Friday night Pandemic Watch - Swine Flu coming to you?

[monster]

A select few people die of the flu. What is the news story here?

This flu kills healthy people by turning their healthy immune systems against them. It is not like a normal flu, that kills sickly people. We are one mutation away from all hell breaking loose.

H1N1 flu may induce a 'cytokine storm'

SARANAC LAKE, N.Y., May 6 (UPI) -- The H1N1 flu may be dangerous for healthy, young adults because it contains genetic components of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, U.S. researchers say.

The flu contains genetic components of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, which can induce a "cytokine storm," in which a patient's hyperactivated immune system causes potentially fatal damage to the lungs.

David L. Woodland, editor in chief of Viral Immunology and president of Trudeau Institute Inc. in Saranac Lake, N.Y., says a cytokine storm occurs when the body's immune system overreacts to an intruder, such as a virus, by producing high levels of cytokines, which are signaling chemicals that help mobilize immune cells capable of removing infectious agents from the body.

When too many cytokines are produced, they can stimulate an inflammatory response in which the accumulation of immune cells and fluid at the site of infection may prevent affected tissues and organs such as the lungs from functioning properly and may cause death, Woodland says.

What is known is that some H1N1 viruses have pandemic potential and that historical evidence supports the possibility that healthy young adults may be especially susceptible to more severe infection and poor outcomes due to the ability of a strong immune system to initiate a cytokine storm, Woodland adds.

FWIW:

Nicotine, Anti-inflammatory H1N1 Cure

Nicotine has an anti-inflammatory effect via the vagus nerve, which is useful against many diseases, and perhaps may block the cytokine storm of the H1N1 swine flu.

Nicotine stimulates the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. At the end of this pathway are immune cells that produce anti-inflammatory cytokines that block inflammation. Thus, nicotine, although one of the most addictive chemicals, can have beneficial effects on inflammatory diseases, such as arthritis, asthma, cancer, inflammatory bowel diseases and perhaps, H1N1.

Tobacco Smoke Is Toxic but also Anti-Inflammatory

Paradoxically tobacco smoke contains hundreds of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals that produce inflammatory reactions and numerous degenerative diseases, but it also contains nicotine that is anti-inflammatory. Smokers assault their bodies, but moderate and obscure the inflammatory degeneration and disease, until they stop the nicotine exposure.

Nicotine Withdrawal Is Inflammatory

The anti-inflammatory benefits of nicotine reveal the inflammatory basis of many unexpected diseases. Nicotine withdrawal is severe, partly because it leads to rebound release of inflammatory cytokines, inflammation and inflammatory disease symptoms that include depression and obesity.

Nicotine Acts via the Vagus Nerve

Attempts to augment bypass surgery for weight reduction have encountered the anti-inflammatory benefits of stimulating the vagus nerve. Vagus nerve stimulation via an electrode attached to the left branch in the neck by a device implanted behind the clavicle, reduces inflammatory cytokine production and is an effective treatment for obesity. Other types of vagus stimulation are being tested for efficacy in treatment of numerous inflammatory diseases, including arthritis, allergy, asthma, Alzheimer’s, etc.

Nicotine Blocks Cytokine Storms

Cytokine storms are a deadly consequence of inflammation that is out of control. These exaggerated host responses are targets for bioterrorism, because it takes very little toxin or a very minimal infection to be lethal, if it produces a cytokine storm. In mice, the ricin toxin, a bioterrorism agent, induces a cytokine storm that kills by multiple organ failure. Ricin-treated mice can be protected by nicotine prior or after the cytokine storm begins.

H1N1 May Kill by Cytokine Storm Similar to Spanish Flu of 1918

The rapid high temperature produced by Mexican H1N1 suggest that some of the deaths have resulted from cytokine storms. As more information becomes available on existing cases, it will become more clear how similar the current H1N1 strain is to the virus that caused the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

Block H1N1 Cytokine Storms with Nicotine

It may be possible to reduce lethality by blocking the cytokine storm with nicotine. There are numerous means of administering nicotine and research will need to be done to determine which if any of these approaches is effective in the treatment of severe cases of the current H1N1 flu.

[chiggerbit]

stickdog said:

What is there to this story other than hype? The flu spreads. A select few people die of the flu. What is the news story here?

