Friday night Pandemic Watch - Swine Flu coming to you?

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Postby Col. Quisp » Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:54 pm

Wow -- post flu depression - I has it! thanks for that info, CB!

Here's the latest news:

World getting 'very close' to swine flu pandemic: WHO

1 hour ago

GENEVA (AFP) — The World Health Organisation on Tuesday assessed that the world was getting "very very close" to a swine flu pandemic, saying that it was racing to prepare countries for such a situation.

"We are getting very very close," said Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general, noting that in Australia, there was now "a great deal of activity in Victoria at the community level."

Under the WHO's guidelines, one key criteria for declaring a pandemic would be established community spread in a country outside the first region in which the disease was initially reported, in this case, outside the Americas.

The WHO has so far left its six-level pandemic alert scale unchanged at phase five, signalling that a pandemic is "imminent."

The UN health agency's guidelines had initially focused on the geographical criteria to justify a phase change. However, member states have called on the agency to take other elements, such as severity of the disease into account.

On Tuesday, Fukuda played down the role of severity, saying that "by going to phase six, what this would mean is that the spread of the virus continues and activity has become established in at least two regions in the world.

"It doesn't mean that the severity of the situation has increased," he said.

But when asked if the situation in Australia, where 1,211 cases of infections have been recorded, warranted a phase change, Fukuda would only say that the world was "getting very, very close" to a pandemic.

"The declaration of phase changes... is not simply getting up in front of press cameras or making an announcement. It's really a way of preparing the world to deal with the situation," said Fukuda, adding that a "great deal of work has to be done."

This includes ensuring that countries had the information and tools to handle increased numbers of patients as well as to deal with inquiries from the population.

"Right now we feel that the essential steps which should be taken are on the way," he said.

Giving an update on the swine flu situation throughout the world, Fukuda said 26,563 infections including 140 deaths have been reported to the health agency from 73 countries.

Fukuda pointed in particular to the situation in Inuit communities in Canada where "a disproportionate number of serious cases is occurring.

"At this time, we know that a larger number than expected of young Inuit people did develop serious illness and has had to get hospitalised," he said.

Fukuda said he was unable to pinpoint the reasons for the trend.

"We know in past pandemics that Inuit populations were very severely hit, that's why these reports raised such concerns to us," he said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Related articles

* WHO preparing to declare swine flu pandemic
Canada.com - 17 minutes ago
* WHO says it is 'very close' to declaring swine flu is a pandemic
The Canadian Press - 40 minutes ago

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jXhsosg4qt7VDKt11ln7kjzbpa5w
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Postby chiggerbit » Tue Jun 09, 2009 2:15 pm

I wonder what it is that causes the depression? Is there a hormonal tendency with that?

This is interesting:

Fukuda pointed in particular to the situation in Inuit communities in Canada where "a disproportionate number of serious cases is occurring.

"At this time, we know that a larger number than expected of young Inuit people did develop serious illness and has had to get hospitalised," he said.

Fukuda said he was unable to pinpoint the reasons for the trend.

"We know in past pandemics that Inuit populations were very severely hit, that's why these reports raised such concerns to us," he said.


I think I read somewhere that the death rate in that population was terribly high during the 1918 epidemic. As I had said on an earlier page where I was noting the "possibility" of Mexicans getting the virus at a higher rate than their white counterparts in Marshall County, Iowa, I'm still wondering if there is some sort of genetic vulnerability. Wouldn't the Inuits and Mexicans share a lot of genes, being from similar family trees?
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Postby chiggerbit » Tue Jun 09, 2009 2:41 pm

OK, I see that the "case-fatality rate" in some Inuit villages was as high as 70%.
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Postby chiggerbit » Tue Jun 09, 2009 2:44 pm

It would be interesting to know what time of the year this hit the Inuits. Maybe vitamin D really is a factor.
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Postby vigilant » Tue Jun 09, 2009 11:32 pm

When Pigs Fly


laboratory confirmed cases? do tell....whose lab? "exactly"

birds...pigs....

