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Thursday, April 30, 2009 Top Swine Flu Myths Debunked-Separating fact from fiction
Top Swine Flu Myths Debunked
Separating fact from fiction.
Posted by Moira at Health on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 10:13 AM
Swine flu coverage is everywhere—on the Web, TV, radio and even spreading like wildfire on social networks like Twitter. But across all of the media outlets, there’s potential for misinformation. And unfortunately, some of this information is causing unnecessary panic. Pediatricians' and doctors' offices are being overwhelmed by calls. Yankee fans in the Bronx are opting out of attending home games as a precautionary measure because of the outbreak in Queens - the largest in the United States.
Are these actions necessary or an overreaction to myths portrayed in the media? Here are some facts about swine flu to help give peace of mind and help you set a plan of action for you and your family.
Infection from the swine flu can only happen if you have direct contact with a pig.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), swine flu has in the past been spread between pigs and humans. This most likely occurs when people are in close proximity to pigs such as on farms and at fairs. However, with this outbreak, it appears human-to-human spread can also occur, because the virus can spread through liquid droplets that get airborne, such as through coughing and sneezing. Or you can contract it by touching something with the live virus on it and then touching your mouth, eyes, or nose.
If you have flu symptoms, then you have swine flu.
This is unlikely. But if you have severe flu symptoms, such as shortness of breath, you should contact your health care provider right away.
Keep in mind that right now in the U.S. those being diagnosed with swine flu are showing mild symptoms. The seasonal flu is more likely to lead to hospitalization or even death, as it kills roughly 35,000 each year, though it's fatal more often in the very young and elderly and those who have a compromised immune system.
Eating pork products puts you at risk for swine flu infection.
Go ahead, eat your bacon. You cannot contract swine flu from eating pork. It's safe to eat properly handled pork if it's been cooked to an internal temperature of 160°F, which kills off most bacteria and viruses, including the virus that causes swine flu.
Your seasonal flu vaccination will protect you from this outbreak of swine flu.
According to the CDC, it may offer a small degree of protection. Note that this swine flu virus is a never-before-seen combination of swine, avian and human influenza, and therefore nobody is fully protected against it. The seasonal flu vaccine may offer some protection against the swine flu's human virus, but it doesn't give protection against its swine and avian components.
You should avoid public events and locations until the virus is contained.
Right now, the CDC is not recommending this. Again, the likelihood of being infected is slim. In the U.S., only 100 people are known to be infected at this time. If you are concerned about your exposure or have a weakened immune system, there is evidence that wearing a surgical mask tightly against your face offers extra protection. Although keep in mind that it’s impossible to contain this virus right now because outbreaks like this generally last for months. Frequent hand-washing is also advised.
Here's one recommendation you should follow, however: The CDC says that the public should avoid any unnecessary travel to Mexico until further notice.
Young, healthy adults are equally at risk as children and the elderly.
It turns out that age and immune-system strength may not be a factor with this virus. That’s because, just like the SARS and avian flu outbreaks, it's believed the problem is not so much the virus itself but how your body responds to it.
In past flu pandemics, young and healthy adults who were more likely to be affected than the very young or elderly. This is because their bodies showed an overreaction of their immune response, with respiratory-system inflammation that was ultimately deadly. A stronger immune system fighting those infections meant an overly strong response and greater odds of fatality.
But not to add to the hype, keep in mind that the cases reported so far in the United States have been mild. For those deaths in Mexico, it’s uncertain why young and healthy people are dying. One theory is the virus has already mutated into a stronger version; public health officials are investigating. It's also important to note that antiviral medications such as Tamiflu are showing to be effective in treating this swine flu; there were no such medications in the 1918 pandemic.
This is the first outbreak of swine flu in the U.S.
This is incorrect. There have been a few incidences of swine flu outbreak in the United States over the years. In 1988, a community in Wisconsin showed multiple human infections as well as antibodies in health care workers who had close contact with the patients. There was also an outbreak of swine flu among soldiers in Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Five were infected, and one of the soldiers died. But medical experts believe there were many factors that contributed to this outbreak, including the introduction of a virus into a stressed community living in close quarters during the winter months.
