Perhaps the War on Drugs ...
... and the war on Illegal Immigration ...
... is about to become the War on Foreign-Borne Pathogens:
And if Washington doesn't respond quickly, we may have to seal our borders ourselves ...
Posted on 04/24/2009 5:04:49 AM PDT by Cindy
Travel advisory warns of severe respiratory illness in Mexico 20 die from severe respiratory illness in Mexico
Canadians who have recently returned from Mexico should be on alert for flu-like symptoms that could be connected to a severe respiratory illness, federal health officials said Thursday in issuing a travel advisory.
A severe respiratory illness appears to have infected 137 people in south and central areas of Mexico, with cases concentrated in Mexico City and three other areas, including 20 deaths, the Public Health Agency of Canada said.
In the United States, health officials in Texas and California were scrambling this week to deal with a new strain of swine flu, which has been diagnosed in seven people.
The states share a border with Mexico not far from a town where two deaths were reported.
The U.S. cases are unusual, because it appears none of the patients had contact with pigs, and the virus is one that health officials have never seen before.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
ping
http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_3028.html
Travel Alert
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of Consular Affairs
This information is current as of today, Fri Apr 24 2009 05:09:35 GMT-0700 (PDT).
Mexico
February 20, 2009
The article/advisory in post no. 1 is from the Canada news.
The travel alert in post 3 is not flu-related as of this post and originated in the U.S.A.
ping
As if I needed yet another reason to avoid traveling to Mexico.
All Canadians should rejoice at the accident of geography that placed the USA between us and the third world.
Stay away from Mexico. My doc, head of internal medicine at UCSF med school, said that Mexico, not Africa, has the worst strains of communicable diseases.
Add to that, a friend’s MI5 buddy declares Mexico to be the most dangerous country in the world.
Forget the beaches and margaritas. You can get those in CA and Hawaii and FL.
Bioterrorism. And the fact that it is a pig-borne disease absolutely throws off the scent, as there is some sort of belief tht Islamic scientists would NEVER concern themselves with anything that would have to do with swine. However, this does not rule out that the People’s Republic of China may be testing a similar tactic.
They are seeking out the vulnerabilities, one of which is infiltration into the US through Mexico. A broadly based plague that kills off tens or hundreds of thousnds is VASTLY more devastating than just taking down a couple buildings in the heart of a city.
Just wait until the bird flu hits Mexico (this fall?)-
the rush of panicked peasants through our borders could be a catastrophe
Maybe that’s why the REX84 camps
Could this be related to a mix of ebola and some other flu-likw disease reported a while back in the Philippines?
bttt
Travel to Mexico doesn't matter. The illness will soon come to you, courtesy of rampant illegal invasion across the Mexican border (as drug-resistant TB already has).
The states share a border with Mexico not far from a town where two deaths were reported.
I love incoherent writing. Guess they don't know that there are TWO states between California and Texas. So if both CA and TX are "not far from" this town, this town is MUCH closer to those OTHER two states. Yes, I live in one of those two states and own property in the other.
All classes cancelled in Mexico City
A Mexican Health Ministry statement issued on Thursday afternoon said the country "was in the presence of a new influenza virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic which is controllable, so far."
But laboratory tests on the 828 Mexican cases have yet to confirm the patients are suffering from influenza, or what strain it might be, Hartl said.
The Mexican government ordered that all classes in Mexico City and the surrounding state be cancelled on Friday, from pre-schools to universities. It also has warned the public to avoid gathering places and major events.
On Thursday, Canadian health officials issued a travel advisory warning travellers who have recently returned from Mexico to be on alert for flu-like symptoms that could be connected to the illness.
In the U.S., health officials were scrambling this week to deal with a new strain of swine flu, which has been diagnosed in seven people in Texas and California.
The states share a border with Mexico not far from a town where two deaths were reported.
The U.S. cases are unusual, because it appears none of the patients had contact with pigs, and the virus is one that health officials have never seen before.
No cases of this swine flu have been found in Canada
I do not monitor the MSM. Have they reported this yet?
sw
The travel alert should be here in the US since the illegals are traveling to here.
Ping to Blam. Check out post #15. First I’ve heard of it.
Spectre - got a link to this report? I’d like to peruse it. Thanks.
President Whats-his-face is in deep doo-doo here as he has not been able to find a competent Health Secretary yet. Chalk up another fiasco for the junta.
This is a worrisome situation for many reasons. There are dozens of news stories coming out about this from Canada to Mexico. Some are linking this with the cases in California and Texas. Plus this is a very unusual strain it combines two different types of Swine flu, one Avian flu and one Human flu - it’s not common to see even 3 strains combine
Also, conservative estimates put the death toll at 60. If those infected are truly only in the 800s that would put the fatality rate at around 7%. The Spanish Flu (1918) had a fatality rate around 5% IIRC. And who even knows if the numbers coming out of Mexico are So this is nothing to take lightly, IMO
I should add too, all schools in Mexico City have been closed and social distancing has been urged.
This site (PFI) has about the best coverage with links to many news stories http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewtopic.php?t=3231
Thanks. Me too.
Swine Flu Cases In US, Mystery Ailment In Mexico Have Experts Scrambling
"Laboratories in Atlanta and Winnipeg are looking at clinical specimens trying to determine if the mounting number of human cases of swine flu - seven and counting - in California and Texas, and an unusual explosion of severe respiratory illnesses in Mexico are pieces of the same puzzle or confusing coincidences."
