Heard of cases now popping up in NY, KS and that it appears to have elements of Bird, Swine and human flu viruses...


Anyone else hear anything like this?

I seen it on the news too

Yea, it was on Fox.
Don't believe everything you hear on the News, MM.

Who knows how many cases there are.
What number of cases constitutes a pandemic?

yup, been following it

we have flu epidemics every year. It's the pandemics that are so dangerous

1918, Spanish Flu killed 40 million people

1957 Asian Flu killed 1.5 million people

1969 Hong Kong Flu killed 1 million people

2009 Swine Flu killed 81 people (so far)

something to watch but not something to freak out over...

yet

Yes, and I am very worry about that

It isn't the virus itself that kills, it is the secondary infections the virus leaves you weak to that does.

With population densities as great as they are all it takes is one good disease and people drop like flies.

With viruses mutating and jumping species means that some thing instigated the mutation. The methods used to farm animals like chickens and pigs create conditions ripe to allow stuff like this to happen.

Then again it could be a method of population control by releasing "new" bugs in agriculture and letting it wipe out a few million lucky lottery winners to help control our numbers. Oh how I love a good conspiracy theory.

I have survived every flu outbreak so far including the nastiest ones we had recently where people were laid out for two months by it. I was down a week. Lucky lucky me!

There are far too may people on this planet so loosing a few million to a disease? No sympathy here. Humans need to learn to control our growth instead of just propagating like Bacteria! Good to know Gaia (The Earth Mother in many alternative religions) is trying to tend her garden and us bugs are constantly wrecking her garden. Only a matter of time when she gets the bis assed can of Raid on our butts!

But....is it nature or is it us humans...I mean we have managed to kill off many other speces.(I didn't spell that right, did I?)

Kat

I am one it would probably kill off, pulmonary problems and such. If it did a good enough job, it could help relieve some of the stress of too many people, not enough resources.

Nations from New Zealand to France reported new suspected cases and some warned citizens against travel to North America.

Swine flu fears prompt quarantine plans, pork bans
AP

By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer Frank Jordans, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 45 mins ago

GENEVA – Countries planned quarantines, tightened rules on pork imports and tested airline passengers for fevers as global health officials tried Sunday to come up with uniform ways to battle a deadly strain of swine flu. Nations from New Zealand to France reported new suspected cases and some warned citizens against travel to North America.

World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan held teleconferences with staff and flu experts around the world but stopped short of recommending specific measures to halt the disease beyond urging governments to step up their surveillance of suspicious outbreaks.

Governments including China, Russia and Taiwan began planning to put anyone with symptoms of the deadly virus under quarantine.

Others were increasing their screening of pigs and pork imports from the Americas or banning them outright despite health officials' reassurances that it was safe to eat thoroughly cooked pork.

Some nations issued travel warnings for Mexico and the United States.

Chan called the outbreak a public health emergency of "pandemic potential" because the virus can pass from human to human.

Her agency was considering whether to issue nonbinding recommendations on travel and trade restrictions, and even border closures. It is up to governments to decide whether to follow the advice.

"Countries are encouraged to do anything that they feel would be a precautionary measure," WHO spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi said. "All countries need to enhance their monitoring."

New Zealand said that 10 students who took a school trip to Mexico "likely" had swine flu. Israel said a man who had recently visited Mexico had been hospitalized while authorities try to determine whether he had the disease. French Health Ministry officials said four possible cases of swine flu are currently under investigation, including a family of three in the northern Nord region and a woman in the Paris region. The four recently returned from Mexico. Tests on two separate cases of suspected swine flu proved negative, they said.

Spain's Health Ministry said three people who just returned from Mexico were under observation in hospitals in the northern Basque region, in southeastern Albacete and the Mediterranean port city of Valencia.

Mexico closed schools, museums, libraries and theaters in a bid to contain the outbreak after hundreds were sickened there. In the U.S., there have been at least 11 confirmed cases of swine flu in California, Texas and Kansas. Patients have ranged in age from 9 to over 50. At least two were hospitalized. All recovered or are recovering.

