young physicists, even undergraduate students, to participate in the frontiers of research. Students can work at the CERN headquarters through programs such as the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience, and participate in the information exchange at the Open Science Grid.

"It is young people that do the nuts and bolts of these experiments," Lykken said. "For people like me, who have been waiting 20 years for a supercollider, it's amazing to see kids just coming into the field. By this fall, they'll be looking at what we've been waiting for all our lives."

Xiaohang Quan, a Princeton University senior, said her research could improve the way in which CMS chooses which data to record and which to throw away. Christopher Tully, her physics professor at Princeton who works on CMS, said she "came with up with an improvement that we're working on implementing."

"If further studies related to the discovery goes well, it will save people much time and trouble I hope," Quan said.


---------------------------------------------------------------

I love it, they really don't know what this thing is going to do, but lets just turn the machine on and deal with results later.

Who said anything about a impending race war??!!

This thing has elements of Swine, Bird and human flus, thats not unheard of, but extremely rare and if it was a totally natural phenomena, then it would have the same serious death tolls for everyone. I've not seen any numbers that say it's thousands of infected Mexicans, so I'm not prepared to comment on that.

You think Paul Watson is sitting in some mexican prison and PrisonPlanet.com is a prison paper?

Paul Joseph Watson is a webmaster and a writer who lives in England and runs PrisonPlanet.com, which is a left/right shattering news organization that focuses, not on partisan issues, but on government corruption and the push towards One world government.

The site itself is owned by Alex Jones, the documentary film maker and radio show host.

They have a long history of scooping MSM, forcing those kinds of stories into the main american lexicon, by putting them out and letting the web take them viral.

Never did I say, oh, Our government definitely intentionally released this, however, these things have a history of getting out.

Most recently, that's easily proven is the Antrax attacks.


Once again, how many white people have died? We know white people are getting it too, so how many of them are dead?

It's only been killing Mexicans.

Where did I say, all these mexicans around the world?

The only thing I'm saying is our government has a history of messing with these things, they have a history of getting out and this thing isn't killing everyone who contracts it, only those Mexicans.

Then again, our Government also has a history of utilizing bioweapons. From Smallpox to the Natives to handing over those things to Saddam.

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa, Ap Economics Writer – 1 hr 42 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The economy shrank at a worse-than-expected 6.1 percent pace at the start of this year as sharp cutbacks by businesses and the biggest drop in U.S. exports in 40 years overwhelmed a rebound in consumer spending.

The Commerce Department's report, released Wednesday, dashed hopes that the recession's grip on the country loosened in the first quarter. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a 5 percent annualized decline.

Instead, the economy ended up performing nearly as bad as it had in the final three months of last year when it logged the worst slide in a quarter-century, contracting at a 6.3 percent pace. Nervous consumers played a prominent role in that dismal showing as they ratcheted back spending in the face of rising unemployment, falling home values and shrinking nest eggs.

In the January-March quarter consumers came back to life, boosting their spending after two straight quarters of reductions. The 2.2 percent growth rate was the strongest in two years.

Much stronger demand for big-ticket "durable" goods, including cars, furniture and household appliances led the increase. That spending rose at a 9.4 pace, the most in a year. Consumers also boosted spending on clothing, shoes, recreation services, medical care, gasoline and other energy products. But not on food, where spending dipped slightly.

Still, the consumer rebound was swamped by heavy spending cuts in virtually every other area.

Businesses cut spending on home building, commercial construction, equipment and software, and inventories of goods. Sales of U.S. goods to foreign buyers plunged as they retrenched in the face of economic troubles in their own countries. Even the government trimmed spending. It was the first time that happened since the end of 2005.

All told, the economy logged its worst six-month performance since the late 1950s.

The sharp cuts underscore the toll the housing, credit and financial crises — the worst since the 1930s — are having on the country. The recession, which began in December 2007, has taken a big bite out of national economic activity and snatched 5.1 million jobs.

To cushion the impact of the downturn, the Federal Reserve has slashed a key bank lending rate to a record low near zero and rolled out a string of radical programs to spur lending. The Fed at the end of its two-day meeting Wednesday is expected to keep its key rate near zero and probably hold it there well into next year.

Wall Street shook off the weak gross domestic product reading as it awaited the Fed's assessment of the economy. The Dow Jones industrial average added more than 155 points in midday trading and broader indices also rose.

