Quote:
Originally Posted by mynah
Latest news:
Breaking news: WHO on high alert
This is beginning to look even more like the big one. It has many characteristics not seen in the SARS and avian flu outbreaks in Asia, and has many of the hallmarks of a pandemic: High mortality rate especially among young adults, novel genetic composition, is spread from person to person, and is spreading from town to town... In addition, Americans may take notice of the fact that it has already crossed their borders... |
High mortality rate? No one knows what the mortality rate is yet. The epicenter seems to be mexico and they are still shipping samples to labs to determine which strain infected who. Last I read, 1/2 of the tested specimens were of this H1N1 variant, the others were other types of flu and all known (as I understood the articles). What I dont know is if these samples were all fatalities, some fatalities or no fatalities.
The novel genetic combo is very interesting. One unconfirmed source stated the swine flu's in this are european swine and N. American swine, and implied that this was not asian in origin. Note this info for the torontosun link below.
Another piece which is fodder for conspiracy theorists is the first USA case being discovered/indentified at a Naval hospital which specializes in outbreak study. (somewhere on msnbc).
Then I found this article via a different website (note the date, late February 2009):
Baxter: Product contained live bird flu virus | Canada | News | Toronto Sun
"The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses."
I have no idea if ferrets exposed to H1N1 die from it. I also have no idea if Baxter has operations in mexico.
Someone posted info about a canadian microbe research (canadian CDC type place) confirming the contaminated samples referred to in the torontosun article. So I searched this canadian site for info on the contaminated H5N1. I found nothing but there were a bunch of articles about some strains of H1N1 being documented by this place for drug resistance.
I do find two different strains of swine flu locking in with the same type of avian flu and apparently the same human genetic combination and showing up in the same country at the same time to be suspect.
Now if this was a contamination issue, rather than a wild strain suddenly appearing, it would make sense for the initial government/cdc type statements made yesterday about it being "too late for containment, its already out there", which really surprised me.