New York health officials said more than 100 students at the St. Francis Preparatory School, in Queens, recently began suffering a fever, sore throat and aches and pains. Some of their relatives also have been ill.

Some St. Francis students had recently traveled to Mexico, The New York Times and New York Post reported Sunday.

Preliminary tests of samples taken from sick students' noses and throats confirmed that at least eight had a non-human strain of influenza type A, indicating probable cases of swine flu, city health officials said. The exact subtypes were still unknown, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was conducting further tests.

Hong Kong and Taiwan said visitors who came back from flu-affected areas with fevers would be quarantined. China said anyone experiencing flu-like symptoms within two weeks of arrival an affected area had to report to authorities. A Russian health agency said any passenger from North America running a fever would be quarantined until cause of the fever is determined.

Tokyo's Narita airport installed a device to test the temperatures of passengers arriving from Mexico.

Indonesia increased surveillance at all entry points for travelers with flu-like symptoms — using devices at airports that were put in place years ago to monitor for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and bird flu. It said it was ready to quarantine suspected victims if necessary.

Hong Kong and South Korea warned against travel to the Mexican capital and three affected provinces. Italy, Poland and Venezuela also advised their citizens to postpone travel to affected areas of Mexico and the United States.

Symptoms of the flu-like illness include a fever of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius), body aches, coughing, a sore throat, respiratory congestion and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea.

At least 81 people have died from severe pneumonia caused by the disease in Mexico, according to the WHO.

The virus is usually contracted through direct contact with pigs, but Joseph Domenech, chief of animal health service at U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency in Rome, said all indications were that the virus is being spread through human-to-human transmission.

No vaccine specifically protects against swine flu, and it is unclear how much protection current human flu vaccines might offer.

Russia banned the import of meat products from Mexico, California, Texans and Kansas. South Korea said it would increase the number of its influenza virus checks on pork products from Mexico and the U.S.

Serbia on Saturday banned all imports of pork from North America, despite reassurances from the FAO that pigs appear not to be the immediate source of infection.

Italy's agriculture lobby, Coldiretti, warned against panic reaction, noting that farmers lost hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) because of consumers boycotts during the 2001 mad cow scare and the 2005 bird flu outbreak.

Japanese Agriculture Minister Shigeru Ishiba appeared on TV to calm consumers, saying it was safe to eat pork.

In Egypt, health authorities were examining about 350,000 pigs being raised in Cairo and other provinces for swine flu.

The WHO's pandemic alert level is currently at to phase 3. The organization said the level could be raised to phase 4 if the virus shows sustained ability to pass from human to human.

Phase 5 would be reached if the virus is found in at least two countries in the same region.

"The declaration of phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short," WHO said.

Phase 6 would indicate a full-scale global pandemic.

North (and Central) America is becoming quarantined if we go like this.

I know. That feels creepy to me - if we are quarantined.

NEW YORK – New York City was dealing with a growing public health threat Sunday after tests confirmed that eight students at a private Catholic high school had contracted swine flu. Some of the school's students had visited Mexico on a spring break trip two weeks ago.
Swine flu confirmed in NYC high school students

New York officials previously had said they were eight probable cases, but Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that it was swine flu, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

About 100 students at St. Francis Preparatory School complained of flu-like symptoms.

Bloomberg stressed that the cases in New York were mild and many are recovering, but also said that parents of the students also had flu symptoms, "suggesting it is spreading person to person."

He said that the virus likely came from Mexico, although that has not officially been determined.

"We do know that some of the students from the school had a spring break in Mexico," Bloomberg said, surrounded by top city officials and members of Congress. "It is most likely to be brought back from Mexico, but nobody knows."


St. Francis is the largest private Catholic high school in the nation, with 2,700 students. The school canceled classes on Monday and Tuesday in response to the outbreak.

