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New Virus Means Deadlier Flu Season Is Possible
HughPickens.com writes Donald McNeil writes in the NYT that this year's flu season may be deadlier than usual because this year's flu vaccine is a relatively poor match to a new virus that is now circulating. "Flu is unpredictable, but what we've seen thus far is concerning," says Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. According to the CDC, five U.S. children have died from flu-related complications so far this season. Four of them were infected with influenza A viruses, including three cases of H3N2 infections. The new H3 subtype first appeared overseas in March but because it was not found in many samples in the United States until September, it is now too late to change the vaccine. Because of the increased danger from the H3 strain — and because B influenza strains can also cause serious illness — the CDC recommends that patients with asthma, diabetes or lung or heart problems see a doctor at the first sign of a possible flu, and that doctors quickly prescribe antivirals like Tamiflu or Relenza. "H3N2 viruses tend to be associated with more severe seasons," says Frieden. "The rate of hospitalization and death can be twice as high or more in flu seasons when H3 doesn't predominate."
After going through Ebola, who is really going to give a shit about this? My suspicion is that, now that the Ebola hype has died back, Big News is looking for another epidemic story since they hit the rating jackpot on the last one.
Those of us who haven't already died of ebola are sure to die from this deadly new virus - it's even deadlier than the old deadly virus!
I bet it is being spread by dirty foreigners too...
I've spent the last couple of days wishing for sweet, sweet death, and I did get my flu shot. Still 100% glad I got my flu shot, though. Basically, I was wearing a bulletproof vest, but got shot in the leg. Not the vest's fault. A group of very highly trained professionals made a judgment call back in February about what strains this year's flu shot should protect against, and they got it wrong. C'est la vie.
That wouldn't happen if the vaccine was open source. Someone would have patched this bug.
CDC issues yet another alarmist virus scare to maintain funding. Film at eleven.
Next year, rinse, repeat, rinse repeat, rinse, repeat
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Not this bullshit again, it's already that time of the year?
If it's true that this is just an alarmist scare to maintain funding, the problem is that instead of being given the resources to effectively deal with diseases as a matter of course the CDC instead has to resort to alarmist scares to maintain funding.
Hello,
I think the CDC has a LOT more grounds to ring the "danger bell" than the people supporting Department of Defense spending. How many US people did terrorists kill in the last 10 years? Probably flu deaths are in the 100,000's? We also lose about 30k people/year to antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, however, do we even have $10B/year going into new antibiotic research?
By *that* measure, which is pretty rational, the CDC and NIH ought to be funded at a higher level than the DoD.
I mean, does USA *really* need to be spending more next 10 nations combined on its national defense, as opposed to spending more to control diseases which could quite conceivably mutate and become major killers, or combat already existing credible threats like ebola? How about spending more to assure the food supply is continuous? There are diseases wiping out food crops like bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee, and there are credible disease threats against wheat. Yet USA is spending a pittiance to combat *that* risk, which, rationally, is a bigger risk than the risks mitigated by USA's DoD spending.
--PeterM
So how many times are we going to go through this same alarmist, the world is going to end because of ... the flu thing?
I started paying attention to this crap in the late 90s when I realized 'it seems like every year we're going to have a horrible flu outbreak' ... then they started naming the flu for the year, which meant my drama queen sister in law seemed to get 'deadliest flu strain ever' every year ... and saying things like 'I have H1N1, its the deadly one!!!!!' except of course ... H1N1 isn't a specific strain, its a class of strains ... and its the most common one for all time, which pretty much everyone gets.
Every year, some news station will show someone from the CDC talking about how much more dangerous this year is ... and they'll throw out numbers ... and then when you go compare those numbers with the CDCs website of ACTUAL statistics ... you see that the numbers they are saying are bullshit ... and that the numbers for this year are actually pretty much average and right down the median of the range from previous years.
Now they've changed the data they display. They no longer display historical data, now they display what they call the seasonal baseline, which is essentially the lowest year ever recorded, and an epidemic threshold, which is exceeded EVERY SINGLE YEAR except extremely rare ones ... and no longer do they show that this year looks exactly like last year, and the previous 20 all look almost identical.
