Swine Flu

The US is declaring a public health emergency, mainly to free up funds and commence preparing for the End Days.  Well, at least my worries about the Taliban dropping the Pakistani government and going nuclear have been moved to the back burner.  Hmm, maybe the Taliban could be decimated by the swine flu?  There's got to be a silver lining somewhere.

Comments

[Pofarmer]

Must need more federal govt intervention.

[daddy]

Sure it's deadly and all TM, but look on the bright side. It did in the Martians on War Of The Worlds, and who knows how much of a spur this might be for universal health care.

[Margaret Back]

As Swine Flu is spread by human to human contact, it becomes imperative to educate children on how germs are spread.

Germy Wormy Germ Smart for Kids educates and entertains kids while teaching them how to NOT spread germs.

Please pass along to anyone who has young children and is concerned about the spread of the Swine Flu

www.germywormy.com

[Roy Schwartz]

You may also want to read:
http://bit.ly/vaC5

[Mike]

Thanks for the website! I also have a suggestion for you: get yourselves a Breath of Life Emergency Escape Mask family pack at www.ProactiveAndPrepared.com

[Wayne]

My latest web comic about the whole thing: http://bit.ly/t9R4D

[Louise Helpmann]

The recent Swine Flu is another US lab-made virus. Check this link:

Swine/Bird Flu Distributed by Dept of Homeland Security

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/21497/Bird_Flu_Distributed_by_Dept_of_Homeland_Security/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qJQCJp4ehc

[Cristy]

The Border Patrol needs to check the people crossing over the border alot better. This would probably never happened.

[Jane]

Who are all these people?

[Jbean]

I just heard from this lady on NBC that the swine flu is a combination of swine, bird, and human flu.

- how did 3 types of flu combine to make 1. ?
- if it is transferred from pig to human where do the birds come in to play

[DSP]

CANOPUS BIOPHARMA AND LEADING CHINESE RESEARCHER TEAM UP TO TREAT AVIAN INFLUENZA, TO PREVENT POSSIBLE PANDEMIC

Major Threat Treatable with StatC™; FDA-Approved Drugs to Begin Testing in U.S. Animal Models

LOS ANGELES, Calif and GUANGZHOU, China (August 12, 2008) /PRNewswire/ — An internationally renowned avian influenza expert today hailed "encouraging and exciting" results from experiments conducted by his research team. This study demonstrated impressive efficacy of a novel statin/caffeine combination, StatC™ in the treatment and prevention of H5N1, H1N1 and H3N2 in a mouse model.

Dr. Jiahai Lu, from the School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, has published extensively in the field of avian influenza, and has been researching the breakthrough compound StatC™ for the past two years on behalf of Canopus BioPharma (OTCPK:CBIA), a US corporation who discovered and patented the potential of this antiviral candidate.

"The global distribution of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza has caused the World Health Organization to show its profound concern regarding the possibility of the virus spreading from human to human in the future," stated Dr. Lu. "Furthermore, the development of resistance to two approved anti-influenza drugs, oseltamivir (Tamiflu®) and zanamivir (Relenza®), as well as the lack of adequate vaccines has increased the need of developing new antiviral drugs."

"Consequently, I am delighted to be involved in the preclinical research stage of this innovative antiviral candidate, and look forward to continuing our successful collaboration with Canopus BioPharma in this area."

Dr. Lu and his colleagues have conducted extensive animal studies with StatC™ against three influenza strains, H5N1 (avian influenza, bird flu), H1N1 (Spanish influenza) and H3N2 (Hong Kong influenza). StatC™ is a combination of two FDA approved compounds which have been re-formulated by Canopus BioPharma for the prevention and treatment of Influenza. Oseltamivir and ribavirin were used as positive controls in this study. In the H5N1 model, StatC™ prevented and relieved the symptoms of H5N1 infection, inhibited lung damage and H5N1 virus replication in the lungs of mice, and was as effective as oseltamivir in both prevention and therapy models. There were no animals with positive viral detection in the groups nasally administered with StatC™. Likewise, StatC™ demonstrated similar results against the H3N2 and H1N1 viruses.

"We are encouraged with these findings," said Dr. Lu. "It is possible that higher doses of statin than those used in this study may result in even greater efficacy. StatC™ also appeared to be more effective when administered preventatively." With current positive results, Canopus BioPharma is looking to form a co-development agreement or licensing arrangements with pharmaceutical companies and Government health authorities interested in providing more economical and universal treatment for their populations in the event of a pandemic.

