Swine flu outbreak in Mexico

[IheartTesla]

Speaking of hysteria-mongering, I was reading an article on google news about this with a somewhat provocative headline..."Swine flu worse in Mexico than US, but why?". And then it goes on to mention that out of 1000 cases in Mexico, there were 68 fatalities, which means a death rate of 7% [1]. And then asks why the American cases, of which there were 14 havent led to deaths.

Well, damn, Sherlock, what is 7% of 14? That's right, its 0.98. Clearly you dont have enough statistics to make any comparisions of death rates based on 14 cases.

[1] 7% may be highballing the number since Mexico was only looking at severe cases, something the article itself mentions in fairness.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

I can't link because I'm on my blackberry, but, the lead story on Google news from the NYT is that 8 Queens high school students have the swine flu.

Flu like symptoms. They are assuming the worst for safety's sake, but it has not been confirmed at all.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

SoS,

Here's hoiping it's not the nasty varient.

[Aemon Stark]

Okay, let's dial down the hysteria. Some of the indications so far is that novel strain or not, it's only so far associated with mild illness - what's going on in Mexico may be distinct.

[RWHamel]

The news is now reporting 81 dead.

[Angalin]

Thought I'd already posted here, but it went MIA...

Do we know whether there is enough Tamaflu and the other drug stockpiled to deal with a serious US outbreak.

Angalin,

You are in Winnapeg according to your account info. Any new information on the cases your lab is seeing?

Is this serious enough to warrent curtailing my family and my movement for a few days?

Scot - if you're not travelling to Mexico, I wouldn't worry about it for now. Results of sample assessment will be released as and when, but the infectious diseases people here, like everywhere else, are going over their game plans to make sure they know what measures will be taken in case the situation takes a turn for the worse. Remember that it is at present a level 3 on a scale where SARS rated a four and an across-national-borders pandemic rates a six.

RWHamel - where's your info coming from? I'm seeing "up to 81 deaths" on Bloomberg. The piece also says that the most recent flu vaccine protected against a strain of H1N1, of which this swine flu is a variant.

[RWHamel]

Well, take your pick at this point. Here

[kungtotte]

The pandemic-panic is certainly not called for at this point, but you should also not brush this off as anything similar to the bird-flu scare of 2006. The bird-flu was still the H5N1 bird-flu virus during the entire epidemic, which meant that the only way to really catch it was to be in contact with the birds themselves and as such the infection vector was rather limited.

The 'Mexican Swine-Flu' as the media dubs it is a form of the H1N1 virus, and preliminary testing indicates that it's an amalgam of up to four different strains of influenza A. There are two things about this that are important. The first is that it allows human-to-human transmission, if an infected person coughs near you, you are likely to catch the virus. So masks are really not a bad idea if you are concerned. The second is that nobody is properly vaccinated or immunized against this strain of the virus, so if you are exposed you are almost guaranteed to catch it. Though early reports indicate that Tamiflu and Relenza are effective.

There are currently 1400 odd cases of suspected MSF infections in North America and Europe, the majority of which are in Mexico, what this means is that there are 1400 reported cases of people with influenza-like illnesses that may or may not be the particular strain of H1N1 that is called Mexican Swine-Flu. 86 people out of these 1400 have died, all of them in Mexico, but only 20 of these are confirmed to have had the MSF virus.

The scary thing about the current influenza outbreak is that some reports indicate that it can cause cytokine storms (your immune system going berzerk and harming your body) as well as pulmonary oedema and pneumonia, and these things are what makes it much more lethal than your garden variety flu and why you should be taking precautions not to catch it.

As of right now the overwhelming majority of cases are in Mexico, so if you don't live there or along the southern US border I wouldn't worry about catching it out on the town, but I would take normal influenza precautions just to be safe.

In short, pandemic-panic is not warranted, but caution is.

[Inigima]

I ignored the bird flu and SARS scares. I'm not really sure why this one is pushing my buttons.

[Kelli Fury]

save the hysteria for the zombie apocalypse, we don't want to play second fiddle to swine flu tyvm

[The Khaleesi]

The media is having a field day here, as a group of students who recently visited Mexico have returned, and 10 have tested positive for influenza A. read on...

<< LATEST Authorities will today contact passengers from the same international flight as the Rangitoto College students who are believed to have caught the potentially deadly swine flu while in Mexico.

Clinical director of the Auckland Regional Public Health Service, Julia Peters, said the focus over the weekend had been on dealing with the group of 22 students and three teachers who returned on a flight from Los Angeles on Saturday morning.

Ten have tested positive for influenza A, with authorities now awaiting further test results from the World Health Organisation (WHO) labouratory in Melbourne to confirm whether it is actually swine flu.