Scaremongering
And while we're on the subject of the flu ... why is it that I'm the only one in my family that doesn't get a flu shot and I'm also the only one who has managed to not get the flu every year except for the year before last ... when doctors convinced me to get the flu shot because I had a newborn son ... ironic that I GOT THE FLU THAT YEAR.
Just fucking stop.
The flu is scary for immunocompromised hosts, which is basically no one other than HIV/AIDS carriers and older people. Even freaking kids have an immune system that does well against it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Forgive me if I simply yawn at yet another hyper-alarmist "CYA" plea from big government.
Or maybe the reality is that we don't really need such a large and complex federal agency to deal with diseases as a matter of course, and so they have to regularly create bullshit boogeymen virus scares to maintain the illusion that their budget should be sacrosanct.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Issuing reports like this is just the CDC doing their job. You do not complain about the weather service issuing reports about tornados, do you? Or CERT issuing their reports? NHTSA?
It seems to me you are the alarmist here.
Or it is mixed with EBOLA? This "overseas" country, it should be quarantined immediately before it is too late. We didn't vote for all your Replicans because we wanted these invaders coming here in the first place.
AAANND, if they said nothing, and some thing horrible happens, some untrained commenter/reporter/radio host would say "the CDC doesn't know anything, they did not warn us this might happen".
Pick what you want, a medical community that tells you what CAN happen, or that tells you what you want to hear. The doctors I deal with (numerous specialties, pediatric and adult, in America), are in the "list everything that CAN happen" mindset. They try to add the probabilities of an outcome, and point out what the most likely outcome is. They have to, or some ambulance chaser lawyer will "help" a patient sue them for "not warning them" of a potential outcome. If you talk with the doctor, and they are candid, they readily admit it can be hard to predict medical outcomes, because human beings and medical facilities have so many variables it is amazing we survive at all.
My wife hates that, because she is a pessimist, and dwells on the low probability "worst case".
- speaking only for myself, as always
In the last century, the CDC became a political and Politically Correct arm of the Federal Government.
The CDC has an agenda and that agenda is not the health of the country. Of even the world.
The CDC is run by political hacks and has destroyed its own credibility.
See the CDC's treatment of ebola for all the recent truth.
See the CDC's pronounce on firearms for the recent past's truth.
Well I love your great anecdotal evidence, you should probably publish it and see how it goes. So, as an actual virologist and epidemiologist, let me try to explain here. First, please understand the difference between correlation and causation. Second, you may truly have a strong immune system helping protect you against seasonal flu or you may simply have very selective memory. Third, a strong immune system has actually been shown to be a detriment as it leads to what some scientists term a cytokine/chemokine storm (yes this specific terminology/pathology still debated) so enjoy that avoidance of a simple, cheap, and safe vaccine if we ever have to deal with such a strain. Fourth, the flu SHOT does not cause the flu, it is killed and will not lead to any type of viral infection directly from the shot. It is, of course, possible for the vaccine to be targeting the wrong strains as the article states the current one may but sorry to say it still is a partial guessing game and they will sometimes guess wrong. This is why good hygiene and health practices are also critical, not just the vaccine. Fifth, someone really has no understanding of herd immunity. One of the most critical aspects of the flu vaccine is it can protect the elderly, young, and immune compromised who themselves can't receive the vaccine or receive no direct benefit. Are you so cold as to avoid a simple and safe shot which could save your own child, or your parents/grand parents? What if your neighbors baby gets dies and we could trace it directly back to you (fairly easy to do through sequencing analysis)? Again, the vaccine is easy and cheap. The economic costs directly related to seasonal flu pay for it by itself, not including the life saving factors. It is simply ignorance, avoidance, and stupidity which can lead to such illogical jumps of "I never get sick so I don't need a vaccine" or "I only get sick when I get vaccinated". If you showed me a daily health report from the last 5 years where you reported your temp and clinical signs twice a day, I may believe you. Otherwise sorry to say I am sticking with selective memory.