At the forefront of influenza research in Guangzhou, China, Dr. Lu is perfectly placed to further investigate the synergistic properties of the statin/caffeine combination. "We are also motivated at the potential of this compound in comparison with other currently available anti-influenza medications. It's clear that there is significant global need for a superior, low cost and plentiful alternative in the fight against influenza." added Dr. Lu. While StatC™ has proven to be highly efficacious against the most virulent strains of influenza, it must be noted that StatC™ is also extremely effective against non-fatal, human forms of the virus that occur annually.

Approved by the Food and Drug Administration, oseltamivir (Tamiflu®) is the leading prescription medicine approved for the prevention and treatment of influenza in adults and children. Datamonitor, the world's leading provider of online data, analytic and forecasting platforms for key vertical sectors, forecasts that global market demand for influenza treatments will expand to 370 million doses and a market value of approximately $3.7 billion by 2010.

Canopus BioPharma's strategy for developing StatC™ includes continued animal testing in partnership with its extensive network of American and Chinese based research laboratories. The next step involves a ferret animal model using a lethal strain of influenza to examine the efficacy of StatC™. Once completed, Canopus BioPharma's preclinical results will then satisfy the FDA's Animal Efficacy Rule and will make StatC™ available for Government stockpiling for use in the case of a pandemic.

About Canopus BioPharma, Inc.:
Canopus BioPharma, Inc. (OTCPK:CBIA) is dedicated to providing the safest, most cost effective and efficacious pharmaceutical products and assay methods in the areas of infectious disease, radiation protection, cancer, and addiction. With innovative science, proven research and development leadership, and superior products and compounds, Canopus BioPharma has, since 2001, been committed to becoming a market trend setter in a new era of healthcare. In addition, the Company is a world leader in the development of novel camelid antibody products to provide unique avenues of progress and improvement in assay methods and monitoring capabilities for physicians, patients and researchers, particularly for food chain protection applications. Canopus maintains staff in Australia, South Africa, Ireland and the USA. Additional information on the Company is available at www.canopusbiopharma.com.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Good GOD! Swine flu spam already.

Okay, Tom, my piece on how panic pays is up on PJM.

You've got it right on the "public health emerfency": the law's written in such a ways that DHS has to declare an emergency to let people have access to the Tamiflu stockpile, since it's an "emergency stockpile".

In the mean time, I found a new set of figures, from the CDC. There are about 200,000 hospital admissions for flu complications in the US ever year, and about 36,000 fatalities, for a mortality rate on hospital admissions of 18 percent.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Let's see, on the other stuff:

- germywormy: eh
- Roy Schwartz's source isn't bad although "high danger" seems overstated
- Wayne's web comic ("Mad Labrador") is pretty funny
- Louise, bullshit.
- cristy, bullshit.
- Jbean, flu is a sort of funny virus. It mutates and otherwise messes about with its surface proteins all the time, which is why you aren't immune for life as you are with herpes zoster (chicken pox), variola (smallpox), and morbillivirus (measles). Certain strains are easily transmitted within species, birds, and swine, and human, but cross over sometimes. However, "swine flu" isn't really a different kind of flu, just one that swine transmit to each other more readily than humans do. But they're all flu, and they actually swap proteins sometimes. So the way they mix is actually simple: birds are around pigs, the pigs get it; pigs are around people, people get it; people are around birds and pigs, the birds and pigs get it.

Sometimes the mutation is such that it becomes easier to spread within another species. That's what seems to have happened now. So, strictly, this isn't swine flu. It's people flu that happens to be similar to a strain of swine flu.

[cathyf]

Somewhere there has to be a scheme for using carrier pigeons to infect the Taliban and kill em off. Ok, if not a scheme, at least a Monty Python skit.

[sbw]

I washed my screen with Purel before I visited this thread.

Hey, remember when Bush took leftist gas for recommending Purel? Who's laughing now.

[SWarren]

Jbean,
- if it is transferred from pig to human where do the birds come in to play

Bird poop in pig feed. It's a strain of Avian Flu transferred to pigs in big industrial CAFO's (confined animal feed operations).

[PMII]

If Bush was still President, he would be getting ripped for allowing this to happen.