"if" this pig were to fly, and people really start dying in large numbers, look for the human swine that drove it in here, cause otherwise, it ain't real...and never would have been.

Its the same bunch, selling similar and same snake oil, using a different animal name, fooling the same human animals..."us"
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=13392

Swine Flu Scare: Stock Market Bonanza for "Politically Connected" BioTech Companies

by Michel Chossudovsky

The Swine Flu scare has boosted the stock market values of Big Pharma. Following initial reports from Mexico on the influenza outbreak, the demand for anti-flu drugs has skyrocketed.

Supported by media disinformation, an atmosphere of fear and intimidation has unfolded. Health “emergencies” have been declared in various parts of the US.

The most sought after influenza drugs are Tamiflu and Relenza. Treatment courses by the US government have been released from the national stockpile “to make sure health care providers are ready for any escalation in cases.”

Tamiflu is produced by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche on behalf of a US based biotech company Gilead Sciences, Inc. While the drug is produced by Roche, it was developed by Gilead Sciences Inc. which owns the intellectual property rights.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was one of the major shareholders of Gilead Sciences. In 1997, Rumsfeld was appointed Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc., a position which he held until becoming Secretary of Defence in the Bush administration in 2001. Rumsfeld was on the Board of Directors from the establishment of Gilead in 1987.

Fortune Magazine in a report published at the height of 2005 bird flu crisis, described Gilead as one of the most politically connected companies in the biotech industry. Rumsfeld’s interests and/or holdings in Gilead following his resignation in 2006 are not known.

Stock Values

The share price of Gilead on the NYSE has risen substantially since the announcement of the Mexican swine flu outbreak (see graph):

“The U.S. government released a quarter of its stockpiles of the drugs after declaring a national health emergency with 40 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu. Seven of those cases are in California, 28 in New York City, two each in Texas and Kansas, and one in Ohio.

Mexico raised the suspected death toll from its outbreak to 149 people — 20 of those confirmed as swine flu — and cancelled all schools until May 6. Nearly 2,000 people there have been hospitalized with serious cases of pneumonia.

Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines active against influenza viruses, including swine influenza viruses, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Swine influenza A viruses detected in the United States and Mexico appear resistant to two antiviral drugs — amantadine and rimantadine — but laboratory tests indicate the viruses are sensitive to Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, and Relenza, which is known as zanamivir.

The Tamiflu oral antiviral, approved in the U.S. to treat and prevent influenza A and B virus infection in people age one or older, is sold by F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., which pays sales-related royalties to Gilead. Roche said it has 3 million packages of Tamiflu on standby — part of 5 million treatments donated to the U.N. health agency in 2006 — and can deliver the drug anywhere within 24 hours.” (San Francisco Business Times, 27 April 2009)

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Rumsfeld To Profit From Avian Flu Hoax


Finally, the pieces of the puzzle start to add up. Last week, President Bush sought to instill panic in this country by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people will die from the avian flu pandemic but it could be as bad as 2 million deaths in this country alone.

This hoax is then used to justify the immediate purchase of 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a worthless drug that in no way shape or form treats the avian flu, but only decreases the amount of days one is sick and can actually contribute to the virus having more lethal mutations.



So the U.S. placed an order for 20 million doses of this worthless drug at a price of $100 per dose. That comes to a staggering $2 billion.

We are being told that Roche manufactures Tamiflu and, in yesterday's New York Times, they were battling whether or not they would allow generic drug companies to help increase their production.

But if you dig further you will find that a drug was actually developed by a company called Gilead that 10 years ago gave Roche the exclusive rights to market and sell Tamiflu.

Ahh, The Plot Thickens...

If you read the link below from Gilead, you'll discover Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was made the chairman of Gilead in 1997.