Parent Jackie Casola said Sunday that her son Robert Arifo, a St. Francis sophomore, told her on Thursday that a number of children had been sent home because of illness. On Friday, he said hardly anyone was in school.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_swine_flu_states

usually only 3% or 4% die from the flu

but if ten million people catch it 3% or 4% turns into a LOT of people

It'll never happen but, now would be a good time to close and secure the Southern border.

Question. Where were these first known cases reported?

Swine Flu in Humans

The first isolation of a swine flu virus from a human occurred in 1974, confirming a long held suspicion that swine flu viruses could infect humans.4 A 2007 review article on this topic presented data from 50 cases reported in the medical literature and offered several salient points regarding human cases:

* Case fatality rates were 14% (likely reflecting case ascertainment bias).
* 61% of civilian cases reported swine exposure.
* Person-to-person transmission did occurr.4

CDC reports the receipt of approximately 1 human swine flu case report every 1 to 2 years (swine flu has been a nationally reportable condition since 2007). Since 2005, 12 cases have been reported in the U.S., most with exposure to pigs.1

Most swine influenza infections do not have a presentation distinct from human influenza infections. Seroprevalence studies have shown 23% positivity in those with occupational exposure to pigs.2

The Fort Dix Incident

The most widely known incident of swine flu in humans centers around an outbreak of a lethal influenza virus at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 1976. During that outbreak, 13 solders had severe respiratory illness, and 1 soldier died. A novel H1N1 swine influenza virus (Hsw1N1) was isolated, and approximately 230 other soldiers displayed evidence of infection.5 The virus did not spread outside Fort Dix, no swine exposure was ever elucidated, and swine were never definitively established as the source.2,5 The incident prompted a massive vaccination campaign that was plagued with problems.2,8

1918 and the Swine Flu

The current swine influenza strains circulating in pigs worldwide include H1N1, H3N2, and H1N2. In the U.S., one of the sub-types of the H1N1 virus has been circulating since the early 20th century [2]. Recent research has shown that this virus was likely seeded into the swine population from humans during the 1918 influenza pandemic and is a derivative of the 1918 pandemic strain—illustrating that interspecies transmission of the 1918 virus was from humans to pigs, not pigs to human [6].

http://www.upmc-cbn.org/

Before anyone get really scared, your biggest fear should be no greater than just catching a flu. Even typical flu (you all most likely had a few times already) kills people yearly, it's just isn't reported and focused on. What makes this more interesting, is that it spreads in the warm weather, unlike the typical flu, which takes advantage of the lowered immune defense system in cold weather.

I think it's in the interest of many to lock down the southern border, it's not "racism", it's prevention.

US declares public health emergency for swine flu
AP 19 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The U.S. declared a public health emergency Sunday to deal with the emerging new swine flu, much like the government does to prepare for approaching hurricanes.

Officials reported 20 U.S. cases of swine flu in five states so far, with the latest in Ohio and New York. Unlike in Mexico where the same strain appears to be killing dozens of people, cases in the United State have been mild — and U.S. health authorities can't yet explain why.

"As we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease," predicted Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We're going to see more severe disease in this country."

At a White House news conference, Besser and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sought to assure Americans that health officials are taking all appropriate steps to minimize the impact of the outbreak.

Top among those is declaring the public health emergency. As part of that, Napolitano said roughly 12 million doses of the drug Tamiflu will be moved from a federal stockpile to places where states can quickly get their share if they decide they need it. Priority will be given to the five states with known cases so far: California, Texas, New York, Ohio and Kansas.

Napolitano called the emergency declaration standard operating procedure — one was declared recently for the inauguration and for flooding. She urged people to think of it as a "declaration of emergency preparedness."

"Really that's what we're doing right now. We're preparing in an environment where we really don't know ultimately what the size of seriousness of this outbreak is going to be."

Russia banned the import of meat products from Mexico, California, Texas and Kansas. South Korea said it would increase the number of its influenza virus checks on pork products from Mexico and the U.S.

sounds like this is getting worse by the hour