| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 4/29/2009 8:28:09 PM | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ OH HELL YES!
I am not into conspiracy theories...but you got to know that governments are taking this seriously...and there is stuff we don't know about the actual numbers...and origins...and they are bracing us for a pandemic.
I found it moronic of the travellers who left Alberta yesterday bound for Mexico to make light of the flu...one of them saying it was propaganda and giggling as she was making her way to her flight.
like so many viruses...including HIV... we don't know how they will mutate...how they can suddenly change their character and be unpredictable..it is early on... I think we should just be cautious and be prepared to like in any emergency situation be prepared...with cash, rations, medication and to stay put for a while... limit your travel.
not panic or paranoia...just precaution... I have 3 young children...so just not about me here. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 4/29/2009 8:39:03 PM | Going to dig out "The Andromeda Strain" (1971 version) and watch it....
What a great movie .....    | |
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Xavery
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Joined: 4/22/2007
Msg: 53 | |
| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 4/29/2009 8:52:58 PM | | One thing about an epidemic that pandemic which is really tragic is that children die. I am not as saddened by the loss of life of older people, but children . . . it bugs me. I have heard that children are like canaries in the coal mine . . . small, weak (immunity) fragile . . . Don't you wish you could reason with a virus and say just take people over 45 or whatever age you think is reasonable. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 4/29/2009 8:58:10 PM |
This version fo the swine flu is a mutation of two other diseases as well. It is resistant to 2 of the 4 drugs that have been used to treat the H1N1 human form of swine flu in the past. IT's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
That's only a half truth. This version is a mutation of swine flu, human flu, and avian flu. Influenzas that we have vaccinations for. I'd be really surprised if this got "a lot worse" than it is. We (the global health community) have enough vaccinations and enough knowledge from other "pandemics" that have arisen in the recent years that I cannot see this becoming a really huge wipe-out-human-civilization issue like so many people are fearing. Sorry, but it just isn't going to happen. This swine flu is not strong enough for that.
Mind you, I could be wrong and I'll be the only one left on earth as some sort of Karmic punishment.  | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/1/2009 11:38:51 AM | I have often wondered if there is a correlation between the severity of a situation and the amount of time it takes for the jokes to start on the international circuit. Here are two that I received on swine flu this morning:
There is a snoutbreak of swine flu in Manitoba......
You know you have swine flu by the rashers all over your body..... | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/1/2009 12:30:20 PM | I'm in Mexico City now... it's not bad at ALL, people make a HUGE deal of it... in the end it's a freaking flu, unless you stay at home sick for days without medical attention you are not going to die.
People who died during the first days were NOT informed, they thought it was a regular flu so they just took a couple aspirins and waited... by the time they got to the hospital they were really sick.
Anyway... use common sense, wash your hands often, avoid crowded places, touching your face and you'll be fine!!! | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/1/2009 7:47:33 PM | ^^^^^^^ thanks for your first hand input
That is a very interesting comment and I welcome some "first hand" information. I heard that everything in Mexico was shut down. Even Cancun... I heard that all the shops and bars were closed and the "all inclusive" resorts were working short staffed as none of the staff want to be in contact with anyone that may have the flu
It also concerns me that all the flights (if I have my information correct) have cancelled all trips to Mexico... anywhere in Mexico .... and the Cruise Ships have not been stopping in the Mexican ports.
A friend told me today that they have been in Cabo since Monday and it is dead there.. All bars, Restaurants, malls and clubs are closed. How accurate do you think this information is?
Be safe everyone, and yes............... please wash your hands and keep your hands away from your nose, mouth and eyes! | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/1/2009 8:09:06 PM | | I just heard earlier that a school in Decker Lake (I think it was) has been closed down due to this virus. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/1/2009 8:58:46 PM | My son and his friends had planned to leave today for a wedding in Mexico.. There were about 6 or 7 couples that had planned to attend. How sad this must be for the bride and groom but I must say I am glad that the airlines decided to cancel the flights to Mexico. Better to be safe then sorry, I think.... but I must say I am thinking as a protective "mom" right now.
Scary Shyte! | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/3/2009 2:36:49 PM | Only Canadian airlines canceled the flights to Mexico, specially those charters flying to the beaches.
I'm flying to Vancouver in 12 days with American Airlines and nothing has been canceled. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/3/2009 9:06:48 PM | this is such a load of crap.
Swine flu, avian flu...
These are the result of agribusiness at its finest. Pure profit farming. Human health means nada.
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=83430641217&h=_nd3M&u=odL-E&ref=mf
If you copy and paste that you will find the rest of this article that I will quote a few lines of:
"According to Biosurveillance, itself part of Veratect, a US Pentagon and Government-linked epidemic reporting center, on April 6, 2009 local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico.
Since the dawn of American ‘agribusiness,’ a project initiated with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s to turn farming into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in what are called Factory Farms, industrial concentrations which are run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to transport distribution to supermarket.
Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) happens to be such a Factory Farm concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world’s largest pig producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia.5 The pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico, a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the border to supermarkets in the USA, under the Smithfields’ family of labels. Most American consumers have no idea where the meat was raised.