Since Rumsfeld holds major portions of stock in Gilead, he will handsomely profit from the scare tactics of the government that is being used to justify the purchase of $2 billion of Tamiflu.

http://mercola.com/blog/2005/oct/19/rum ... flu%5Fhoax
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Fuss and Feathers
Pandemic Panic over the Avian Flu
http://www.fumento.com/disease/flu2005.html
==================================================================
Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?
by F. William Engdahl

October 30, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca

No sooner are indictments being handed down to Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States for lies and coverup of information used deliberately to suppress the fact the Bush Administration had no ‘smoking gun’ to prove Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear arsenal, but a new scandal is surfacing every bit as outrageous and ultimately, likely also criminal.

Against all scientific prudence and normal public health procedure, the world population is being whipped up into a fear frenzy by irresponsible public health officials from the US Administration to WHO to the United States Centers for Disease Control. They all warn about the imminent danger that a malicious viral strain might spread from infected birds, primarily in Vietnam and other Asian centers, to contaminate the entire human species in pandemic proportions. Often the flu pandemic of 1918 which is said to have killed 18 million worldwide, is cited as an example of what ‘might’ lie in store for us.

On November 1, appropriately enough the day after Halloween, President Bush is scheduled to visit the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland to announce his Administration’s strategy of how it will prepare for the next flu epidemic, whether from Bird Flu or some other strain. The plan has been a year in the making. On October 28 the Senate passed an $8 billion emergency funding bill to address the growing Avian Flu panic. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, in a moment of candor during the debate on the Senate bill told the press, ‘If it isn’t the current H5N1 virus that leads to an influenza pandemic, at some point in our nation’s future, another virus will.’ In the meantime taxpayer billions will have gone to a handful of pharmaceutical giants positioned to profit. None stands to reap more lucre than the Swiss-US pharmaceutical giant Roche Holdings of Basle.

The only medicine we are told which reduce the symptoms of general or seasonal influenza and ‘possibly’ might reduce symptoms also of Avian Flu, is a drug called Tamiflu. Today the giant Swiss pharmaceutical firm, Roche, holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. Due to the media panic, the order books at Roche today are filled to overflowing. Roche recently refused a request from the US Congress to lift its exclusive patent rights to allow other drug manug´facturers to produce Tamiflu with the improbable excuse that it was in effect, too complex for others to rapidly produce.

However, the real point of interest is the company in California who developed Tamiflu and gave the marketing rights to its patented discovery to Roche.

‘Rummy Flu’

Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotech firm, Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is a NASDAQ (GILD) listed stock company which prefers to maintain a low profile in the current rush to Tamiflu. That might be because of who is tied to Gilead. In 1997, before he became US Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld was named Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the board of Gilead since 1988 according to a January 3 1997 company press release.

An as-yet-unconfirmed report is that Rumsfeld while Secretary of Defense also purchased an additional stock in his former company, Gilead Sciences Inc., worth $18 million, making him one of its largest if not the largest stock owners today.

The Secretary of Defense, the man who allegedly supported the use of contrived intelligence to justify the war on Iraq, is now poised to reap huge gains for a flu panic his Administration has done everything it can to promote. It would be useful to know whether the Pentagon’s successor to Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans developed the strategy of biowarfare behind the current Avian Flu panic. Perhaps some enterprising Congressional committee might look into the entire subject of plausible conflicts of interest regarding Secretary Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld stands to make a fortune on royalties as a panicked world population scrambles to buy a drug worthless in curing effects of alleged Avian Flu. The model suggests the parallel to the brazen corruption of Halliburton Corporation whose former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney’s company has so far gotten billions worth of US construction contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. Coincidence that Cheney’s closest political friend is Defense Secretary and Avian Flu beneficiary Don Rumsfeld? It is another example of what someone has called the principle of modern US corrupt special interest politics: ‘Concentrate the benefits; diffuse the costs’ President Bush has ordered the US Government to buy $2 billion worth of Gilead Science’s Tamilflu.

