Posted on 01/11/2012 3:06:26 PM PST by Hojczyk
The days of medical masks at airports and widespread panic may be coming back—that's because at least 12 humans are believed to have been infected with a new strain of swine flu that's not covered by this season's vaccine.
The new swine flu strain, H3N2v, has shown at least some potential for human-to-human transmission in those 12 individuals, which makes it especially dangerous. Between 2009 and mid-2010, more than 17,000 people died worldwide from the highly contagious H1N1 swine flu strain, leading the World Health Organization to call the strain a pandemic.
The 12 people with the new swine flu strain live in Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Officials for the Centers for Disease Control say the sample size of H3N2 infections is too small to know whether it will pose a threat to the population at large.
"It's a very small sample and it's geographically spread, which makes it more difficult to get a handle on it," says Jeffrey Dimond, a CDC spokesman. "Most of the cases have come through direct contact with the animals, through the 4H Club and that sort of thing."
In order to have a true threat of causing an epidemic or pandemic, Dimond says the virus needs to spread easily between humans.
"If you're in close contact with someone who's ill, that's one thing," he says. "To make it like the pandemic flu of a few years ago, it has to be highly contagious from human to human."
H3N2v or another new flu strain could disrupt what CDC officials expected to be a relatively quiet flu season. Each year's flu vaccine protects against specific strains of the virus that researchers expect to circulate. I
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
Relax. It’s a virus. If you’re immune system is healthy and you’re not physically and medically compromised you’ll be fine. But watch out! The sky is falling and might hit you!
Let the unreasonable and silly panic begin.
Really.
Cue the “Ah Jeez” gif...
W.H.O. is back at it again planting seeds and hoping something grows meanwhile with the help of the media scaring most to death. They desparatley need a pandemic right before the election
Doomed. We’re all doomed! LOL!
Exercise your immune system: Eat more dirt.
Vit D is known to prevent the flu, yet there is a thread up from this one about a doc claiming that too much D is not good for us. I’ll keep taking my D thank you very much.
This one is no sweat. It does not appear to be particularly capable of easy transmission, most people have partial immunity, and those people infected with it recover.
H5N1 is still the number one threat. The world medical community took advantage of the H1N1 epidemic last year as a dry run, though only Ukraine really suffered from it.
It’s called the “swine” flu because the pigs in the media feed on it for ratings every winter...
5000 IU of vitamin D3 a day keeps the doctor away. Has worked for me the last four years. Thank the Good Lord.
Why would a new strain start here? I guess it has to start somewhere. It probably started in one of those rat infested OWS camps.
H1N1 must have lost it’s sexy sound so now they offer H3N2v.
Thousands of lives were SAVED by the last swine flu out break. The total deaths due to all flu strains was drastically lower because the swine flu was so mild and those who got it were then inoculated against the more serious seasonal flu.
That’s my favorite.
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