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Source: Reuters * Pattern different from seasonal flu * U.S. flu season running unusually long * Average flu victim is teenager (Updates throughout with news conferences) By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) - The new influenza strain circulating around most of the United States is putting a worrying number of young adults and children into the hospital and hitting more schools than usual, U.S. health officials said on Monday. The H1N1 swine flu virus killed a vice principal at a New York City school over the weekend and has spread to 48 states. While it...

May 18, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Swine Flu HotwashReviewing the course of the recent outbreak can help us fight the next one. By Tevi Troy After a significant event, government officials often undertake a formal review of how they reacted. These exercises, called hotwashes, produce “lessons learned” documents that governments use to prepare for the next event. With the swine-flu episode apparently receding, government and public-health officials are probably preparing such hotwashes right now, and there is plenty to be learned. A lot of things went right in the recent outbreak, but not everything, and it is worth taking a...

Swine Flu in Japan May Trigger Pandemic In U.S., 8 New York City Schools Closed as H1N1 Swine Flu Spreads Across Nation By Daniel J. DeNoon WebMD Health News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD May 18, 2009 -- H1N1 swine flu appears to be spreading in Japan, pushing the world to the brink of an official flu pandemic. Japan's cases of H1N1 spiked today with 104 new lab-confirmed cases, raising that nation's swine-flu case count from 25 to 129. Ten schools in the Kobe City area reported 78 of the new cases. If the new cases do indeed represent "community-level...

Enlarge ImageGoing viral. A look at how air travel helped H1N1 spread. Credit: Christophe Fraser et al, Science The first quick and dirty analysis of Mexico's swine flu outbreak suggests that the H1N1 virus is about as dangerous as the virus behind a 1957 pandemic that killed 2 million people worldwide. But it's not nearly as lethal as the bug that caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The world first became aware of this latest outbreak of swine flu in late April. Researchers recognized that the new virus was also causing disease in Mexico. As of today, there have...

Editors Note : During a recent presidential address, President Obama was confronted with a barrage of questions about closing the border between the U.S. and Mexico. While the president remains confident that closing the border is not the solution, Swine Flu is exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment. We asked several young Latinos if they felt the Swine Flu scare was changing the way they were being treated on a daily basis. The authors are interns for The Beat Within. The Swine Flu is a sickness discovered in Mexico, not in Mexican Americans! While Listening to President Obama give an address on MSNBC...

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY -- Responding to the spread of swine flu to the United States, university officials have temporarily evicted residents of one of Georgetown’s two university-designated quarantine houses to make space for any students who may contract the virus. Wednesday morning, residents of 3517 Prospect St. were told that they have 24 hours to vacate their residence. According to Mark Valtierra (SFS ’10), one of three residents at 3517 Prospect, Patrick Lukingbeal, hall director of Alumni Square and university townhouses, notified Valtierra of the eviction at 10:30 a.m. Valtierra and his housemates were given several boxes and told they must...

Swine flu will carry the name "pandemic" even if the new virus turns out to cause mainly mild symptoms as it sweeps the world, raising questions about how serious the global alert actually is. Although it has been deadly in the disease epicenter, Mexico, and caused the death of one Mexican infant in the United States, in other countries people infected with swine flu have fared well, with diarrhea the biggest complaint. The World Health Organization is expected to move quickly to designate a full pandemic -- at level 6 of its 6-point scale -- within days to reflect the...

Pigs can’t fly yet, but the swine flu is still a reason to stay out of the sky. At least, that is, if you ask Vice President Joe Biden. And most Southwest Floridians aren’t. Nor are their travel agents. Or their airlines. Or the rest of the federal government. “I would tell members of my family — and I have — that I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning. Only problem is, Biden’s advice is not in line with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official message, which is...

HUNTINGTON BEACH Bolstered by the growing number of swine flu cases, anti-illegal immigration groups in Southern California are urging members to barrage their congress members with letters and phone calls pressuring them to close the U.S.-Mexico border. Barbara Coe, founder of the Huntington Beach-based California Coalition for Immigration Reform, has continuously blasted emails to about 20,000 group members since news of the influenza hit the media.