And because the swine flu has similar symptoms to the common flu, it’s possible there have already been other cases that have not been tested for. As they have reported in the outbreaks of swine flu, many health care workers caring for those with swine flu often have antibodies to the virus and have experienced mild symptoms.
The swine flu outbreak is worse than the other SARS pandemic of 2000–2003.
This is not true. The SARS pandemic of 2000–2003 had 774 deaths. That’s about 10 percent of those who were infected with the virus. Most of the cases were in China, with fewer than 10 in the United States.
Egypt's call to kill pigs amid flu scare ridiculed
CAIRO – Egypt's government was hoping to look strong and proactive in the swine flu scare with its decision to slaughter all the country's pigs, after taking heavy criticism at home for poor planning and corruption in past crises.
But instead, some Egyptians called the move a knee-jerk overreaction that even the World Health Organization said was unnecessary.
Egypt, which has no swine flu cases, is the only country in the world to order a mass pig slaughter in response to the disease. The move mirrored Egypt's battle with bird flu, in which the government killed 25 million birds within weeks in 2006.
But international health officials said the swine flu virus that has caused worldwide fear is not transmitted by pigs, and that pig slaughters do nothing to stop its spread. The WHO on Thursday stopped using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion.
In Egypt, even the editor of a pro-government newspaper criticized the order to slaughter the estimated 300,000 pigs, which was pushed by parliament and issued by the government.
"Killing (pigs) is not a solution, otherwise, we should kill the people, because the virus spreads through them," wrote Abdullah Kamal of the daily Rose El-Youssef. "The terrified members of parliament should have concentrated on asking the government first about the preventive measures and ways of confronting the problem."
The Egyptian government has come under criticism in past years for being caught flat-footed by crises.
A rockslide that crushed a Cairo neighborhood and killed at least 100, and a series of fires — including one that burned down the upper house of parliament — highlighted how ill-prepared emergency services are. A 2005 ferry sinking that killed 1,000 raised an uproar over poor safety conditions.
Many accused the government of not taking precautions when bird flu first appeared in Asia in 2003. When the first case appeared in Egypt in 2006, the government carried out mass bird culls, but the disease has killed more than two dozen people since.
With the new flu scare, the government "took a precautionary step because they were afraid there would be a case here, and then they would face questions about why they didn't take this step," said Nader Noureddin, an agricultural resources expert at Cario University's Agricultural College.
The government likely felt confident slaughtering pigs would not spark any public backlash in predominantly Muslim Egypt, where the majority of the population does not eat pork. Pig raising and consumption is limited to the country's Christian minority, estimated at 10 percent of the population.
Still, the opposition Muslim Brotherhood was critical of the slaughter on the grounds it was not thought out.
"The problem is that the government here deals with things in emotional ways," said Essam el-Erian, a top Brotherhood leader. "It acts with the memory of what happened during the bird flu crisis."
Coptic Christian leaders — including the pope — condoned the slaughter, and two Coptic lawmakers were among the most vocal supporters.
But pig farmers — overwhelmingly Christian — were angered. Government efforts to start the slaughter Wednesday were met with farmers who hurled stones at Health Ministry trucks.
"This is the livelihood of a segment of the people," said Youssef Sidhom, an editor of the Al-Watani newspaper and prominent Coptic figure. "You can't just do something on the national level and ignore a segment of the population."
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Associated Press Writer Maamoun Youssef contributed to this report.
Now about the the two usual strains found in pigs, the real Swine Influenza:
So, pigs have nothing to do with this new Influenza Virus la min arib wla mni b3id!
And even if a pig caught to hostthe same strain to that newly discovered in the late Human Influenza Outbreak, it's totally safe to eat its meat, specially after cooking it to a temperature of 70°.
Moreover, I demand the human race to be cautious enough to not let this virus be caught by pigs since they're free of it so far.