Well, maybe I'm reading too much into your reply, stickdog, but it doesn't sound like you're looking for an answer to a question so much as offering an opinion. There are opinions and then there are informed opinions. It would be nice to know whether or not you've actually read the thread. Sorry if I've gotten a bit anal on this topic, but that's the way I am when I find something that interests me this much. I'm a bit like Hugh in that way.

Assuming that you're really interested in an answer to your question, then for me the implications of this disease are everything that lbo and monster have explained above, but so much more than that, too. It's the totality of the issues that has me fascinated. I'm actually watching the progression of this flu in a bit of a detached way as it unfolds, almost like I'm watching a movie. Sure, this could turn out to be another SARS event, but it has the potential to turn into something serious. Not that this isn't personal to me, since it's likely that this disease started in pigs, jumped to humans, and has jumped back from human to pigs at least once, so that alone is a bit unique, as far as we know, AND I live in one of the largest hog breeding and processing states in the country, AND I'm only two miles from a hog confinement with manure lagoons and enough dead piggers to make the wildlife around here quite happy. But I'm not worried about it, I'm fascinated by the process that's playing out here.

I'm assuming that you informed yourself by reading the 2006(?) Rollingstones' article, among the many others, on Smithfield Farms that was posted on an earlier page. That article blew my mind. It isn't even the nature of this virus that interests me so much as the political, economic, geographical, sociological and cultural implications of it. For instance, if in fact this virus did start at the Smithfield operation that is located at the epicenter of the disease in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, then it's likely a disease that could have been prevented. Which, if you read the rest of the thread, you would probably agree is a NAFTA issue--see, politics, economy. And when the disease first started in Mexico, the only government agency to respond was one called Social Security (or something like that, kind of a public health agency), and that agency was hampered by a lack of funds and testing supplies, as well as other support from the Mexican government until the alarm was sounded by a company (Canadian?) that scans the globe for it's clients to alert them to this kind of thing-- otherwise I wonder if the Mexican government would have responded at all. Hmmm, politics, economy? And in Marshall County, where most of Iowa's cases are located, the first kids to catch it are being blamed and shunned by the other kids in the school district for the school shutting down, which means they will have to attend school for an extra week this summer. See, sociological, possibly cultural. And I've seen the CDC response go from sounding alarms to dismissing it as an inconsequential virus,which makes me wonder if that's a medical response or a political one, since the timing of that change coincided with the timing of pressure from the pork lobby which has succeeded in getting the media to start calling it "H1N1", instead of "swine flu". Politics, economics????

I could go on and on, but then I'd just be behaving anal all over again. Trust me, though, I doubt that we're the only ones studying this process-- so is the government, or my name's not chigger.

[chiggerbit]

Oh, yes, let me add that I doubt that there's another place on the internet with a more comprehensive collection of information on this flu than RI.

[chiggerbit]

Already? Man, they sure ran out of that fast:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... S/90512021



May 12, 2009


Official says numbers don't tell the story of flu in Marshall County

By REID FORGRAVE
rforgrave@dmreg.com

Marshalltown, Ia. — The number of confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus in Marshall County might not rise dramatically in the coming weeks, but officials here say that doesn’t mean the illness has stalled its progress in this central Iowa county.

So far, 46 of Iowa’s 54 confirmed cases of H1N1 virus have been in Marshall County. But since the Marshalltown Medical and Surgical Center opened an emergency flu clinic on May 2, more than 300 patients who’ve visited in the past week have shown symptoms of the virus, which is also known as swine flu and has raised the alert level of health professionals worldwide.

The discrepancy in the numbers is because of an international shortage of testing supplies, officials said.

“The numbers don’t tell the story at this point,” said Tina Coleman, director of home care and public health for Marshall County. “What we need to help educate the public now is that they’re not going to see those numbers increase. Because the state is limiting the amount of testing we can do, and the only way we can get a confirmed case is to do the testing.”

The county only sent six H1N1 tests into the University Hygienic Laboratory in Iowa City on Monday. That’s out of about 30 patients who visited the emergency clinic with symptoms consistent with the virus.

Instead of confirming cases through tests, however, health officials here and statewide are doing more surveillance of patients who call flu hotlines or come to emergency clinics. They are also following up with residents who’ve shown symptoms consistent with the virus and trying to prevent the disease from spreading among people they’ve come in contact with.