"Even on its own the human infections with swine flu viruses are significant enough to have experts wondering whether the world is watching the start of a flu pandemic."
Sixty Swine Flu Fatalities In Mexico Confirm Pandemic Start
Recombinomics Commentary 13:30
April 24, 2009
A rare outbreak of human swine flu has killed at least 60 people in Mexico and spread to the United States where authorities are on alert, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.
“To date there have been some 800 suspected cases with flu-like illness, with 57 deaths in the Mexico City area,” Chaib added.
Twenty four suspected cases and three deaths were also recorded in San Luis Potosi in central Mexico.
The above comment confirm that the swine H1N1 in southwestern United States (see updated map) is the leading edge of a H1N1 pandemic that appears to be centered in Mexico.
These deaths should increase the pandemic phase to 6.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/04240903/H1N1_Swine_Mexico_Pandemic.html
Mexican government just confirmed that it is swine flu -linking it to the cases here.
“Cordova Villalobos said that “a mutant virus that comes from pigs, which had already been described in 1976.” Mexican authorities sent 17 samples to Canada and received confirmation that in 16 cases it was swine flu. Cordova Villalobos said that in recent months, seven cases had been filed in the Southern United States. “
http://www.lanacion.com.py/noticias_um-242255.htm
Mexico shuts schools in capital in flu scare
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE53N3CQ20090424
Ping...
Maybe. Recall they don't waste a good crisis and this could be the stalking horse for Martial Law.
Not Good.
Nice how they never mentioned a thing about people DIEING IN MEXICO!!!!
No, fatima, not good at all.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE53M63F20090424
This is a link to an article about 7 US cases, don’t know if it’s been posted on this thread yet.
Which will lead rapidly to speculation that this bug came from a lab somewhere.
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven people have been diagnosed with a new kind of swine flu in California and Texas, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday.
All seven people have recovered but the virus itself is a never-before-seen mixture of viruses typical among pigs, birds and humans, the CDC said.
“We are likely to find more cases,” the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat told a telephone briefing. “We don’t think this is time for major concern around the country.”
Only one of the seven cases was sick enough to be hospitalized and all have recovered, Schuchat said.
CDC officials are unsure whether the cases are related to an unusually late and severe flu season in Mexico in which 20 people have died.
“Generally the period of infection ends during the last week of February and the first week of March, but this year there was an atypical situation where the transmission period was prolonged until April,” Mexico’s Ministry of Health said in a statement.
Canadian officials have asked doctors to keep an eye out for cases of respiratory illness among travelers from Mexico.
“Symptoms from those seriously ill in Mexico include high fever, headache, eye pain, shortness of breath and extreme fatigue with rapid progression of symptoms to severe respiratory distress in about five days,” the British Columbia Center for Disease Control said in a statement.
In the United States, the CDC reported the new strain of swine flu on Tuesday in a boy and a girl from California’s two southernmost counties.
Now, five more cases have been found via normal surveillance for seasonal influenza. None of the patients, whose symptoms closely resembled seasonal flu, had any direct contact with pigs.
Two of the new cases were among 16-year-olds at the same school in San Antonio “and there’s a father-daughter pair in California,” Schuchat said. The boy whose case was reported on Tuesday had flown to Dallas, but the CDC has found no links to the other Texas cases.
The agency will issue daily updates here
HUMAN TO HUMAN
“We believe at this point that human-to-human spread is occurring,” Schuchat said. “That’s unusual. We don’t know yet how widely it is spreading ... We are also working with international partners to understand what is occurring in other parts of the world.”
The CDC’s Dr. Nancy Cox said virus samples from the seven appear to carry genes from swine flu, avian flu and human flu viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.
That was one of the first things I thought. Not that nature itself couldn’t manage this, especially in crowded unsanitary conditions.
Thanks, Judith Anne!
Maybe we both are just naturally suspicious of the improbable...we are not alone in that.
Sounds like a combo cocktail of strains possibly designed to infect a larger spectrum of people. I'm no doctor but, I wonder if this combo can occur naturally or was this lab-born?
Joe, you could be right on the money about the stalking horse. Sounds like something those sick f$#ks might do.
I’m glad the news is coming out, of course the case numbers from Mexico are waaaaaaay low, likely due to lack of medical care facilities in Mexico City.
In case someone didn’t mention it before, or it’s upthread somewhere, I saw one report that said 500+ Mexico City health care workers were sick with it.
And if Washington doesn't respond quickly, we may have to seal our borders ourselves ...
It’ll be here soon!
Bump for reference.
Perfect timing for Obama’s Universal Health Care plans????
BIGGER Government?
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”
I know their epidemiological protections may be lax in the absence of an alert, but each would only have to infect two people for the case numbers to be far too low, and chances are they have been in contact with far more.
CDC and WHO had a conference today (teleconference?) I don’t have a link or know exactly what came out of it, but ALL of Mexico City’s schools, colleges, etc are closed down today, and that’s a city of 20 million.
So far they are having the mortality rate at under 10%, but this is not one of those minor flu outbreaks where everyone is under the weather a few days and then we all go back to our lives. In my opinion.
We should know something in a very few days.
Flu Pandemic?...Ping!
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