The World Health Organisation raised its flu alert signalling a swine flu pandemic is "imminent" as a toddler in the United States became the first to die of the disease outside of Mexico. "All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans," WHO chief Margaret Chan said as she raised the alert to five on a scale of six following WHO health expert talks in Geneva. "The international community should treat this as an opportunity to ramp up the response. After all, it is really all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic," she added. Phase five,...

WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - A government official confirmed the first U.S. death from the new H1N1 swine flu on Wednesday, a 23-month-old child who died in Texas.

Original report just issued on web in Japanese. English translation not up yet; synopsizing here for Free Republic.Upshot is that Japanese pandemic-tracking organization (per Japanese link) is bundling this Mexican swing flu into a threat coming from both MEXICO and the UNITED STATES, and as such more than likely the flu will be officially named "The North American Influenza" in due time. (理的由来から名づけられており、このため、このインフルエンザは「北アメリカインフルエンザ（North American influenza）」と呼ばれることが理にかなっているだろう。 )Additional observations:1) Japanese Border Inspection authorities (at airports and ports) are stringently inspecting each aircraft coming either from Mexico, or the United States with travelers from Mexico. Protection-suited up health specialists with googles, operation...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to some health care providers noting procedures to be followed if the swine flu outbreak eventually makes quarantines necessary. DHS Assistant Secretary Bridger McGaw circulated the swine flu memo, which was obtained by CBSNews.com, on Monday night. It says: "The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines."

go to the link

No story/source yet--is this about Mexico? Or America? Or is it a global warning?? Whatever it might be, it seems the military may be taking over the streets before too long, using this sudden 'pandemic' as an excuse?!

Original Title:豚インフルエンザで渡航規制相次ぐ、米国も要警戒Upshot: NEC, NTT Data, Hitachi, etc. ordering employees not to go to Mexico, and report any flu if arriving back in Japan immediately as well as to not come into work. What is questionable is that they are ordering family employees back from Mexico to Japan (what if they themselves already have the flu?) Reports also said Japanese people should take care if considering any kind of travel to the UNITED STATES. 　(FR Link to original article in Japanese)

TRENTON, N.J. New Jersey health officials say they've identified five probable cases of swine flu in people who recently traveled to Mexico and California. The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services said Monday that all have mild forms of the flu and none has been hospitalized. The department says it's arranging for confirmatory testing at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Results are expected within two days. The patients include residents of several counties. Four of the five recently traveled to Mexico; the fifth had traveled to California. The cases were identified through preliminary tests conducted...

Mexico canceled school nationwide Monday and warned the death toll from a swine flu epidemic believed to have killed 149 people would keep rising before it can be contained. Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said 20 of the deaths have been confirmed to be from swine flu and the government was awaiting results on the others. "We are the most critical moment of the epidemic. The number of cases will keep rising so we have to reinforce preventive measures," Cordova said at a news conference that was briefly shaken by an earthquake centered in southern Mexico.

Avian flu and SARS rudely awoke the world to the possibility of a new pandemic. Could a seemingly more mundane bug now put the world to the test?The swine flu virus that may have killed more than 80 people in Mexico and appears to have sickened hundreds more is still a mystery contagion. But this much is known: The virus is unusually made up of genetic material from avian, pig and human viruses; it can transmit from person to person; and in many people, it only triggers mild symptoms seen in garden-variety influenza.The current virus is mainly sickening the young...

Preparing for an epidemic, the feds declared a national public health emergency Sunday after tests confirmed eight Queens teens have mild cases of the deadly new Mexican swine flu. All 20 confirmed American cases of the sickness that has killed as many as 103 Mexicans have been nonlife-threatening. Still, federal officials warned the outbreak is spreading and that Americans probably will start dying, too. "We really need to prepare for the idea that we will have more cases, and I do fear that we will have deaths here," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....