GMO Chickens come home to roost

But Tamiflu conflicts are perhaps just the tip of the iceberg of the Avian Flu story. There is high-level biological research underway in Britain and presumably also the United States to develop a genetic engineering method to make chickens and other birds ‘resistant’ to Avian Flu viruses.

British scientists are reportedly genetically engineering chickens to produce birds resistant to the lethal strains of the H5N1 virus devastating poultry in the Far East. Laurence Tiley, Professor of Microular Virology at Cambridge University and Helen Sang of the Roslin Institute in Scotland are involved in developing ‘transgenic chickens’ which would have small pieces of genetic material inserted into chicken eggs to allegedly make the chickens H5N1 resistant.

Tiley told the Times of London on October 29, ‘Once we have regulatory approval, we believe it will only take between four and five years to breed enough chickens to replace the entire world (chicken) population.’ The real question in this dubious undertaking is which GMO giants are underwriting the research and development of GMO chickens and who will control their products. It is increasingly clear that the entire saga of Avian Flu is one whose dimensions are only slowly coming to light. What we can see so far is not at all pretty.

Global Research Contributing Editor William Engdahl is author of ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press and the soon-to-be released book, ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Geopolitics of Gene-ocide’. He can be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net .
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... cleId=1169
The whole world is a stage...will somebody turn the lights on please?....I have to go bang my head against the wall for a while and assimilate....
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:55 am

chiggerbit wrote:I wonder what it is that causes the depression? Is there a hormonal tendency with that?

This is interesting:

Fukuda pointed in particular to the situation in Inuit communities in Canada where "a disproportionate number of serious cases is occurring.

"At this time, we know that a larger number than expected of young Inuit people did develop serious illness and has had to get hospitalised," he said.

Fukuda said he was unable to pinpoint the reasons for the trend.

"We know in past pandemics that Inuit populations were very severely hit, that's why these reports raised such concerns to us," he said.


I think I read somewhere that the death rate in that population was terribly high during the 1918 epidemic. As I had said on an earlier page where I was noting the "possibility" of Mexicans getting the virus at a higher rate than their white counterparts in Marshall County, Iowa, I'm still wondering if there is some sort of genetic vulnerability. Wouldn't the Inuits and Mexicans share a lot of genes, being from similar family trees?


I don't know if it's been said before on the thread, but the Inuit have no immunity to these diseases because they have had very little exposure to them in the past. It's similar to what happened when Cortez landed in the New World - his European crew brought all sorts of poxes and diseases to the natives, which they had no resistance to. The Spanish didn't conquer South America. Smallpox did it for them. And the Conquistadiors later brought back some diseases that Europeans had little or no resistance to.

There's no mystery about it. It's just basic immunology.

I think I might just be stating the obvious mainstream view here.
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Postby lightningBugout » Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:08 am

AOL wrote:There's no mystery about it. It's just basic immunology.

I think I might just be stating the obvious mainstream view here.


That seems to be particularly treacherous on this thread (I don't mean everyone, and especially not Chigger who's made this into a much better thread than it could have been -- thnx cb).
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Postby chiggerbit » Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:29 am

There's no mystery about it. It's just basic immunology.

I think I might just be stating the obvious mainstream view here.


The obvious which I just totally overlooked. :shock: Somehow I just assumed that that wouldn't apply in this day and age.
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Postby Jeff » Thu Jun 11, 2009 9:35 am

Level 6 expected to be declared this morning

Swine flu 'pandemic' announcement imminent
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Postby chiggerbit » Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:07 am

Looks like this swine flu may be increasing in its capacity for lethality"


http://www.thetreeofliberty.com/vb/show ... hp?t=64629

Lethality of H1N1 Influenza Virus Increasing According to Latest Analysis of Virus Peptide Genomic Data

Boston Biotech Firm Reports First Rise in 76 Years of Replikin Count* of H1N1 Lethality Gene


BOSTON, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- An analysis of the latest peptide genomic data for the H1N1 influenza virus indicates that the current global outbreak of H1N1 is increasing in its capacity for lethality.