Coleman’s office made 100 phone calls yesterday to Marshall County residents showing symptoms consistent with the worldwide H1N1 flu epidemic: a fever higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, sore throat and coughing. About 70 percent of those contacted are still ill more than seven days after they first felt symptoms of the virus, Coleman said. And about a quarter of households with suspected cases of the virus have seen significant illnesses spread through their households.
Yet health officials also have detected a waning public interest in the disease. That’s alarming, they said, for two reasons. One is that flu epidemics tend to come in waves, and there very well could be another, more severe H1N1 wave in fall.

The second reason is that, even though the United States hasn’t seen as many H1N1 deaths as Mexico, the virus isn’t exactly something to sneeze at.

“They’re pretty miserable by the time they come to us,” La Rae Schelling, the hospital’s chief operating officer, said at a Tuesday morning press conference. “You’re out of work seven to 10 days. That’s a lot of lost time.”
The disease has been concentrated among people age five to 30. The Marshalltown school district has seen a slight decrease in attendance in recent days, dipping from 95 percent attendance to 91 percent. But superintendent Marvin Wade doesn’t know if he can attribute the dip in attendance to the virus.

Also, the district hopes to find out soon whether it will have to make up the three days of school that were canceled last week due to the H1N1 virus.

The flu has infected about 2,600 people in the United States this year, killing three. In Marshall County, at least one percent of the population has exhibited symptoms consistent with the H1N1 virus. The mean age of confirmed cases has trended downward, to about 16 years old, Coleman said, and those with the H1N1 flu were eager to rid themselves of it.

“When I talked to them, they were absolutely miserable,” Coleman said. “They didn’t want it to come across as that they were just mildly ill. That’s not the case.”

[chiggerbit]

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNe ... 00&sp=true

New flu not quite a pandemic yet: WHO
Tue May 12, 2009 6:03am EDT

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA (Reuters) - The new H1N1 virus shows no signs of sustained person-to-person spread outside of North America and so has not yet tipped over into a pandemic, a top World Health Organization official said on Monday.

Dr. Keiji Fukuda, acting WHO assistant director-general, also told a news briefing it was too early to say whether the swine flu virus would cause a pandemic.

"We remain at phase 5," Fukuda said, referring to the agency's second-highest pandemic alert level. "It is still a confusing situation."

WHO said its laboratories have confirmed 4,379 infections with the new strain.

But the worst impact is still in North America, with 60 deaths. The United States alone has 2,600 cases.

"We know that we are seeing things change on an almost daily basis," Fukuda said.

"We are evaluating the clinical features, we are evaluating the epidemiology and the spread. We will continue to evaluate what is the impact on both people and countries."

In Mexico, millions of children, many of them wearing surgical masks and clutching hand sanitizer, went back to classes for the first time in two weeks.

Schools throughout Mexico were scrubbed from floor to ceiling last week and the 20 million students who returned on Monday were told to follow strict hygiene rules.

"If everyone respects them, we're going to have a safe and healthy return," Education Minister Alonso Lujambio said.

ITCHY MASKS

Although there is no evidence to show masks protect people who have not been infected, many children wore them. "I know it's to protect us but the mask is very uncomfortable. It makes me itchy," said Pamela, a 10-year-old at a school in the capital.

Mexican health officials said the death toll there has risen to 56 as results come in of tests on people who died in recent weeks. Mexico has had a total of 2,059 cases of the swine flu distributed throughout all but three of the country's 32 states, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said.

An international team reported the virus appears to act like a pandemic strain, being more easily passed along than the regular seasonal flu.

Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London and colleagues reported in the journal Science that as many as 23,000 Mexicans were likely infected with the swine flu virus.

They also found evidence to support the theory that the outbreak originated in the village of La Gloria in the state of Veracruz, which had been the subject of intense speculation.

CHINESE QUARANTINE

Chinese authorities were searching for 150 people who took the same flights as mainland China's first confirmed case of the new flu, state media said.

State television and the Xinhau news agency said the government had tracked down and quarantined 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.

The patient himself, a Chinese student in the U.S. state of Missouri, was doing well.

Thai scientists who infected piglets with the new virus said it caused flu-like symptoms in the animals before disappearing, just like many of the human cases.