Now the story becomes interesting.
...
They speak of ‘La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons.’ Presumably the manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The Smithfield’s Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That’s a lot. It gives an idea of the volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La Gloria.
A research compilation by Ed Harris reported, ‘According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.’ However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’9 That would imply that the entire Swine Flu scare might have originated from the PR spin doctors of the world’s largest industrial pig factory farm operation, Smithfield Foods.
Understandably the company is perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable with the sudden attention. The company, which supplies the McDonald’s and Subway fast-food chains, was fined $12.3 million in the United States 1997 for violating the Clean Water Act. Perhaps they are in a remote tiny Mexican rural area enjoying a relatively lax regulatory climate where they need not worry about being cited for violations of any Clean Water Act."
If you really want to get on the truth train, try stuff like " Stuffed and Starved: the Hidden Battle for the World Food System" by Raj Patel, formerly with the World Trade Organization.
Sorry about the length of the post, but it's very important to get to the story behind the story, and then ask yourself why are you being spoon fed hours a day about an outbreak that has not killed anybody outside of Mexico, while regular yearly flu outbreaks kill about 30,000 people plus in the US alone. 250,000 to 500,000 worldwide every year. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/3/2009 9:21:32 PM | | We live in the era of shock news, the media will go above and beyond to scare the pants off us... 911 sure did a number on our civilization, what a money maker for some, it's really sad... | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/4/2009 2:04:43 AM | thanks Quadly for the background info ,
spoon fed sounds about right.
I initially thought the Swine flue was a mutation of the European or Classical Swine Fever (ESP or CSF) or Hog Cholera virus which has been known since early 1800. Though this degrease was not transferable to other species including humans, my assumption was a mutation may have made it possible as swine flu viruses change constantly. Pigs can be infected by avian influenza and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. When influenza viruses from different species infect pigs, the viruses can reassort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of swine, human and/or avian influenza viruses can emerge.
Regardless the entire matter just has a bad "feel" to it, without suggesting conspiracy I am certain someone is working matters real hard for profit or cover up?? | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/4/2009 10:37:34 AM | Sorry about the length of the post, but it's very important to get to the story behind the story, and then ask yourself why are you being spoon fed hours a day about an outbreak that has not killed anybody outside of Mexico, while regular yearly flu outbreaks kill about 30,000 people plus in the US alone. 250,000 to 500,000 worldwide every year.
"spoon fed"?
While I agree with your sentiments about factory farming, what does this have to do with the issue at hand?? And what do you think you are being spoon fed? Where the new flu came from is not the issue at hand. What to do about it is.
The WHO raised alert levels because this is a new virus with the proven potential both to kill people and to spread from person to person. They were absolutely right to do so, and we still don't know what might happen with it. Viruses mutate as they spread, and they usually become less dangerous but you can't count on it. It's basic evolutionary biology; a virus which doesn't usually kill its host immediately will have more chance to spread and displace its cousins which do. The catch is in the qualifiers - they evolve in the way that spreads them as much as possible, not necessarily to become less lethal. This strain might yet change to become particularly lethal to some groups of people and not others, for example.
Nevertheless, it probably will happen that the virus will turn out to be nothing much and the alert will have been a false alarm. Fine. Great, even! The authorities did their job properly at the right time and deserve credit for it. As I said before, this is the problem with precautions; if you take them at the right time you rarely see proof they were needed. We should take them anyway, and the advice I've heard from actual health authorities has almost all been good sound stuff: Wash your hands, don't cough on people, go see a doctor if you start running a fever.
The media probably is playing it all up as a bigger risk than it actually is, and as usual there are a few people panicking - slaughtering pigs and banning pork, for example.
However, dismissing swine flu as hype and ignoring it is even more stupid than panicking. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/4/2009 11:54:16 AM | I am a hugger, mainly because I'm just generally affectionate. I do not shake hands for the most part, not so much because of the fear of picking up viruses but because I've seen way too many people go to the bathroom & exit without washing their hands. I'm very diligent about washing my hands with soap frequently & don't want traces of urine or feces passed onto my hands from others. 
I have friends in the Lower Mainland who are staying home right now & avoiding contact with anyone right now because their son recently returned home from Mexico & discovered he has the swine flu. My friends don't have the flu but are also being treated as they are likely carrying the virus.
I'm just wondering whether everyone on his flight has to be notified & treated as well just in case they have it & don't know it yet. All it takes is one person on the flight who has it & since the same air in the flight cabin is circulated throughout the flight, viruses can easily be passed on to other travelers. I'm not sure if the air filtration system on aircrafts actually disinfect the air from bacteria or not. Any crew members know? | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/4/2009 11:54:17 AM | It's the origin of the A/H1N1 virus or (H5N1-avian) that is of interest to me. Not at all covered by the mainstream media, only the disproportionate fear-a-thon that obscures ANY rational analysis of cause. Detaining healthy people, killing pigs....
Yes "spoon fed" Bullsh!t that only serves to confuse the real origins of an extremely distorted foodchain that endangers human health for corporate profit, with zero accountability.. I disagree wholeheartedly that the origin is of no value.
