cbs5.com/national/swine.flu.texas.2.994262.html
New flu has pandemic potential. Keep yourselves healthy folks. IF Mexico gets it, the USA will and then Taiwan wont be far behind (with all the people flying between the USA and Taiwan daily).
Lets hope they squash this bug before it gets more widespread.
Why isn’t there a facemask smiley?
Obama just visited Mexico City too
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aEsNownABJ6Q&refer=worldwide
This was kinda buried in the story, so I don’t think we should worry about POTUS getting this flu quite yet.
:raspberry:
SARS-scenario all over again? 
Wonder what will happen with a travel ban to Mexico? 
How about a travel ban to Texas/California/border states?! If I want to go home, that means flying out of Atlanta, again. Thanks a lot, up there.
just heard on tv news that some school children in new york city have been confirmed to be infected with this strain !!!
This could be the start of a world wide pandemic. Lets hope not, This strain is serious stuff.
raise up that perimeter. Might as well start by: rearing vegetables…
Sounds very suspect to me that this has sprung out of nowhere.
“This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified,” said Dr. John Carlo, Dallas Co. Medical Director
The WHO insists that the outbreak has “pandemic potential” and has been stockpiling supplies of Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, a pill that can both treat flu and prevent infection, according to officials.
Those that have a stake in the Tamiflu vaccine include former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Indeed, Rumsfeld himself played a key role in hyping an outbreak of swine flu back in the 1976 when he urged the entire country to get vaccinated. Many batches of the vaccine were contaminated, resulting in hundreds of sick people and 52 fatalities.
And vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses such as Bayer in 2006. Their injection drug, which was used by hemophiliacs, was contaminated with the HIV virus.
I have another thread about buying land. Well, I went to see the land Saturday. It’s about 11 miles from where I live. The only business in the town is a pig farm, which I found accidentally when I turned down the wrong road. I was driving along on a dirt road when the boy yelled about a spider. I pulled off at the mouth of another intersecting dirt road and got out to chase the spider away from the boy, looked up and there was a pig farm with lots of keep out–quarenteen signs all over it. In the time I spent chasing the spider away, four different trucks drove out around mine. That pig farm and the ALE school are the only things in the entire town, and the only people I saw were those driving away from the farm and one guy tending a garden he’s planted opposite some of the land I looked at.
Hold on to your serapes Amigo Y amigettes…Its spread to Kiwi Land…
Minister: 10 NZ students ‘likely’ have swine flu
[i]"WELLINGTON, New Zealand – New Zealand’s health minister says 10 students who were recently in Mexico have tested positive for influenza. He said the cases are “likely” to be swine flu.
Tony Ryall said there was “no guarantee” the students had swine flu, but that health officials were taking precautions.
Ryall said Sunday that none of the patients were seriously ill and seemed to be recovering.
He says 13 high school students who returned from Mexico early Saturday were tested for swine influenza, and 10 had positive results."[/i]
Updates at the link. Quite a long update actually.
[i][b]"Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic caused by viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals.
No vaccine specifically protects against swine flu, and it is unclear how much protection current human flu vaccines might offer." [/b][/i]
I wonder how much this will be exacerbated by the airlines’ anal cancellation policies. You usually can’t just cancel a $1000 flight because you have the flu. If I feel a little sick, that’s not gonna stop me from flying.
I’m wondering the same. I’m flying back to Taiwan from SFO this coming Saturday, with a nice 14-hour layover in HK during which time I plan to go into the city. Better not affect my plans.
The flu is started to spread. I sure hope it doesnt become a killer
airliners.net/aviation-forum … n/4394228/
If you return only to infect the hiking club with some swinish microbe I will not talk to you ever again.
Cake, hundreds of kids died in my country because of those tainted vaccines. Even though they news years ahead that they had problems, they still sold them to Third World countries with impunity.
It is really weird that Mexico was one of the few countries in Latin America that was tested and assesed as ready for a flu pandemic.
I know the DF is quite polluted smogwise, and there is indeed too much population concentrated in a small area. Thsi is supposed not to be “the big one”, and it is not transmitting as fast or seriously as SARS. Nevetherless, it is still worrisome. Why Mexico? Why now?
I was also thinking that the political environment nowadays was just ripe for an epidemic…
I just checked the blogs from back home, boy are they already in panic!
US is not faring as well, either, but at least they keep their sense of humor:
[quote]The prospect of a flu pandemic could make anyone nostalgic for the good old days when our biggest worries were rising gas prices and China’s seemingly unstoppable growth. Actually, a book like “Preparing for Pandemic Avian Flu” could make anyone nostalgic for the good old days when our biggest worries were a global financial meltdown, high unemployment and entire neighborhoods inhabited by squatters.
For those inclined to big-picture angst, the weather hasn’t helped. By Sunday, it was hot enough to raise inevitable questions of global warming. Would rising sea levels and widespread flooding soon enough make us all nostalgic for the good old days when all we had to worry about was swine flu?
You know what I really miss? Y2K.
[/quote]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/nyregion/27bigcity.html
Here are some links for the flu that I heard on This Week in Tech with Leo Leporte:
California has several outbreaks near the border as does Texas. They are closing schools in Texas, California and New York now.
I saw there were several people sickened in New Zealand, Australia, Columbia, the Middle East and Europe already. Here’s a NT Times article on it, U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
This is a bend over and kiss your arse goodbye-type panic, which is why its so popular.
If it really DOES spread to a pandemic, you’re either going to catch it and not even know you’ve had it (most likely), catch it and get sick (less likely) catch it and get very sick (even less likely) or catch it and die (least likely).
Sweet fuck all you can do about it, really, I’m afraid. Its going to make for miles and miles of column inches, though.
[quote][quote=“lbksig”]Here are some links for the flu that I heard on This Week in Tech with Leo Leporte:
California has several outbreaks near the border as does Texas. They are closing schools in Texas, California and New York now.[/quote][/quote]
Been doing a lot of reading on this. This is man made. Quite disturbing how these bio wepons are created and then tested. Just another day in a life of your friendly neighboorhood govt.
There’s no reason to think it’s man-made yet, these type of pandemics happen fairly regularly when they jump species barriers.