Late on Monday, public health officials in Cuba reported its first confirmed case of the new flu in a student from Mexico.

Europeans were relaxed about the outbreaks. Italian farm group Coldiretti said that while one in 10 Italians had stopped eating pork despite reassurances the virus is not food-borne, 12 percent were actually buying more pork because prices had fallen since the outbreak.

"They say it's better to prevent than cure but I think the reaction has been alarmist. That is more the fault of the WHO (than the government)," said Sami Husein, 32, a Madrid engineer.

"There have been fewer deaths than for any normal flu, so for now I don't understand how it could be a major problem."

The U.S.-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said it had asked the CDC to release any evidence that would show the outbreak originated on a factory farm.

(Reporting by Alistair Bell and Adriana Barrera in Mexico, Michael Kahn in London, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Jeff Franks in Havana; Writing by Maggie Fox; Editing by Eric Walsh)

[chiggerbit]

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNe ... health1100

"....The 22 piglets infected with the new virus showed flu-like symptoms between one and four days after infection and were shedding virus -- meaning they could spread it -- two days after infection, the researchers said.

None of the animals, also infected with the less dangerous H3N2 subtype, died, Roongroje Thanawongnuwech and colleagues from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok reported...



"......The team found that all infected pigs developed respiratory symptoms such as nasal discharge, coughing, sneezing and conjunctivitis. They also developed lung lesions large enough to be seen by the naked eye.

The lesions were characterized by dark plum-colored, areas on the lung and were most severe two days after infection. This was especially the case in the H1N1-infected pigs, where about a third of the lung was covered"


""The results demonstrated that both swine flu subtypes were able to induce flu-like symptoms and lung lesions in weanling pigs. However the severity of the disease with regard to both gross and microscopic lung lesions was greater in the H1N1-infected pigs,".

[vigilant]

And I've seen the CDC response go from sounding alarms to dismissing it as an inconsequential virus,which makes me wonder if that's a medical response or a political one, since the timing of that change coincided with the timing of pressure from the pork lobby which has succeeded in getting the media to start calling it "H1N1", instead of "swine flu". Politics, economics????


I don't know if this has been brought into the thread yet because the thread is huge and I have not read all of it yet. But...that huge unnecessary stock of Tamiflu that was sold to the government for the Bird Flu swindle has a three year shelf life. Its been about three years since they bought it. Its time to "restock" with another huge unnecessary load...
Rumfeld's investments need a kick???...Which is a new number I have heard lately. It used to be 7 years "I think".....

on edit: it appears to be at a 5 year shelf life for now, with some countries such as Japan extending to 7


One end run around this problem is to skip livestock altogether and grow meat in the laboratory, which the Dutch have been researching (giving new meaning to the phrase "Dutch treat").

Time to buy stock in the genetic food engineering arena?

[professorpan]

I spoke to a respected scientist last night at a social gathering. He is actually on the record predicting a potential flu virus emerging from large scale farm animal operations, and he said that he continues to be very alarmed at the rapid transmission of H1N1 and the potential for mutation and resistance in advance of flu season. Just wanted to throw that in there.

And I got this via a google alert this afternoon:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... refer=home

Swine Flu May Be Human Error, Scientist Says; WHO Probes Claim

By Jason Gale and Simeon Bennett

May 12 (Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization is investigating an Australian researcher’s claim that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.

Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu drug, said in an interview today that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said that he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus’s origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint.

The World Health Organization received the study last weekend and is reviewing it, Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s assistant director-general of health security and environment, said in an interview yesterday. Gibbs, who has studied germ evolution for four decades, is one of the first scientists to analyze the genetic makeup of the virus that was identified three weeks ago in Mexico and threatens to touch off the first flu pandemic since 1968.

A virus that resulted from lab experimentation or vaccine production may indicate a greater need for security, Fukuda said. By pinpointing the source of the virus, scientists also may better understand the microbe’s potential for spreading and causing illness, Gibbs said.

Caution

“The sooner we get to grips with where it’s come from, the safer things might become,” Gibbs said in a telephone interview from Canberra today. “It could be a mistake” that occurred at a vaccine production facility or the virus could have jumped from a pig to another mammal or a bird before reaching humans, he said.