[clarice]

CAFO's my eye--most of the world's big flu epidemics start in a small area of China where ducks and pigs and humans live check by jowl in an enormous sort of sty. Some have suggested simply pouring concrete over that part of the world would save thousands of lives a year.

[sbw]

check by jowl

Stop Swine flu: Support card cheek?

[MayBee]

-most of the world's big flu epidemics start in a small area of China where ducks and pigs and humans live check by jowl in an enormous sort of sty.

When SARS was spreading in Hong Kong, there was an information effort to get people to stop publicly picking their nose, hocking up luggies on the street, and throwing their diapers and other waste products off their balconies.
A construction problem was also found in one of the high rise buildings where water droplets from flushing toilets was getting picked up by ventilation fans and spraying into other people's bathrooms.
And this was Hong Kong.

[SWarren]

Clarice, you may find this article interesting.
Excerpt:

"We met with a team of researchers from the University of Iowa who are studying avian flu, and their real concern was the very scenario that may have happened in Mexico - that avian flu may get into a swine CAFO and rapidly mutate and then get passed to workers, and then on to other people very quickly," Bob Martin, who was executive director of the now-disbanded commission and currently a Senior Officer at the Pew Environmental Group, told me.
"Their concern was that new strains of avian flu combining with swine flu could make the swine flu more deadly," he said. "And because viruses pass so easily between pigs and people, the new avian component could make swine flu more virulent."
Researchers such as Gregory Gray, MD, a University of Iowa professor of international epidemiology and expert in zoonotic infections, warned that CAFO workers could serve as a "bridging population" to rural communities sharing viruses with the pigs, and vice-versa. Other scientists suggested that CAFO workers could theoretically spread disease quickly to great distances. An outbreak of infectious avian flu on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, for example, could reach the Rocky Mountains within 36 hours.
The Iowa team was also worried that CAFO production could lead to another 1918-style global pandemic. One theory behind that calamity is that waterfowl cross-infected U.S. pigs with a new type of avian-swine super-virus that was quickly transmitted to farm workers, possibly in Iowa, who went off to military training camps for WWI, and then spread the pathogen worldwide
"One very big concern was that swine flu mixed with wild bird flu, or bird flu in a chicken CAFO, tended to be ripe for incubating new types of viral infections, especially since the animals are so densely packed together," Bob Martin said.
Hog CAFOs are supposed to be completely closed environments, in order to protect the pigs from outside diseases. Visitors are usually required to shower and don special protective clothing (again, for the animals' benefit) before going inside a confinement.
But these are not hermetically sealed environments, and pathogens can enter and exit a CAFO in a number of ways other than via swine workers (or flies, another proven vector of CAFO diseases).
To begin with, some swine CAFO's recover water from their waste lagoons and recycle it back into the animal housing, in order to wash out the barns while also cutting down on dwindling groundwater supplies (a particular concern in parts of Mexico, to be sure). But wildfowl routinely land in CAFO lagoons, where they can easily shed influenza virus into the water. This can also happen at facilities that use water from nearby ponds or rivers.

Cont’d at LUN
There was a follow-up article by the author that I will have to look for.

[MayBee]

Good stuff, Charlie.

[Stela Yordanova]

Red Cross ready to respond to swine flu
Read more http://www.redcross.org.uk/news.asp?id=94489

[ericTObb]

Sure glad the gop (collins) pulled flu pandemic preparedness money from the stimulus package. That and volcano monitering were such a waste of taxpayer cash. Wish they were in charge and pulling more money from more un-important things.

[ericTObb]

monitoring

[SWarren]

~snip~

As Philpott pointed out in his post, Mexican newspapers have been reporting for weeks that residents living near Granjas Carroll's massive hog facility at La Gloria are falling ill with severe upper respiratory diseases.
One five-year-old girl in the village just tested positive for swine flu - the bodies of two more children who died recently are being exhumed.

According to an April 5 article in La Jornada newspaper, "Clouds of flies emanate from the lagoons where Granjas Carroll discharges the fecal waste from its hog barns - as well as air pollution that has already caused an epidemic of respiratory infections in the town."

LUN

[jorod]

Spur universal health care? People are dropping like flies in Mexico where everything is "free" and some people want socialized medicine?

Are you nuts?

[MayBee]

Fox is saying an earthquake may have just hit Mexico City.