Another point - have you ever READ the original reports and release from the CDC? Pretty dry stuff.
It is THE PRESS that adds the hyperbole.
- speaking only for myself, as always
Quick edit, the sentence should read "What if your neighbor's baby gets sick and dies and we...."
Thanks
another American medical company now wants to sell a new and better vaccine to the whole world, to save us from this imminent pandemic? Sell your shit to Americans instead, the rest of us don't want it.
The CDC goes WAY beyond just issuing objective, disinterested alerts. Their press conferences often sound more like the rantings of a nutcase holding up a "The End is Nigh!" sign than the objective and qualified observations of serious medical professionals. Remember their H1N1 "pandemic" press conferences?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
This flu does suck. My six-month-old baby and I have it. That's all I have to say for now because looking at the screen hurts right now.
If everything's a crisis, nothing is really a crisis.
And we wonder why people ignore things.
2 years after the Ebola virus will spread throughout the world.
http://www.saatciyim.com/
They need to stay HERE. Fix problems at HOME.
Toto was HERE.
Wait, is the CDC not reliable? Are you saying that Jenny McCarthy is right?
have you ever READ the original reports and release from the CDC? Pretty dry stuff.
Yeah, I've heard about some of their objective and disinterested reports on "disease."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Considering it is the season where flu infection rates rise up tremendously, yes. Yes it is.
Ladies and gentlemen: I present to you ignorance so profound it represents a threat to society.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Flu kills more people than ebola. Ebola kills a higher percentage of the sufferers though.
So yes, the flu is WORSE than Ebola under certain metrics. And it spreads much better, too.
you mean where teh CDC was correct after all, and all the talking heads were fearmongering over ebola for nothing?
oh yeah. firearms....god forbid an organization whos chief concern is public health do research into one of the deadliest yet most preventable threats in a society, a threat most every other civilized nation has already neutralized. they also have guidance on cars, eating habits, and other leading causes of death.
so scary.
oooooooooo.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
We were talking about this particular communication of the CDC. I see just facts and reasonable-sounding suggestions to doctors, and no ranting anywhere. So why is this 'yet another alarmist virus scare', as you claim it is? Quotes please.
the only nutcase around here is you.
ok i take that back, you have a lot of company.
but still a nutcase.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
DUH! Obviously the Weather Service is only issuing reports and warnings to justify their own existence and get more funding.
I dont know what theyre going to do with it, since being government employees their salaries are locked by codified pay scales so its not like they can pocket the money from "more funding".
Seriosuly, what do these nuts who say its about more funding think they're going to do with it?
Its so dumb, its hard to properly parody it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
that's an opinion peice from a non expert criticing experts, and that piece has itself been torn to shreds.
for starters, theres the assumptions that the FBI statistics are at all adequate (they arent, and even the FBI says so), or that their statistics are the end of the discussion and should or would at all match studies.
the FBI stats are inadequate and incomplete.
the FBI even says so.
there are tens of thousands of LEA's across the country (>35k), but onlya very small minority of them (1k) even track statistics and then report them to the FBIs database.
further, unlike robbery or homicide, rape very rarely has third party witnesses or bystanders able to report the crime.
meaning the only person capable of reporting it is the victim. and the victims very often dont report it for various reasons, such as intimidation and threats, they know the assailant, etc etc.
these are established problems with the current statistics, and only the tip of the iceberg of problems, that everyone acknowledges.
except apparently the author of that horrible article...and you.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Step one, disarm public. Steps two through n, tell them what to do.
Secure ample funding for the CDC so they don't have to spew alarmist bull every now and then to keep their budget.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
LOL. "The virus has 'mutated'" - LOL. How convenient! One of the diseases that almost everybody gets, every year, and the magical 'vaccines' don't work because 'the virus mutated'...
Sure, we believe you...
http://www.whale.to/v/hadwen.html
Feel free to refute the above talk. Oh, wait... you don't do science, do you...
I mean, does USA *really* need to be spending more next 10 nations combined on its national defense ...