Gibbs and two colleagues analyzed the publicly available sequences of hundreds of amino acids coded by each of the flu virus’s eight genes. He said he aims to submit his three-page paper tomorrow for publication in a medical journal.

“You really want a very sober assessment” of the science behind the claim, Fukuda said yesterday at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has received the report and has decided there is no evidence to support Gibbs’s conclusion, said Nancy Cox, director of the agency’s influenza division. She said since researchers don’t have samples of swine flu viruses from South America and Africa, where the new strain may have evolved, those regions can’t be ruled out as natural sources for the new flu.

No Evidence

“We are interested in the origins of this new influenza virus,” she said. “But contrary to what the author has found, when we do the comparisons that are most relevant, there is no evidence that this virus was derived by passage in eggs.”

The WHO’s collaborative influenza research centers, which includes the CDC, and sites in Memphis, Melbourne, London and Tokyo, were asked by the international health agency to review the study over the weekend, Fukuda said. The request was extended to scientists at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris, as well as the WHO’s influenza network yesterday, he said.

“My guess is that the picture should be a lot clearer over the next few days,” Fukuda said. “We have asked a lot of people to look at this.”

Lab Escape

Gibbs wrote or co-authored more than 250 scientific publications on viruses during his 39-year career at the Australian National University in Canberra, according to biographical information on the university’s Web site.

Swine flu has infected 5,251 people in 30 countries so far, killing 61. Scientists are trying to determine whether the virus will mutate and become more deadly if it spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and back. Flu pandemics occur when a strain of the disease to which few people have immunity evolves and spreads.

Gibbs said his analysis supports research by scientists including Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, who found the new strain is the product of two distinct lineages of influenza that have circulated among swine in North America and Europe for more than a decade.

In addition, his research found the rate of genetic mutation in the new virus outpaced that of the most closely related viruses found in pigs, suggesting it evolved outside of swine, Gibbs said.

Some scientists have speculated that the 1977 Russian flu, the most recent global outbreak, began when a virus escaped from a laboratory.

Other Theories?

Identifying the source of new flu viruses is difficult without finding the exact strain in an animal or bird “reservoir,” said Jennifer McKimm-Breschkin, a virologist at the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization in Melbourne.

“If you can’t find an exact match, the best you can do is compare sequences,” she said. “Similarities may give an indication of a possible source, but this remains theoretical.”

The World Organization for Animal Health, which represents chief veterinary officers from 174 countries, received the Gibbs paper and is working with WHO on an assessment, said Maria Zampaglione, a spokeswoman.

The WHO wants to know whether any evidence that the virus may have been developed in a laboratory can be corroborated and whether there are other explanations for its particular genetic patterns, according to Fukuda.

‘Wild Idea’

“These things have to be dealt with straight on,” he said. “If someone makes a hypothesis, then you test it and you let scientific process take its course.”

Gibbs said he has no evidence that the swine-derived virus was a deliberate, man-made product.

“I don’t think it could be a malignant thing,” he said. “It’s much more likely that some random thing has put these two viruses together.”

Gibbs, who spent most of his academic career studying plant viruses, said his major contribution to the study of influenza occurred in 1975, while collaborating with scientists Graeme Laver and Robert Webster in research that led to the development of the anti-flu medicines Tamiflu and Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc.

“We were out on one of the Barrier Reef islands, off Australia, catching birds for the flu in them, and I happened to be the guy who caught the best,” Gibbs said. The bird he got “yielded the poo from which was isolated the influenza isolate strain from which all the work on Tamiflu and Relenza started.”

Gibbs, who says he studies the evolution of flu viruses as a “retirement hobby,” expects his research to be challenged by other scientists.

“This is how science progresses,” he said. “Somebody comes up with a wild idea, and then they all pounce on it and kick you to death, and then you start off on another silly idea.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jason Gale in Geneva at j.gale@bloomberg.net; Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net.

[chiggerbit]

Ok, just found this site when I googled "cytonic storm" Looks like it's about natural health methods. Someone there has linked several sites with regards to vitamin D, which is an interesting theory that flu viruses tend to circulate when vitamin D is at its lowest ebb in our bodies, in the winter, I suppose when we have the least amount of sun exposure. However, one question I would like to dig into is, if this is true, then how to explain this particular variant, which, like the 1918 one, started in the spring?

