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It seems Fannie & Freddie aren’t the only dangerous pigs in the world. With everything else we have to fret about, the end of April saw some ominous talk of a new flu with
elements of avian, swine, and human genes that has broken out in Mexico, and was carried to at least 5 US states in the last days of April. By May 2nd 21 US states had cases and the CDC lab was swamped with a
backlog of test samples to process. So bear in mind that the reported numbers are well behind reality. Ground Zero for the outbreak was Mexico City, where the World Health Organization confirmed 81 deaths and over
1000 others taken ill. On April 25 the CDC said 7 Out of 14 Mexican viral samples were identical to cases in Texas and Southern California.
An interesting story appeared in early May when the Twitter flu headline site for Veratect, a data mining company, began to get a lot of traffic. It seems the company had provided early
warning to both WHO and the CDC about unusual reports of severe respiratory illness with flu-like symptoms appearing in rural areas of Mexico at least 10 days before the outbreak occurred, but the warnings were
apparently not acted upon. I guess early warning systems are only useful if you pay attention to them.
It is clear that the bug was spread due to normal travel, as almost all cases can be traced to someone who had recently been in Mexico. The pattern is telling, and shows just how a virus
can quickly spread around the world at the speed of an airliner. The death ratio also appears even higher than the 1918 flu, which killed an estimated 2.5% of its victims. This bug is killing between 7% based on
current reported death rates, but this figure is deceptive because the number of confirmed cases is vastly underreported. But this ratio will likely decline as more cases are reported, and new indications are
that the virus may be much weaker than feared.
 For Mexico, and now the world, it now
appears that it is too late to contain the outbreak. Flu mask supplies have run out in Mexico City, passed out by the military, and the Mexican government has closed schools, sporting events, museums,
restaurants, government buildings and public institutions. Catholic churches have canceled Sunday Mass, and airports are tightening travel restrictions. People are hibernating in their homes, and normally
bustling streets are eerily quiet. The situation may be far graver than the official case numbers indicate. It is believed that news of deaths from the disease are being covered up to prevent a panic, but people
living in Mexico have presented their own eye witness accounts. The following is a direct quote from a Mexican Physician who e-mailed BBC news:
“I'm a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More
and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die.
The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses. It is a great fear among the staff. The infection risk is very high among the doctors and health staff.
“There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is
that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been
going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes
and there is great sadness among health professionals here.”
- Dr. Antonio Chavez, Mexico City
Another Physician wrote BBC:
“I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly,
the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realize that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with
no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all
of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the
truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.”
Yeny Gregorio Dávila, Mexico City
The Health Department declared a public emergency on Sunday, April 26, 2009 to heighten awareness of the pathogen and mobilize resources. Coming as it is on the
heels of our normal flue season, the illness seems to have caught health professionals off guard, who believed early cases were nothing more than typical influenza. But the
CDC now confirms this is an entirely new strain, with a combination of genes from bird, swine and human influenza that has never been seen before. This alone makes it
dangerous, as people will not have any natural resistance to the mutated strain. In the first three days of this outbreak, confirmed cases of the virus have doubled daily. Case
numbers are constrained by the speed of staff at the CDC lab processing samples.
The fact that the virus seems to hit younger, more healthy people in the 20-40 age group is ominous, as this was a salient trait of the deadly 1918 flu virus. Nearly all
those who died in Mexico were between 20 and 40 years old, dying of severe pneumonia, a complication of the illness. Another reason mortality rates are higher in
this group is that younger, healthy people have a stronger immune response to the virus--so strong that the body attacks its own tissues, causing death. Older and very
young patients, who do not mount such a strong immune response, appear to be surviving, though the first recorded death here in the US was a 2 year old boy, on
April 29th, a Mexican national traveling to Brownsville, Texas who later died in a Houston Hospital. Two more deaths in California, men aged 33 and 45, are now under
investigation as well. Both died of severe respiratory distress after flu like symptoms.
Outside the US, new possible cases in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany,
Honduras, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Slovakia, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and
Uruguay are being investigated, and it appears that most of this was a result of travel to and from Mexico in the last three weeks, a potential crisis that was quietly building
up beneath the level of media awareness until late April. A Chinese virologist claimed that WHO was moving too slowly, and the general sense I have is that things may be
far worse than they now seem in terms of case numbers in Mexico.
On April 29th, WHO responded by raising the alert level to 5 on their scale of 6, indicating “strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the
organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.” In layman’s terms, we’ve just bought the ticket, and now we’re about to take the ride.
The good news is that the LA Times reported scientists examining the virus say it lacks some key amino acids required to cause more serious infection in the human
lung. This may mitigate the effects of the virus in this early wave, but scientists still fear the bug is getting well seeded in the population and could return in a 2nd wave later this year. Stay tuned...
Developments In The U.S. - CDC Official Confirmed Case Numbers
April 25, 2009 - 11 cases reported in the US:
April 26, 2009 - 21 Cases
April 27, 2009 - 40 Cases
April 28, 2009 - 64 Cases
April 29, 2009 - 91 Cases - 1st Confirmed Death
April 30, 2009 - 111 Cases - 1 death
May 1, 2009 - 141 cases in 19 states
May 2, 2009 - 160 cases in 21 states - 1 death
May 3, 2009 - 226 Cases in 30 states - 1 death
May 4, 2009 - 286 Cases in 37 states - 1 death
May 5, 2009 - 403 Cases in 39 states - 1 death
May 7, 2009 - 896 Cases in 40 states - 2 deaths
May 13, 2009
- 3352 Cases in 45 states - 3 deaths
It sure looked ominous as it began last may, but the Swine flue turned out to be nothing much to worry about. The “Pandemic” Cheney and others warned us about will
have to try again some other time. Perhaps in 2012.
JS
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Strangely, the Army’s bioresearch lab at Ft. Dietrick just reported it found several unknown
viruses in its inventory, (hey what are these doing here?), and that some deadly viral samples may also be “missing.” (Hey, where’s that other stuff we were working on?) Isn’t that
comforting? Your tax dollars at work! These are the guys who research ebola, plague and other deadly germs. It appears the government has been playing around with flu virus, with the aim of
weaponizing the pathogen, for many years now. They actually resurrected the H1N1 strain of the deadly “Spanish Flu” that killed millions of people in 1918! Talk about playing with fire!