And even if proven that swines got infected through humans, the human race is due to be punished.
Other than that, I really can't understand what's the fuss all about.
It's a **** stupid ****** flu.
It's a **** stupid ****** flu!
And gosh I wonder how some people die because of such a disease!
Not only that new strain, which I find really awkward to be formed by itself out of those four different other stains, also due to the normal Human flues every person gets several times during his life and specifically in those flu seasons yearly:
what you're saying is true. It is, after all, just a flu, and it has been somewhat hyped more than it really deserves. The concern however comes from 3 main points.
1-It's a new strain. Although there has been H1N1 cases before (mainly in the 70's in the US), this epidemic seems to be related to a new H1N1 strain. This doesn't mean that it's a worse or a more deadly strain, just new.
2-There is no vaccine for it. The regular yearly Influenza vaccine is only partly protective against H1N1. No Actual H1N1 vaccine has been developed. It is, however, sensitive to 2 available antiviral drugs: Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and Zanamivir (Relenza).
3-It seems to cause mortality in young age groups. The median age of patients so far is 17 years, ranging from 1 to 81. Most deaths occurred in young people. Keep in mind however, that most deaths (so far) occurred in Mexico. IT's not clear why the worst cases occurred in Mexico, but it might have to do with late diagnosis and poor access to health care.
Again, as you also mentioned, it's not transmissible from pigs to humans. People might have drawn an analogy with avian flu which only transmits from birds to humans. This analogy is wrong. The first case in this epidemic was a pig-human transmission, in a small town in Mexico called La Gloria. The tricky part is that this virus mutated and gained a higher ability to be transmitted across humans, and possibly a more severe clinical course. So unless every swine flu virus in pigs around the world underwent the same mutation, there is no reason to believe pig-human transmission and its severity is any worse that before.
To keep things in perspective each year in the US, more than 500,000 people die of cancer, 42,000 by car accidents, 20,000 people die of common flu, 90 people die of being struck by lightning Vs 1 death so far from H1N1 flu in the US (and 16 confirmed so far in Mexico).
Many people react with incredulity when the assertion is made that the so-called swine flu outbreak in Mexico may be manufactured crisis. And yet history is replete with examples of government using biological and chemical agents for political purpose.
As a primary example, consider the CIA’s secret war against Cuba and Fidel Castro.
In 1975, the Church Committee revealed a CIA memorandum listing deadly chemical agents and toxins then stockpiled at Fort Detrick. “These included anthrax, encephalitis, tuberculosis, lethal snake venom, shellfish toxin, and half a dozen lethal food poisons, some of which, the committee learned, had been shipped in the early 1960s to Congo and to Cuba in unsuccessful CIA attempts to assassinate Patrice Lumumba and Fidel Castro,” write Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap (Bioterror: Manufacturing Wars the American Way, Ocean Press, 2003, p. vii).
Schaap cites the work of Dr. Marc Lappé (Chemical and Biological Warfare: The Science of Public Death, Student Research Facility for East Bay Women for Peace and Science Students for Social Responsibility, 1969), who claims that the U.S. Army had a biological warfare agent prepared for use against Cuba at the time of the Missile Crisis in 1962, mostly likely Q fever (Coxiella burnetii, a bacterium that affects both humans and animals). In 1977, a Washington Post report confirmed that during this time the CIA maintained an “anticrop warfare” program.
In regard to swine flu, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on January 10, 1977, that CIA “operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971.” The outbreak, the first time the disease hit the Western Hemisphere, was labeled the “most alarming event” of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. Cuba reacted to outbreak by slaughtering 500,000 pigs. An intelligence source told the newspaper “that early in 1971 he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at Ft. Gulick, an Army base in the Panama Canal Zone. The CIA also operates a paramilitary training center for career personnel and mercenaries at Ft. Gulick.” The source said he was given instructions to turn the container with the virus over to members of an anti-Castro group.