The last page of discussion of H1N1 at The Tree of Liberty site:

http://www.thetreeofliberty.com/vb/show ... 27&page=14

[Penguin]

professorpan -
yeah that sounds plausible.

First 2 confirmed cases here in Finland now. Theyre both young adults, male and female, who arrived from holiday in Mexico. Theyre being treated in quarantine at their home, and the symptoms are mild.

“The sooner we get to grips with where it’s come from, the safer things might become,” Gibbs said in a telephone interview from Canberra today. “It could be a mistake”

^^
Someone always screws something up, eventually. Thats one of the laws of nature or something.

"..silly idea..."

[chiggerbit]

Another thing that's puzzling about the vitamin D theory is that the virus was moved around the world by vacationers returning home from Mexico--where they would have been getting large doses of Vitamin D in their exposure to all that sunshine. Hmmmm.....

[chiggerbit]

Well, I suppose it isn't the humans, but the piggers who aren't getting the vitamin D they need inside the hog confinement buildings, never getting a bit of direct sunshine. Maybe that contributes to the beginning of the virus in the winter, and it opportunistically jumped the barrier to humans without regard to season by then. And maybe that's why the disease has become less virulent to its human victims, because they have been out in the beautiful spring weather.

[chiggerbit]

Did you know that pigs can get sunburned?

http://www.thepigsite.com/diseaseinfo/114/sunburn

[stickdog99]

What is there to this story other than hype? The flu spreads. A select few people die of the flu. What is the news story here?

1. Swine and avian flus are different than the seasonal flu for any given year.
2. This flu is very, very, very contagious.
3. It will mutate over time. If it mutates to become more deadly, many many people could die.

1. Yes
2. Really? How so?
3. Really? Why is this inevitable?

[stickdog99]

Assuming that you're really interested in an answer to your question, then for me the implications of this disease are everything that lbo and monster have explained above, but so much more than that, too. It's the totality of the issues that has me fascinated. I'm actually watching the progression of this flu in a bit of a detached way as it unfolds, almost like I'm watching a movie. Sure, this could turn out to be another SARS event, but it has the potential to turn into something serious. Not that this isn't personal to me, since it's likely that this disease started in pigs, jumped to humans, and has jumped back from human to pigs at least once, so that alone is a bit unique, as far as we know, AND I live in one of the largest hog breeding and processing states in the country, AND I'm only two miles from a hog confinement with manure lagoons and enough dead piggers to make the wildlife around here quite happy. But I'm not worried about it, I'm fascinated by the process that's playing out here.

What is the best evidence that this flu has anything whatsoever to do with hog breeding?

I'm assuming that you informed yourself by reading the 2006(?) Rollingstones' article, among the many others, on Smithfield Farms that was posted on an earlier page. That article blew my mind. It isn't even the nature of this virus that interests me so much as the political, economic, geographical, sociological and cultural implications of it. For instance, if in fact this virus did start at the Smithfield operation that is located at the epicenter of the disease in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, then it's likely a disease that could have been prevented. Which, if you read the rest of the thread, you would probably agree is a NAFTA issue--see, politics, economy. And when the disease first started in Mexico, the only government agency to respond was one called Social Security (or something like that, kind of a public health agency), and that agency was hampered by a lack of funds and testing supplies, as well as other support from the Mexican government until the alarm was sounded by a company (Canadian?) that scans the globe for it's clients to alert them to this kind of thing-- otherwise I wonder if the Mexican government would have responded at all. Hmmm, politics, economy? And in Marshall County, where most of Iowa's cases are located, the first kids to catch it are being blamed and shunned by the other kids in the school district for the school shutting down, which means they will have to attend school for an extra week this summer. See, sociological, possibly cultural. And I've seen the CDC response go from sounding alarms to dismissing it as an inconsequential virus,which makes me wonder if that's a medical response or a political one, since the timing of that change coincided with the timing of pressure from the pork lobby which has succeeded in getting the media to start calling it "H1N1", instead of "swine flu". Politics, economics????

I could go on and on, but then I'd just be behaving anal all over again. Trust me, though, I doubt that we're the only ones studying this process-- so is the government, or my name's not chigger.

Sounds good. But I'm still wondering why this specific flu is somehow supposed to be scarier than other recently evolved or lab developed flus.