Here's a link to some interesting information: Pissin' On The Roses About the H7N9 virus and the reactions our government is having to it.
This is a very interesting link. This is information I hadn't seen before. Currently H7N9 has around a 20% fatality rate. I know that last week someone from China got stopped when trying to bring raw chickens into DC. This puts an interesting spin on everything I have read so far.
"...the Federal Government is preparing for the type of Global Pandemic infectious disease scenario only seen in books and movies." True.
BBC News - H7N9 bird flu is a 'serious threat' - researchers warn Often in pandemics older people have some immunity as they have lived longer and have been exposed to similar viruses before. However, in this outbreak the ages of those infected ranges from two to 81. Of those infected, a fifth died, a fifth recovered and the rest are still ill. The infection results in severe pneumonia and even blood poisoning and organ failure.
it always does range from 2 to 81 but it is always the very young and the "very old" the people with the week amune systems... these are also the same people dying from common colds...
If this were to become a pandemic, the 20% fatality rate is likely very optimistic. Once medical facilities are overwhelmed, supportive care will be essentially unavailable and people will be dealing with loved ones with this at home, not in an ICU. I'll probably have to watch Contagion again. I know it's Hollywood, but I feel it did a great job of capturing the scope and much of the nuance of a pandemic and the social dynamics around it. Also need to look at some of the grass roots details of the Spanish Flu pandemic.
That's because they didn't have these capabilities in 1918, nor did they have control over information like they do now.
As it should. The "common weal" demands it. That said, there are a lot of frns expended wastefully chasing ephemera by funding research that on the face will be dead ends. THAT is the part needing to be controlled.
This is a very bad flu and current news is 130 sick and 31 dead. We do not do flu vaccines in our home. When the flu does come to our part of the world I always have some doubt. If something ever happened to a loved one because of the flu, i would never forgive myself; yet if I immunized my loved ones and they suffered effects, I would never forgive myself. I just wish I had faith in the drug makers and the gov't. Silversnake is correct, once the hospitals get overwhelmed things can get out of hand real quick. I recall during the last flu season they had tents in hospital parking lots, some businesses were shut down. Just today I read that part of Children's Hospital is shut down due to a stomach flu.
I, personally, never get flu shots. They guarantee a couple of crappy days, because they give you a mild case to build up your immune system. (anti-bodies). But I almost never get sick in the first place. work outdoors primarily, and in the worst of it, rain, snow, burning heat, I don't get sick, so why bother MAKING myself sick for those few days? For me, it is counter-productive.
Not trying to fearmonger, but here's another article about the progress of the #nCoV (the new name of the virus): Two People Dead From SARS-Like Virus In Saudi Arabia, Two More Infected In France | Zero Hedge
Some new information has come up on the POTR blog: it appears that the H7N9 virus causes a hemorrhagic fever. It is spread by pigeons during their migration, and they suffer no outward effects. Here's some info from the CDC on Viral Hemorrhagic Fever: Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers | CDC Special Pathogens Branch
Mysterious respiratory illness strikes 7 in Alabama; 2 dead - Vitals Unknown? Coughing, weezing, shortness of breath- pneumonia perhaps? They don't give the victims ages of the two that had died. Would be nice to know, not very comforting, I know, for the victims family, but still, this is the type of info we need. They spend more time in the article trying to prove that it wasn't H7N9, coronavirus, or MERS, than they spend trying to figure out what it is. If this stops here, then it's nothing (probably the situation). On the other hand, if this continues, then watch out.
The 1918 flu killed mostly healthy young adults, by causing their immune systems to overreact, causing a cytokine storm.
Latest bird flu strain 'kills more than a third' Jun 24, 12:40 AM (ET) LONDON (AP) - More than a third of patients infected with a new strain of bird flu died after being admitted to the hospital earlier this year, Chinese researchers report in a new study. Since the new H7N9 bird flu first broke out in China in late March, the strain has sickened more than 130 people and killed 37. The World Health Organization has previously described H7N9 as "one of the most lethal influenza viruses" it has ever seen and said it appeared to spread faster than the last bird flu strain, H5N1, that threatened to unleash a pandemic. After making some adjustments for missing data, the Chinese scientists estimated the overall death rate to be 36 percent. The outbreak was stopped after China closed many of its live animal markets - scientists had assumed the virus was infecting people through exposure to live birds. That makes the new strain less deadly than H5N1, which kills about 70 percent of the people it infects. Still, H7N9 is more lethal than the swine flu that caused a 2009 global epidemic. That had a death rate of less than one percent. The results were released in two papers on the H7N9 strain, published online Monday in the journal Lancet. "The good news is that numbers of (H7N9) cases have stalled," Cecile Viboud and Lone Simonsen of the U.S. National Institutes of Health wrote in a commentary accompanying the article. However, they warned that the threat of the virus still "persists" and predicted that the strain might return in the winter, when flu viruses are typically most active. That assessment echoes the WHO, which earlier this month also warned of the virus adapting. My Way News - Latest bird flu strain 'kills more than a third'
The problem is that right now, people aren't going to a doctor or hospital when they feel a little sick, but when they're REALLY sick. I applaud not wanting to bother medical professionals with something trivial, but with something like this going around, I'd at least get checked ... and I hate doctors. Without checking everyone that get's sick, we have no idea what the actual mortality rate is. How many people recover without going to the doctor? We'll never know.
The problem with these strains, is that they go right for the death spiral, not giving the victim the chance to even feel "just a little sick." When one got sick from the spanish flu, you either died from it quickly (and healthy young people, BTW) or suffered through it- not the other way around.
I do think MERS is worth keeping an eye on. If WHO is holding a just in case talk then we ought to pay attention. They say they are just being pro-active. But 54% death rate is not good. WHO convenes emergency talks on MERS virus - FRANCE 24 And why are they holding a talk? Because of this I think: