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WHO Raises Swine Flu Threat Level
Solarch writes "Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, the WHO raised the pandemic threat level for H1N1 "swine flu" to 5. Global media outlets(such as CNN, Fox News, and the BBC) preempted normal broadcast coverage and immediately published stories on their websites. To clarify, the WHO's elevation is mainly a sign to governments that the virus is spreading quickly and that steps should be taken on a governmental level to stage supplies and medicines to combat a possible pandemic. Unfortunately, broadcast coverage focused on phrases like 'pandemic imminent' (CNN marquee).
In other news, patient zero, the medical term for the initial human vector of a disease, has been tentatively identified in Mexico."
I read an article a couple days ago, apparently there was a swine flu outbreak in 1976, and the US was quite proactive in stopping it, encouraging everyone to get vaccinated. The problem came when more people died from the vaccine than from the flu. So the correct path of action is not always clear, how far should you go to try to prevent this? Wall Street Journal has an interesting article dealing with these issues.
As for me, being young and healthy, looks like I'm about to roll one of my d20. Whatever happens happens, I'll enjoy it to the end.
Qxe4
Actually, the virus strikes people with healthy immune systems, and the causes of death are an immune system overreaction. Translated: People with excellent immune systems are more likely to die than those with weaker ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm
It it is most dangerous to those with strong immune systems because of the potential for cytokine storms
Which is pure speculation at this point. The truth is nobody knows why it's mostly killed young people so far. Pointing to a cytokine storm as the cause is possible, but very misleading.
AccountKiller
One of the remarkable facts about this outbreak is that the deaths in Mexico are primarily among healthy adults between 20 and 50--similar to the profile of the Spanish flu of 1918. However, one of the yet unresolved puzzles about the virus is why the mortality figures in Mexico are proportionally so much larger than in the USA, so yeah, we just don't know what's going on yet...
Are you adequate?
Not necessarily. The reason the 1918 version of H1N1 was so bad was that those with healthy immune systems were more likely to die because the immune system overreacted. You have a point about the antiviral medicine, but the other factors *favor* those in third-world countries.
Brett
This is likely somewhat inaccurate. The efficacy of SARS and the previous avian flus-- and of pandemic flus in general-- is that they cause the strongest human immune systems (18-30 yrs) to overreact and fill the lungs with fluid, slowly drowning the victims. (Antivirals are also not all that effective, versus respirators and manual techniques to clear the lungs).
We also don't quite know what we're up against, get.
That said, if the developing world looses its young and strong, that is in some ways worse. But don't think the developed world is out of the way: avian flu killed one in three victims in Hong Kong, right?
Most of the deaths reported in the press have been non-elderly adults, as opposed to the regular flu where 90% of the deaths are already-sick old people and the rest are mostly kids who are too young for flu shots. Until the latest news articles (which said that "150 deaths" was "maybe actually only 7-8 confirmed to be swine flu"), the number of deaths from swine flu was about 1% of the total number of regular-seasonal-flu deaths during the past week.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Aaand clarifying before justified downmods:
It kills healthy people, more of them thus far than ill people. And it's rather obvious why it hasn't killed much people in the last 30 years - if you don't get that, get the hell outta my Slashdot and your ass into Biology 101.
It's not yet confirmed it's cytokine storm precisely - but it's certainly a possibility on the table.
Please STOP spreading this racist, unfounded meme. While Mexico is a developing nation with a "poor" health care system, hospitals in Mexico City and elsewhere are modern, with up-to-date equipment and well-trained personnel. While pollution is a problem, not necessarily more so than in parts of New York City or LA, especially in the downtown zones under the new environmental rules. Significant advances in air quality have been made in the past 10 years, under AMLO and Ebrard.
There is no clear, obvious reason for a higher morality rate across Mexico, including and especially in the downtown Mexico City hospitals, than in the US.
If you look at that CDC search, one article that jumps out is this one, which says that based on later research, it looks like the big killer wasn't actually the influenza itself or related cytokine storms, but secondary bacterial infections causing pneumonia among people weakened by the influenza. That's actually fairly good news, because it's much more likely that we can treat those in a hurry with existing antibiotics (as opposed to waiting 6 months to get a newly-tuned H1N1 vaccine or using the increasingly-ineffective antivirals like Tamiflu), and because quarantine also reduces the spread of bacterial infections so people who do get the flu are less likely to get the secondaries.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think it's partially human nature though.
They call it Schadenfreude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude and there is a lot more of it in the world than one would like to believe.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
whats strange is the original outbreak of the 1918 spanish flu started at a Kansas army base. As the WW1 soldiers were deployed to Europe the virus went with them.
It wasn't a natural disaster, wasn't an accident, wasn't even a war. It was a big...
The term you're looking for is blowback.
Actually, the virus strikes people with healthy immune systems, and the causes of death are an immune system overreaction. Translated: People with excellent immune systems are more likely to die than those with weaker ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm
ACTUALLY, you should read the article you're citing:
Recent reports of high mortality among healthy young adults in the 2009 swine flu outbreak has led to speculation that cytokine storms could be responsible for these deaths.[6] However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) has indicated that symptoms reported from this strain so far are similar to those of normal seasonal flu,[7] with the CDC stating that there is "insufficient information to date about clinical complications of this variant of swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus infection."[7]
Fixed that for you.