In 1980, described as “the year of the plagues” by Schaap, “Cuba was beset with disasters. Another African swine fever epidemic hit; the tobacco crop was decimated by blue mold; and the sugarcane crops were hit with a particularly damaging rust disease.”
By 1981, the Cuban population was targeted with hemorrhagic dengue fever, a devastating disease transmitted by mosquitoes. “From May to October 1981 there were well over 300,000 reported cases, with 158 fatalities, 101 involving children under 15. At the peak of the epidemic, in early July, more than 10,000 cases per day were being reported. More than a third of the reported victims required hospitalization. By mid-October, after a massive campaign to eradicate Aedes aegypti [mosquito], the epidemic was over,” writes Schaap. “The history of the secret war against Cuba and the virulence of this dengue epidemic were enough to generate serious suspicions that the United States had a hand in the dengue epidemic of 1981. But there is much more support for those suspicions than a healthy distrust of U.S. intentions regarding Cuba.”
After interviewing officials from the Pan American Health Organization and of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, Schaap states that he believes the “epidemic was artificially induced.”
The epidemic began with the simultaneous discovery in May 1981 of three cases of hemorrhagic dengue caused by a type 2 virus. The cases arose in three widely separated parts of Cuba: Cienfuegos, Camagiiey, and Havana. It is extremely unusual that such an epidemic would commence in three different localities at once. None of the initial victims had ever traveled out of the country; for that matter, none of them had recently been away from home. None had had recent contact with international travelers. Moreover, a study of persons arriving in Cuba in the month of May from known dengue areas found only a dozen such passengers (from Vietnam and Laos), all of whom were checked by the Institute of Tropical Medicine and found free of the disease. Somehow, infected mosquitoes had appeared in three provinces of Cuba at the same time. Somehow, the fever spread at an astonishing rate. There appears to be no other explanation but the artificial introduction of infected mosquitoes.
Researchers believe the Mexican swine flu outbreak may also be “artificially induced.” First, the Mexican outbreak occurred outside of the normal flu season (influenza usually obeys a regularly re-occurring time period – in temperate climate zones, the flu season will typically begin in the late fall and peak in mid- to late winter, while in tropical zones flu seasons appear to be less pronounced, with year-round isolation of the virus). Second, the genetic makeup of the fast-spreading H1N1 strain of influenza — including genetic elements from bird flu, swine flu and human flu covering three continents — appears to be man-made.
“What seems suspicious to me is the hybrid origin of the viral fragments found in H1N1 influenza,” writes Mike Adams. These viral fragments include human influenza, bird flu from North America, and swine flu from Europe and Asia.
This is rather astonishing to realize, because for this to have been a natural combination of viral fragments, it means an infected bird from North America would have had to infect pigs in Europe, then be re-infected by those some pigs with an unlikely cross-species mutation that allowed the bird to carry it again, then that bird would have had to fly to Asia and infected pigs there, and those Asian pigs then mutated the virus once again (while preserving the European swine and bird flu elements) to become human transmittable, and then a human would have had to catch that virus from the Asian pigs — in Mexico! — and spread it to others.
At present, there is little evidence the virus was created in a U.S. lab and deliberately unleashed on an unsuspecting Mexican public. However, there is plenty of evidence the U.S. military and the CIA have used biological agents in the past, including “tests” on the American people.
“More than 200 experiments were carried out in U.S. rural areas to test the spread of non-lethal germs,” writes Joe Allen. “These tests were also carried out in San Francisco in 1950 and in New York in 1966. While the cover for these tests was to study a ‘defense’ against biochemical warfare, U.S. war planners wanted this knowledge for offensive use against an enemy population,” for instance livestock and people in Cuba, as mentioned above.
At the height of Cold War insanity, the U.S. government gave a free hand for its scientists to experiment on anything that could possibly further its military prowess. The CIA experimented with LSD for “mind control.” At Fort Detrick, scientists studied the possibility of spreading yellow fever and plague with insects. Anti-crop bombs were built for the United States Air Force to be used in the Third World.
It appears this insanity did not stop with the Cold War. Last week, the Frederick News Post reported Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick.
