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Swine Flu Genetics Suggest a Vaccine Is Possible
Kristina at Science News writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced findings May 1 from genetic studies of swine flu virus from six different countries. A strong similarity from country to country suggests all the infections are from one strain, making a vaccine a strong possibility. It will be several months at least before such a vaccine would be developed, though."
about those torture memos with all this swine flu brouhaha, haven't we?
I Want To Believe
Also now having rtfa, I noticed this is even mentioned:
influenza comes in many strains, each a slightly different version of the flu virus. The new flu strain infecting people around the globe is unique in that, although it has a well-known surface protein combination, H1N1, the H in this protein pairing has swine origins. Whether this trait will give this strain of flu virus unusual characteristics remains to be seen."
Liberty.
Well, no. It's pointless shutting down the transit system, and sticking infrared cameras everywhere (as oa few places did) was unlikely to produce results either.
Britain ordered hundreds of thousands of filtered masks. Which might stop patients from being infected by health-care workers, but would not have stopped the health-care workers from being infected. They did not order much in the way of antivirals, which were known to be effective.
America closed some schools down, which did indeed shut down the vector of kid-to-kid transmission. As sick kids often end up going to work with their parents, it did however mean that you exposed adults to any potential infection, and kids would get infected from their parents. So it didn't actually do anything useful. Again, antivirals were not being ordered.
Canada took several weeks (maybe closer to a month) to isolate the flu virus from the first-known case. Well, in all probability, they got the sample, ignored it for ages, checked it, sat on the results for a long time, and then got round to telling someone. Active they were not. When they did inform the Mexicans, they obviously didn't inform the Americans as the CDC had no information on the flu in Mexico until the Mexicans sent them the data. So we can conclude the Canadian Government - even once the concerns started coming in - sat on their own data from Mexico. If this had been something dangerous, this political foppery could have been disastrous, and the Canadians couldn't have known at that point if it was going to be a nasty situation or not.
That should be enough examples to be getting on with.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You know what bothers me the most? That it's invariably people who don't give a shit about the "common flu" who go headless chicken over this craze.
There's no vaccine. Yes. Did you get inoculated against the normal flu? No? THEN WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Surely you mean global economic crisis?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The drift from pigs to humans (and therefore no vaccine in production) caused the initial concern. Furthermore, this could come back more virulent in the winter. The 1918 flu was also H1N1, and it had three waves. The second wave was the big killer.
Sick kids going to work with their parents? What on earth? If that is common in your area, it's fairly awful! Sick kids here in Ireland mostly rightly get to stay at home, either with a parent already at home (raising a family, running a household) or with a parent who simply takes time off work (certain occupations would be tricky for that, but it would seldom be both parents with such a job). Sometimes the employer might insist on annual leave being used (there is a statutory minimum of 21 days in addition to the public holidays).
If the parents can't even get time off from work to mind a sick child, one has to wonder if they really should have undertaken to raise children with both parents working. It also raises questions about there being sufficient regulation to ensure worker's rights.
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