26 people dead in Mexico by their new numbers today. Down from the 150+ a week ago. Tragic, yes. Concerning, yes. Preventable, probably.
Wash your hands. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/4/2009 12:15:13 PM |
Yes "spoon fed" Bullsh!t that only serves to confuse the real origins of an extremely distorted foodchain that endangers human health for corporate profit, with zero accountability.. I disagree wholeheartedly that the origin is of no value.
Fair enough. So what do you propose to do about factory farming, then? | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/4/2009 2:55:50 PM | There's a cure for Swine flu.
Get some oink-ment. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/4/2009 4:28:22 PM | So what do you propose to do about factory farming, then?
Exactly what I'm doing now. Educate myself, find out where to look, and show and tell others.
Raise awareness, one person or forum or class or audience at a time.
Point out that the "swine flu panic" is just a symptom of a much deeper, more insidious problem. Not doomsday conspiracy 2012 armageddon type of problem as much as simple greed, corruption and ignorance.
Make choices that are ethical. Food, like the flu, is an issue that transcends politics, gender religion, race or status.
Get involved in a local food movement. Support sustainability, food security, safety and nutrition. At the risk of sounding extreme I'd say support your local organic farmers. oh wait you can't... they have been run out of business by crippling regulations designed to protect the interests of big business and trade agreements that put corporate profits above sustainability, the environment, or public health, even though these problems (bird flu, mad cow, avian flu, swine flu, fear flu...) never originated with the local farmers. They are the product of giant corporate for-profit international food production/control practices.
I think animals are tasty little critters, I'm not a member of P.E.T.A, although I completely respect the ethical view of a vegetarian or vegan, they do have it right but it is not going to happen-everybody being vegetarian-anytime soon.
Politically, I'm going to vote yes BC-STV to try to take steps towards proper proportional representation, so that the little guys voice does get a chance to get heard and is not drowned out by giant agribusiness. But that's another thread!
Despite my best attempts at being rational I may have caught the fear flu myself. two days of sneezing and a tickle in the back of my throat makes me go through my mental inventory, "have I been near anybody who was in Mexico lately? Maybe out for drinks with the other night? did one of the employees forget to wash their hands before they started work?..."
That invisible little flu germ/bacteria/virus could be anywhere. Scary stuff. That's what I get for watching the news too much I suppose.
Where is that coughing icon? | |
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Xavery
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Joined: 4/22/2007
Msg: 71 | |
| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/5/2009 8:26:36 PM | It seems the swine flu has peaked. However, we are cautioned not to let our guards down and warned that it may reappear in the Fall.
I wouldn't freak out if I came down with it. I would just go to bed and get some sleep. The reason I am not afraid of it is because most of the cases are mild.
They say the Spanish flu started out this way too. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/5/2009 10:43:49 PM | | Despite the swine flu "pandemic", I still enjoy a little (or a lot) of sausage. Nothing better than gobbling down a nice, big, piece of pork. | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/5/2009 11:09:24 PM | I was at a meeting tonight with a couple of E.R. medical staff members & the swine flu paranoia was discussed. From the E.R.'s point of view, people are just going hog crazy over nothing. Yes, if you have the swine flu you need to be tested & treated, but there are way more people who die from your everyday, run-of-the-mill flu than from the H1N1 bug.
Also if you have swine flu, stay away from pigs as humans can pass the virus onto healthy pigs. But apparently, as long as you cook the meat properly, you cannot catch swine flu from eating pork from an infected pig. Bizarre! So I'm thinking, why not just eat all the infected pigs instead of killing them & wasting all that bacon?  | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/5/2009 11:15:38 PM | Also if you have swine flu, stay away from pigs as humans can pass the virus onto healthy pigs. But apparently, as long as you cook the meat properly, you cannot catch swine flu from eating pork from an infected pig. Bizarre! So I'm thinking, why not just eat all the infected pigs instead of killing them & wasting all that bacon?
Because the pigs can transmit it to each other, and from each other back to people. Not only that, in transmission between people & pigs it's more likely to mutate (if I recall rightly, not a biologist myself). So killing the pigs is one way to slow the spread of it in people. It probably won't make enough difference to be anywhere near worthwhile, but it's not totally silly - again, this is still early days for a new virus strain and we don't know what might happen with it.
Anyway, it's totally not a reason to avoid eating pork. Normal healthy pigs carry quite enough bugs we can catch that only a fool would eat undercooked pork, even at the best of times.
I wonder if the price of pork at the supermarket will drop... Bargain time! | |
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| Swine Flu Outbreak
Posted: 5/5/2009 11:16:46 PM | Am I concerned?
No.
More have died from the vaccination in the USA than the flu itself.
Let's not even get into actual regular FLU related deaths... Which topple 36000 a year?
1-5 die. Big deal.
The media is blowing this WAY out of proportion.
Guess how you can prevent it?
Same way you can prevent the regular flu.
It shouldn't take us, to tell you. You should have learned how to prevent it when you were a kid in your mothers care. | |
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