The new sequence data on PubMed of the past two weeks through June 10, 2009 showed an increase in the Replikin Count* of the Replikin Lethality Gene in the pB1 genomic area from a mean of 2+/-0.2 in 2008 to a mean of 3.2+/-3.7 in 2009 (p<0.001).

The Replikin Count of the Lethality Gene in 836 previous H1N1 influenza virus isolates has remained essentially unchanged (at 2) since 1933.

These analyses were conducted by the Boston-based biotech firm Replikins, Ltd. (http://www.replikins.com) using its FluForecast(R) software. A year ago (4/7/0, using the same software, the firm predicted the current H1N1 virus outbreak, and last month (5/23/09) an increase in the Replikin Count of the Replikin Infectivity Gene in the hemagglutinin area indicated a marked increase in infectivity of the evolving H1N1 virus.


"Last month the H1N1 genomic data indicated some bad and some good news. While it indicated an increase in the infectivity of the H1N1 virus, its lethality appeared to remain relatively low," noted Sam Bogoch, MD, PhD, chairman of Replikins Ltd. "However, the FluForecast(R) analysis of new data of the past few weeks, through June 10th, on 144 new specimens published on PubMed, indicate an increase in the current H1N1 outbreak's capacity for lethality.

Since the software also permitted the automated analysis of all sequence data available on PubMed for all previous years, it was noted that this is the first such significant increase in the Replikin Count of the H1N1 Lethality Gene in 76 years. This is cause for concern and an accelerated vaccine effort."


For both the Infectivity Gene and the Lethality Gene, a significant increase in Replikin Count has invariably been followed by an increase in infectivity or lethality in influenza. While both the Replikin Infectivity Gene and the Replikin Lethality Gene have been found to act independently in all common influenza strains in human, swine, and bird hosts, both of these genes have been inhibited by the Two-Punch(TM) vaccine system -- designed to be concurrently directed at both genes.


The company recently announced that it has made available for testing against H1N1 a Two-Punch(TM) PanFlu(TM) vaccine. The same vaccine system has been successfully tested against H5N1 in chickens.
http://ca.sys-con.com/node/997972
Last edited by chiggerbit on Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Jeff » Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:26 am

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Postby chiggerbit » Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:41 am

US death count so far, with low "lethality":

Arizona: 6
Missouri: 1
New York(St): 13
Texas: 6
Washington(St): 2
Utah: 2
Illinois: 6
California: 5
Virginia: 1
Connecticut: 1
Michigan: 1
Wisconsin: 1
Pennsylvania: 2
Oklahoma: 1
Oregon: 1

Total: 48
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Postby chiggerbit » Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:44 am

Looks like the same company that predicts the increased lethality also produces vaccines:

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/200 ... ccine.html
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Postby chiggerbit » Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:53 am

Wow, Victoria, in Australia, has been hit HARD:

http://www.thetreeofliberty.com/vb/show ... hp?t=64675

".....More than 1,000 of Australia's swine flu cases are in Victoria state in the nation's south, which has been hit by the cold temperatures and dry conditions that flu viruses thrive in.

Victorians now account for around 3.6% of total confirmed cases globally, and authorities are struggling to understand exactly why the virus has taken such a hold in the state, Victoria's acting chief health officer, Rosemary Lester, said Thursday......"
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Postby chiggerbit » Thu Jun 11, 2009 11:57 am

Looks like I'm not the only one wondering about genetics:

http://www.thetreeofliberty.com/vb/show ... hp?t=64508

".......OK, I think I have posted before that Native Americans are much more susceptible to lung conditions. My Hubby is a good example. But Remember when this thing was first being publicized, how we wondered if there was a genetic component that made it more deadly to certain ethnic populations? I'm STILL wondering here....."
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