Finally, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen has reported that “a top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, [and] concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission ‘vectors’ that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon. The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents.”
Again, at this time, there is no definitive evidence indicating the Mexican virus is a bio weapon. However, there is plenty of factual evidence pointing to the fact the U.S. government (and other governments) have developed biological weapons and have used them against target populations.
Reuters By Ben Blanchard and Maggie Fox Ben Blanchard And Maggie Fox – Mon May 11, 3:18 am ET
BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The new flu strain spread to mainland China, state media reported on Monday, and killed a third person in the United States, as the number of cases of H1N1 influenza worldwide jumped to more than 4,300.
Health officials warn the true number of cases may be underestimated, although most appear mild and no more lethal than seasonal flu, which kills 250,000-500,000 people globally a year.
Chinese authorities are searching for around 150 people who took the same flights as mainland China's first confirmed case of the new flu, state media said.
State television said the government had tracked down about 150 people who flew with the 30-year-old man, first from Tokyo to Beijing and then from Beijing to the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu. But another 150 or so were unaccounted for.
Those found had been placed in quarantine, Xinhua news agency said. As for foreign nationals on those flights, authorities were "persuading them to take quarantine measures," it added.
None of those placed in quarantine had so far shown flu symptoms, the report said.
The patient himself, a Chinese student in the U.S. state of Missouri, was doing well.
In Washington state a man in his 30s with underlying health issues died last week, health officials said. Another 48 people have died in Mexico and one each in Canada and Costa Rica.
JUMP IN CASES WORLDWIDE
The new flu strain has infected 4,379 people in 29 countries, the World Health Organization said on Sunday, increasing its count by almost a thousand in one day. The WHO tally tends to lag national reports but is considered more definitive.
Evidence that the disease, popularly known as swine flu, has taken hold in communities outside the Americas, would prompt WHO Director-General Margaret Chan to declare a full pandemic.
Chan has raised the alert level to 5 out of 6. The level of 5 means a pandemic is imminent.
The virus has started to move into the southern hemisphere, where the influenza season is just beginning, and could mix with circulating seasonal flu viruses or the H5N1 avian influenza virus to create new strains, health officials said.
"One of the big challenges with influenza viruses is the way that they change, the way they combine and their prevalence in a number of species," Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told a news briefing on Saturday.
The CDC reported 2,254 confirmed U.S. cases of the virus with 104 people in hospital, up from 1,639 cases previously.
"Today there are almost 3,000 probable and confirmed cases here in the United States," Schuchat said. "The good news is we are not seeing a rise above the epidemic threshold."
Japan reported four cases. Australia reported its first case, a woman who been traveling in the United States but officials said she had made full recovery.
VERY GREAT UNDERESTIMATE
"We think this virus is in most of the United States," Schuchat said. "The individual numbers are likely to be a very great underestimate."
More Americans are seeing doctors for influenza-like illnesses at a time of year when such visits usually decline.
Schuchat said tests showed they do not all have the new H1N1 virus. Many have seasonal flu -- the H1N1 seasonal strain, the H3N2 seasonal strain and influenza B -- and other infections.
Health experts have not openly criticized efforts by other countries to stop the virus from getting in -- most notably China and its territory of Hong Kong, which have quarantined travelers in contact with patients.
A spokeswoman in Hong Kong said on Saturday that a Mexican traveler confirmed as Hong Kong's first and only case of the new flu strain had been discharged from hospital.
The unidentified man, who unwittingly caused the confinement of almost 300 guests and staff at a Hong Kong hotel where he had stayed, had been in hospital for a week.
Schuchat said it is not yet clear whether some measures taken have slowed the outbreak, but she said it was clear that early detection methods had alerted the world quickly.
She noted that the AIDS virus, which has now killed 25 million people globally and infects 33 million, spread for years before it was even identified.
"If we end up having a bad pandemic of influenza from this strain we would have had a real jump-start on things like vaccines," she said.
30th April 2009