While this is true in terms of absolute numbers, consider it another: as a percentage of GDP:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
It doesn't look as crazy from that perspective.
Also note that NATO guidelines say that members should spend out 2% of GDP, and a lot of countries aren't doing that--which the US may be compensating for. If the US' friends did a bit more, perhaps the US could do less.
Speaking as a Canadian, we definitely have to step it up a bit (though the current ruling party has bungled the last few procurement programs).
And incomplete FBI stats somehow justifies calling women up, asking them if they've ever had sex while they were drunk, and then defining that as "sexual assault"?
I mean, are you FUCKING HIGH?
And if you are, BTW, don't fuck anyone! Your partner might go to prison for it.
And, for that matter WHAT THE FUCK is the Centers for Disease Control financing a research project into sexual assault in the first place? I'm pretty sure the taxpayers and Congress meant for the money budgeted to CDC to be spent on actual medical diseases, not social and criminal issues.
Programmers more than anyone should be able to understand these pathogens more than most people.
Bacteria are a problem because some strains/species have metabolic byproducts (ie botulotoxin) that are deadly.
But viruses are different, they don't do this.
What they do instead is replicate like RTM's worm and make trillions of copies of themselves.
Ask yourself - where do the raw materials come from when each virus makes a trillion more?
You, of course.
Now, what if the raw materials they use are really important to you in trace amounts?
So, whatever the virus encodes for, you're losing that stuff.
Ever wonder why Ebola Reston is harmless? Or why some people who got HIV never got AIDS? Or why some who got HIV got AIDS quickly while others took a decade? Or why some people get flu and die while others get sick for a week and are fine after?
It all depends on what the virus encodes for and what molecules it strips from your body.
"Klenner's paper (Klenner FR. The treatment of poliomyelitis and other virus diseases with intravenous ascorbate C. J. South. Med. and Surg., 111:210-214, 1949.) on curing 60 cases of polio in the epidemic of 1948 should have changed the way infectious diseases were treated but it did not." - Robert Cathcart
1949 ^^^
In 2010 the H1N1 influenza swept through here; my ex died of it, I was sick for two days and then back to work.
If you can find the numbers (good luck with that) compute the r-naught factor for Ebola and see if you can explain what happened in mid-October.
Need Mercedes parts ?
When it comes to the flu, why bother with unproved vaccines when we have multiple studies showing vitamin D helps your immune system thwart it as efficiently in winter as it does in summer.
each year 700 billion people die of flu.
GSK QIV vaccine sales were up 76% in Q4 but we can do better! if only we could find enough gullible fools somewhere!? oh wait, what's this interwebs you speak of hmmm? release the shills!
Or maybe the reality is that we don't really need such a large and complex federal agency to deal with diseases as a matter of course, and so they have to regularly create bullshit boogeymen virus scares to maintain the illusion that their budget should be sacrosanct.
That way, when something like Ebola arrives here, we can all run around like chickens with our heads cut off, because we don't have any standing organization with the expertise to deal with it, but it does save us a few bucks on taxes that we can use to buy bigger engines for our Road Queen Family Trucksters and bigger screens for our phones.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Except that in the years where they put the WRONG virus in the vaccine there was no increase in influenza deaths!
Except that Dr Lisa Jackson's research into the healthy user effect by following the same group of people inside and outside the flu season shows very little difference in mortality (all cause mortality (ACM) studies).
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/337.short
Except that the seasonal influenza vaccine is questionable at best in its effectiveness
- Cochrane Review - Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults-
Except that an earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found industry-funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favourable to the vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in the light of this finding.
- Except that vitamin D3 has been shown to be more effective and less side effects that the influenza vaccine. If they keep on insisting that the seasonal influenza vaccine is the best way to avoid the flu they will only get more people throwing the baby out with the bath water. Quit lying about it and start telling the truth and maybe even withdraw it in favour of safer and more effective treatments and maybe the public will trust you more about the vaccines that do work. Or just keep spewing on and on that the seasonal influenza vaccine is the most effective and safest way to prevent the flu and have more and more people distrust EVERYTHING you say. Your choice.