[Victor]

@ Jane I heard the same news reporting stating this new strain is a combo of Swine Flu, Bird Flu and Human influenza!

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Victor, that story means a lot less than you think it does.

[daddy]

Mexico Border crossing wise, it seems to me that we have been inundated this last year with 2 competing meme's from the Left:

1) Fence's and increased Border Surveillance Personnel will never work to stem illegal border crossings because people will always find a way to cross the border.

2) We can control the flow of firearms across the border with fences and Border Surveillance Personnel.

So my question is which argument is the Media and the Administration mouthing so far in this Mexican Flu Business? Will Fences and Border Guards be able to stop it crossing the border, or will Fences and Border Guards successfully halt it at the Border? If it is successfully stemmed at the Border, then why wouldn't that work for illegal immigration, yet if it doesn't, then why would such measures work for gun control?

I await their pontification.

[Rick Ballard]

The Q1 numbers for the economy must really suck.

AP Business Headlines:

"Investors are cautious as swine flu cases increase"

"Oil falls as reports of swine flu rattle market"

"Swine flu could mean new threat to US economy"

Bloomberg Headlines:

"U.S. Stocks Fall as Swine Flu Drags Down Travel, Hotel Shares"

"Airlines Tumble on Concern Swine Flu Will Damp Travel"

"Emerging-Market Stocks, Bonds, Currencies Drop as Flu Spreads"

"Corn, Soybeans, Wheat Drop as Swine Flu May Cut Animal-Feed Use"

The median on the consensus is a -4.5% GDP contraction. I'm betting closer to -6% and the focus away from the (D)irty Socialist moves towards a subZero Oconomy in the business press(D) make me feel it might be worse.

Hey! Let's torture the definition of torture and blame everything on dirty pigs!

[Dr David Hill]

The present state of preparedness for a pandemic caused by pigs, birds and other animals is wholly inadequate and if a pandemic happened today, hundreds of millions would undoubtedly perish.

Pigs are one of the closest matches to humans. That is why we use their organs for human transplantation operations. Therefore the mutation from pig influenza to human influenza, is probably the most dangerous of all due to the nearness of match.

The link between pig and human influenza has been known for a long time. Two important studies are Evolutionary pathways of N2 neuraminidases of swine and human influenza A Virus: origin of the neuraminidase genes of two reassortants (H1N2) isolate from pigs by Kuniaki Nerome et al, National Institute of Health, Japan – Journal of General Virology (1991), 72, 693-698/ and /Ito T, Couceiro JN, Kelm S, et al. Molecular basis for the generation in pigs of influenza A viruses with pandemic potential. J Virol 1998; 72:736773.

The problem with the present strategy is that it is predominantly targeted and dependent upon at a drug cure which is a totally false strategy. There are two main reasons for this.

1. Flu viruses are constantly remodelling themselves and where when a
new strain occurs, like the present state in Mexico, it will take
6 months to develop a drug to combat it. It has to be noted that
the Spanish flu (swine flu) that killed between 20 million and 100 million
nearly 100 years ago (there is no definitive statistic in this
respect as in 1918 the analysis was rudimentary, but where modern
pandemic statisticians estimate that it was somewhere between the
two huge figures), did its worst in the first 26 weeks. Therefore
an antidote would be a fool’s way of solving the problem.
2. Distribution of any new antidote would be a problem of enormous
proportions and all affected would be dead by the time it got to them.

Therefore the present strategy is futile.
But unfortunately now again, Tamiflu is in 99% of flu types, not resistant against the viruses.
I cite only a few points of information that confirm this fact.

(i) HONG KONG(Reuters) -- A strain of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that may unleash the next global flu pandemic is showing resistance to Tamiflu, the antiviral drug that countries around the world are now stockpiling to fend off the looming threat. Experts in Hong Kong said on Friday [30 Sep 2005] that the human H5N1 strain which surfaced in northern Viet Nam this year had proved to be resistant to Tamiflu, a powerful antiviral drug. – Reuters, 30 September 2005

(ii) U.S. health authorities (Center for Disease Control & Prevention) alerted doctors Friday that a prevalent strain of the flu is resistant to Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu antiviral drug – Wall Street Journal: Health (December 19,2008).