The students, teachers and their families are now in home quarantine for an unspecified period of time.>>

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/236...flu-toll-climbs

[Tears of Lys]

I'm not scared. No siree. I speet on zis swine flu. :patooie:

It's rare that I even catch a cold. In fact, the only time I was ever really sick was from a sinus infection. Now THOSE scare me.

[Inigima]

save the hysteria for the zombie apocalypse, we don't want to play second fiddle to swine flu tyvm

oh sure the zombies talk the talk, but i ain't seen them walk the walk yet

[DemiNymph]

Just remember take take care of basic proper hygiene, educate your young, and run the fuck away from any body sneezing or coughing. And don't stay in enclosed places, that was how the rage virus spread.

[Lord of Oop North]

The hospital in my town is reporting they have a few patients with cases of what is very likely the swine flu.

I was just at the hospital visiting my grandmother, and they had people at the doors making sure that everyone used the antibacterial lotion.

[Aemon Stark]

Just to put this in perspective, in a normal year thousands of people die from influenza. So far symptoms from non-Mexican clusters have been mild and self-limiting. We don't have enough information yet to gauge how this will progress, but the genie is definitely out of the bottle at this point.

[jack-be-lucky]

Why it that when a government official says "now is not the time to panic" I'm ready to panic.

As a person on immune-suppresion therapy for the last seven years, I suspect this is going to have a negative impact on my life. The planned June trip to Vegas will probably be a no-go.

I wonder if they have attachments that enable a bubble-boy to still have sex? Or should I stockpile the lube for,um, self-pleasuring purposes?

[Relic]

I ignored the bird flu and SARS scares. I'm not really sure why this one is pushing my buttons.

cuz your older and more aware now then you were then of a final end death? maybe.

i used to be terrified of this sort of shit. bought into all the media induced hysteria. not buying into it atm. seems way too early for panic.

[The Anti-Targ]

We've had at least one plane load of highschool kids coming back from a trip to Mexico come down with this strain of 'flu. Quite why one would take some highschool kids on a trip to mexico right now with all the reports of near collapse of the social fabric there (irrespective of any epidemic diseaases) is beyond me. It was a Spanish language class so I would have thought a trip to Spain would have been the safer bet, albeiit a tad more expensive in airfaires.

The cynic in me is saying that the hype is all around the fact that "swine" has been tacked on the front of this particular 'flu strain.

When it all comes down to it what we have is a strain of 'flu that has not been specifically targetted by this season's vaccine. There are various epidemiological outcomes resulting from this, including that it may become quite widespread. This is because no one in the world right now has strong immunity to it from being vaccinated. The way 'flu is controlled in its impact every year is that spread is circumscribed by virtue of millions of people being immune via vaccination and therefore they are not a vector to spread it around, fewer vectors means slower spread during 'flu season and therefore by the time the season ends the disease has not spread as far and wide as otherwise would have been the case. This mass control of the potential effect of the 'flu is achieved through a highly educated estimation of what strain(s) are likely to be the strain du-jour for the year. When the epidemiologists get it right the risk of ' a 'flu pandemic is greatly diminished to the point of insignificance. When the epidemiologists get it wrong then the odds of a pandemic are much greater. The severity of a pandemic is dependant on the virulence of the strain, not the number of people coming down with the 'flu. A pandemic with a low virulence strain isn't going to cause major public health problems even though it was highly contagious.

AFAIK the only confirmed deaths are in Mexico and I'm not well informed of the details around those deaths. If indeed the deaths are disproportionately represented by normally healthy 25-45 year olds, who almost never die from 'flu in normal years (even unvaccinated individuals) then this is a concerning situation. However in a single country there may be factors leading to this which do not provide a true picture of the viruse's virulence in a global sense.

For those who are immuno-compromised the 'flu is indeed a life threatening disease in any year and they really should be vaccinated every season. And despite this vaccine probably being incapable of full protection the possibility of it priming your immune system to better deal with a non-target strain makes it worthwhile. I don't know how long it takes for the vaccine to confer immunity, but it probably isn't too late to get vaccinated other than in Mexico.

[Aemon Stark]

AFAIK the only confirmed deaths are in Mexico and I'm not well informed of the details around those deaths. If indeed the deaths are disproportionately represented by normally healthy 25-45 year olds, who almost never die from 'flu in normal years (even unvaccinated individuals) then this is a concerning situation. However in a single country there may be factors leading to this which do not provide a true picture of the viruse's virulence in a global sense.

I was just on the phone with my dad (he's been on-call and/or in tele-conferences all weekend), and he said it's still not clear who has died among those infected, or whether they had some co-morbidities that made them more susceptible to severe illness. The information coming out of Mexico is still unclear and WHO/CDC people are now there investigating. The four confirmed cases in NS have all been mild and have generally resolved already. (I've even been to that school before...)