President Barack Obama is counting on his $787 billion stimulus of tax cuts and increased government spending on big public works projects to help bolster economic activity later this year. The administration also has put forward programs to rescue banks and curb home foreclosures — big negative forces weighing on the economy.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the first-quarter's showing a "pretty severe contraction," but added that some more up-to-date signals on the economy have been more encouraging. "We continue to get, as the president said, some glimmers of hope," he said.

Even in the face of Wednesday's weaker-than-expected report, some analysts stuck to predictions that the economy would shrink less in the current April-June period — at a pace of 1 to 2.5 percent — as Obama's stimulus begins to take hold. Those analysts also continue to hope the economy would start to grow again in the final quarter of this year.

"The recession was bad in the first quarter but won't be as bad going forward," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia. "I don't think this lessens the expected pattern that the economy will be entering a recovery by the end of this year."

However, the recent outbreak of the swine flu, which started out in Mexico and has spread to the United States and elsewhere, poses a new potential danger. If the flu stifles trade and forces consumers to cut back further, those negative forces would worsen the recession.

Before the flu outbreak, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the recession could end this year if the government succeeds in stabilizing the shaky financial system and getting banks to lend again.

In recent weeks, Bernanke and his colleagues had cited "tentative signs" of the recession easing in some consumer spending, home building and other reports. Finance officials from the U.S. and other top economic powers meeting here last week also saw some hopeful signs for the global economy.

Fresh glimmers of hope emerged in the U.S. Tuesday. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index rose far more than expected in April, jumping more than 12 points to 39.2, the highest level since November. And a housing index showed that home prices dropped sharply in February, but for the first time in 25 months the decline was not a record.

However, in the first quarter there was much weakness in those areas and others.

Spending on home building fell at a 38 percent annualized rate, the most since the second quarter of 1980. Businesses cut spending on equipment and software at a 33.8 percent pace, the most since the first quarter of 1958.

Inventory reductions shaved 2.79 percentage points off overall first-quarter economic activity. But with stockpiles slashed, any pickup in business sales would help increase production and bolster the economy in the current quarter.

Still, U.S. exports plunged at a rate of 30 percent, the biggest drop since the first quarter of 1969, reflecting the crimped appetite of struggling foreign buyers. The government also cut spending 3.9 percent, the most since the end of 1995.

Even if the recession were to end this year, the economy will remain feeble and unemployment will keep climbing, government officials and analysts say.

The Labor Department on Wednesday said that all 372 metropolitan areas tracked saw their jobless rates rise in March from a year earlier. The rate in Indiana's Elkhart-Goshen region soared to 18.8 percent, up 13 percentage points, which was the biggest gain in the country.

The national jobless rate is now at a quarter-century high of 8.5 percent and is expected to hit 10 percent by the end of this year. It will probably rise a bit higher in early 2010 before starting to slowly drift downward. Still, the Fed predicts unemployment will stay elevated into 2011, and economists don't think it will return to normal — around a 5 percent jobless rate — until 2013.

More layoffs were announced this week. Textron Inc. said it will expand layoffs, eliminating 8,300 jobs, or 20 percent, of its global work force as the recession weakens demand for corporate planes. The maker of Cessna planes, Bell helicopters and turf-maintenance equipment earlier this year said it would reduce its work force by 6,200 jobs, or 15 percent, mostly at Wichita, Kansas-based Cessna.

General Motors Corp. laid out a massive restructuring plan that includes cutting 21,000 U.S. factory jobs by next year. Clear Channel Communications Inc., the largest owner of U.S. radio stations, said it's cutting 590 jobs in its second round of mass layoffs this year amid pressure from the recession and evaporating advertising budgets. And bearings and specialty steels maker Timken Co. indicated it will cut about 4,000 more jobs by the end of this year after earlier suggesting about 3,000 jobs already had been targeted.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes I wonder how much of this swine flu thing is just a distraction, what stops me is the fact people are dying. However, we shouldn't let our entire attention be moved away from the real threat to this nation and it's people, the fact our economy is being popped.

How many white and black people have actually died from this, not just infected, but died?

I'm still looking and I'm not finding any deaths where the persons skin was much lighter than Cheech Marins.

You're reporting infections, not people who have died from it. Big difference.

Naaa... couldn't be, it's all just an whacko theory by some guy in a tinfoil hat. And Government loves us all.