(iii) Virtually all the dominant strain of flu in the United States this season is resistant to the leading antiviral drug Tamiflu…This season, 99 percent do… If a Tamiflu-resistant strain is suspected, the disease control agency suggests using a similar drug, Relenza. But Relenza is harder to take; it is a powder that must be inhaled and can cause lung spasms, and it is not recommended for children under 7…Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline, is known generically as zanamivir. Tamiflu, made by Roche, is known generically as oseltamivir… – The New York Times: Health (January 8, 2009).

(iv) Tamiflu found to be 99% ineffective against primary flu strain – USA Today (January 8, 2009).
(v) There is no provision for a vaccine for swine flu and it will take at least six months to identify, produce and manufacture a vaccine in large enough quantities. This was the statement by Dr Iain Stephenson, a consultant in Infectious Diseases at the University of Leicester who has just completed successful research on a pre-pandemic vaccine for bird flu. "We are in a position where if a swine flu virus becomes a pandemic we don't currently have a vaccine for it," he said. "I think that it is unlikely there will be widespread vaccine in less than six to eight months." – Daily Telegraph, 27 April 2009

(vi) Dr Ian Barr, from the WHO Influenza Center in Melbourne, said it was unlikely any existing vaccines would be effective against the new swine flu strain. – China View, 27 April 2009

There are only two modern-day drugs supposed to save human life from any pandemic. These are Relenza and Tamiflu as stated above. But both are ineffective (more-or-less totally ineffective in the case of Tamiflu) in certain areas when dealing with new strains. Unfortunately zanamivir (Relenza) is less active against influenza A/N2 neuraminidases (found in Pigs etc). For zanamivir is inhibitory for only certain influenza A neuraminidase variants but not A/N2 neuraminidases.

There are also some nasty side-effects with Tamiflu –
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:uNFhMaU3GLEJ:www.topix.com/forum/drug/tamiflu/T5T8TK967U6DPFEL8+usa+today+tamilflu+april+2009&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk <http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:uNFhMaU3GLEJ:www.topix.com/forum/drug/tamiflu/T5T8TK967U6DPFEL8+usa+today+tamilflu+april+2009&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk>

Both these drugs have to be taken within 48hrs of infection, but where the prerequisite is that the host body has to be strong against infections at the time of the start of the dosage for survival (common sense really). After 48 hours, both become increasingly useless according to medical scientists working at the coal-face around the world. Therefore the question is, how does anyone identify that they have flu quick enough and get a dose within 48 hours ? For fully identified symptoms can take several days to raise their ugly head. Indeed, medical advice is to stay at home if you think that you have flu and to not visit surgeries. This means any flu infected people will have to wait until the doctor or nurse visits with medication. In proportion though, there are few doctors and nurses compared to the population and therefore if a pandemic happened, few would receive medication in time.

Therefore for all the above reasons an international and national strategy based upon a drugs solution is not the answer and where if we continue to pursue this as our primary strategy, there is no doubt that eventually more people will die than has ever been witnessed before in the history of humankind, and potentially over a billion people.

Considering these true facts we have to look at the ‘source’ and therefore not fight the war on the grounds of trying to find a drug solution that will never happen in time. This is common sense and governments should not be pursuing such a basically useless strategy to nowhere.

For this alternative strategy (the only one that will really work) we have to look at how animal flu jumps into humans.
In this respect there are predominantly two main reasons how killer flu spreads like this.
(a) In Asia, Mexico and the major rural areas of the world we are talking about cultures where a lot of roosters are used for cock fighting. It is very possible for those handling the roosters to get scratched and pecked with a little break in the skin which leads to bleeding. That's one way they get infected.

(b) Another way is that it is very common for villagers in these developing countries to have roosters, chickens and pigs (their livestock) tied up or running around freely. A lot of houses are on stilts and the pigs and poultry are tied up under the house. During cold tropical evenings it is also common to see people sleeping in hammocks, or whatever they use as beds, outside amongst the pigs and the poultry. This is very common.

Therefore the world’s resources should primarily be addressing good farm husbandry around the world and not a drug solution, but where it has to be said that the extremely powerful pharmaceutical company lobby group, do not want this. The reason, both Tamiflu and Relenza have realised for the multinational drug firms, billions upon billions of revenues. It is therefore about time that human life was placed above corporate profits and where in this case, it is fundamental to the survival of a large proportion of the human population.

Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland

Ps. For anyone interested, one of the best websites for unbiased and independent information is
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:5r085nr4Hm0J:birdflubook.com/+bird+flu+by+dr+michael&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk