Kathianne
04-25-2009, 07:07 AM
For a couple years there have been widespread concerns from the CDC and WHO that a flu pandemic could be overdue. Much concern over avian flu. Now it seems that the avian may have teamed with swine virus into a new strain. Mexico has taken the bulk of deaths, but the illness has spread to the states.
On another board one from the left was hostile that Drudge had the headlines on the warnings. Finishes up his post with the complaint that sort of headline would not have been used if a Republican was president! :laugh2:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090425/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/med_swine_flu
Fear, anger and fatalism over swine flu in Mexico
By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 50 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – The schools and museums are closed. Sold-out games between Mexico's most popular soccer teams are being played in empty stadiums. Health workers are ordering sickly passengers off subways and buses. And while bars and nightclubs filled up as usual, even some teenagers were dancing with surgical masks on.
Across this overcrowded capital of 20 million people, Mexicans are reacting with fatalism and confusion, anger and mounting fear at the idea that their city may be ground zero for a global epidemic of a new kind of flu — a strange mix of human, pig and bird viruses that has epidemiologists deeply concerned.
Tests show 20 people in Mexico have died of the new swine flu strain, and that 48 other deaths were probably due to the same strain. The caseload of those sickened has grown to 1,004 nationwide, Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said.
The same virus also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths north of the border, puzzling experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic from viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals. This outbreak is particularly worrisome because deaths have happened in at least four different regions of Mexico, and because the victims have not been vulnerable infants and elderly.
The most notorious flu pandemic, thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, also first struck otherwise healthy young adults....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042404075.html
Swine Flu Found in Mexican Outbreak
Illness Raises Alarm Among U.S. Officials
By Rob Stein and David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 25, 2009
An unusual strain of swine flu has been detected among victims of a large outbreak of a severe respiratory illness in Mexico, prompting global health officials, fearful of a potential flu pandemic, to scramble yesterday to try to contain the virus.
At least 1,004 people have been sickened and at least 68 have died, primarily in the sprawling capital of Mexico City, triggering officials to close all schools and universities, museums and libraries and to begin screening air travelers for symptoms before they leave the country....
...The outbreak heightened alarm among health officials in the United States, where at least eight cases of swine flu have been detected along the U.S.-Mexican border, and elsewhere.
"It's alarming and very concerning," said Sari Setiogi, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Geneva, which began an investigation of the cause and scope of the outbreak.
President Obama has been briefed about the illness, spokesman Reid Cherlin said, adding: "The White House is taking the situation seriously and monitoring for any new developments."
The illness appeared to be primarily striking young, healthy adults, a highly unusual pattern that conjured images of the devastating 1918 flu pandemic.
Officials stressed that there were no signs that anything of that scale had begun, but Setiogi said, "This is another reason we are highly concerned," noting that it is the very old and the very young who are usually most vulnerable to common seasonal flu....
On another board one from the left was hostile that Drudge had the headlines on the warnings. Finishes up his post with the complaint that sort of headline would not have been used if a Republican was president! :laugh2:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090425/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/med_swine_flu
Fear, anger and fatalism over swine flu in Mexico
By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 50 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – The schools and museums are closed. Sold-out games between Mexico's most popular soccer teams are being played in empty stadiums. Health workers are ordering sickly passengers off subways and buses. And while bars and nightclubs filled up as usual, even some teenagers were dancing with surgical masks on.
Across this overcrowded capital of 20 million people, Mexicans are reacting with fatalism and confusion, anger and mounting fear at the idea that their city may be ground zero for a global epidemic of a new kind of flu — a strange mix of human, pig and bird viruses that has epidemiologists deeply concerned.
Tests show 20 people in Mexico have died of the new swine flu strain, and that 48 other deaths were probably due to the same strain. The caseload of those sickened has grown to 1,004 nationwide, Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said.
The same virus also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths north of the border, puzzling experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic from viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals. This outbreak is particularly worrisome because deaths have happened in at least four different regions of Mexico, and because the victims have not been vulnerable infants and elderly.
The most notorious flu pandemic, thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, also first struck otherwise healthy young adults....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042404075.html
Swine Flu Found in Mexican Outbreak
Illness Raises Alarm Among U.S. Officials
By Rob Stein and David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 25, 2009
An unusual strain of swine flu has been detected among victims of a large outbreak of a severe respiratory illness in Mexico, prompting global health officials, fearful of a potential flu pandemic, to scramble yesterday to try to contain the virus.
At least 1,004 people have been sickened and at least 68 have died, primarily in the sprawling capital of Mexico City, triggering officials to close all schools and universities, museums and libraries and to begin screening air travelers for symptoms before they leave the country....
...The outbreak heightened alarm among health officials in the United States, where at least eight cases of swine flu have been detected along the U.S.-Mexican border, and elsewhere.
"It's alarming and very concerning," said Sari Setiogi, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Geneva, which began an investigation of the cause and scope of the outbreak.
President Obama has been briefed about the illness, spokesman Reid Cherlin said, adding: "The White House is taking the situation seriously and monitoring for any new developments."
The illness appeared to be primarily striking young, healthy adults, a highly unusual pattern that conjured images of the devastating 1918 flu pandemic.
Officials stressed that there were no signs that anything of that scale had begun, but Setiogi said, "This is another reason we are highly concerned," noting that it is the very old and the very young who are usually most vulnerable to common seasonal flu....