The Mexican Flu and You (J.W. Rawles blog. Excellent advice)

Survival Blog ^ | 4-25-09 | J.W. Rawles

[dynachrome]

In the past 24 hours I've received dozens of e-mails from SurvivalBlog readers about the emerging Mexican Flu. Some news stories have included cryptic comments from heath officials, implying that the mechanism of infection makes this particular virus "very difficult to contain." This leads me to conclude that those infected have a long latency period during which they are infectious, yet, they do not display frank symptoms. This does not bode well for any hopes of containing the spread of the virus.

Then we hear a CDC official stating: "The swine flu virus contains four different gene segments representing both North American swine and avian influenza, human flu and a Eurasian swine flu." That strikes we as something very peculiar.

The disease is respiratory, and has one strong similarity to the 1918 Spanish Flu: "The majority were young adults between 25 and 45 years old," said one official under the condition of anonymity. Since, young and healthy people with strong immune systems are the most likely to succumb, this might indicate that the biggest killer is a cytokene storm--a collapse caused by the human immune system's over-reaction to a pathogen.

I strongly recommend that everyone reading this take the time to re-read my background article on flu self-quarantine and other precautions: Protecting Your Family From an Influenza Pandemic. The details that I give there are quite important. Pay special attention to my discussion of the shortage of hospital ventilators. If anyone in your family is immunosuppressed, consider yourselves on alert. Make your final preparations to hunker down, immediately.

[dawn53]

Since the cases in the US have all been mild (to this point)...yes, I’d say it’s over the top.

[dynachrome]

So far, probably. Seems odd to me that there is all this coverage, suddenly and the CDC shrugging their shoulders, “oh well, we can’t stop the spread now”

[dawn53]

Well, I’m of the opinion, “Don’t borrow trouble.” So I can’t get all worked up over something that hasn’t happened yet.

In the meantime, I’ll wash my hands on a regular basis, probably avoid large crowds, use those little sanitizing wipes they provide at the grocery store to clean the handle of the grocery cart, and go on with life.

[bobby.223]

just finished the book last night. very highly recommended reading. a fiction work of how things might go down. Rawles’ survivalblog.com is the best site of it’s kind out there imho.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

The author mentions a deadly serious problem the US has right now: an acute ventilator shortage.

Nationally, we only have about 102,000, and during a typical flu season, we need 100,000. Without a ventilator, people risk death by oxygen deprivation to their internal organs.

Here are two possible solutions. While we are critically short of ventilators, we have a lot of oxygen generators. These just produce oxygen that people breathe in under their own power. Ventilators create an overpressure that pushes oxygen into their lungs.

So (1) is it possible to fabricate an acceptable ventilator out of an oxygen generator? Granted it will not be hospital quality, but it might be a life saving “jury rig”, if someone can come up with a design for it. It might save thousands or tens of thousands of lives.

The other idea is based on blood substitutes called “oxygen therapeutics.” These are chemicals that actually carry *more* oxygen than does the hemoglobin in our blood.

Even though they would not be used to replace our red blood cells delivery of oxygen, perhaps they could enhance the delivery of oxygen to the internal organs. Thus helping to fend off organ damage.

Typically it stays in the body only 48 hours, but in this case, just a simple intravenous injection of oxygen therapeutics might provide just enough oxygen so that cells don’t start to die.

Both of these are just thoughts, and real experts would be needed to both evaluate their promises and make them happen.

[ErnBatavia]

and they are reporting confirmed cases now in the State of Hidalgo.

A week or two from now, those deaths will be classified as those of "migrants" who actually died in the U.S.

Reparations are in order...

[ErnBatavia]

looks like it's spreading in the USA along the migratory wildfowl pathways.

Still the kook, I see, Mumia.....

[Billthedrill]

Someone started this because we beat them at soccer. We should have just let them win.

Oh, don't be silly. What kind of a swine would do a thing like...

Uh-oh.

[Libertarian444]

When this thing gets to China could it combine with the bird flu into some kind of super transmittable flying pig virus?

I realize this is serious and all....but that is damn funny.

[Excellence]

How many pounds per square inch pressure is required to push air into the lungs. How about a positive pressure apnea mask?

[ziravan]

"So (1) is it possible to fabricate an acceptable ventilator out of an oxygen generator? Granted it will not be hospital quality, but it might be a life saving “jury rig”, if someone can come up with a design for it. It might save thousands or tens of thousands of lives."

The problem is that you will have a short supply of nurses if it gets to that point, as well. As such, these "makeshift" devices would have to have the ability to alarm for specific parameters of pressure: too low and the patient might be disconnected, too high and the tubing might be clogged or pt needs to be suctioning.

By the time you build the parameters into such a device to protect people while they are more or less on "auto-pilot" while a nurse that normally has a 2:1 ratio in critical care is now taking care of 4-6-10:1 - by the time you construct such a machine, what you would be building is: a ventilator. My point is that any such device would be just as unsafe as having no device because a ventilator that can't alarm its troubles is a death machine, as well. In order to put somebody on a ventilator, you have to create a seal to their lungs in order to blow in air under positive pressure: that seal is a balloon on the breathing tube that obstructs the airway for all but the inside of the breathing tube. Unmonitored and without mechanical air working correctly, the result is no respiration.

It's not a matter of being a technocrat to say that these are machines that can't be rigged on the spot. It's a safety issue large enough to not be a viable alternative.

On the other hand, it would seem to me that a virus that kills by immune response could be successfully treated with high dose steroids. I've heard it posited that the 1918 flu could have been treated that way. I wonder what the national supply of steroids is? I know that hospitals routinely run out of a common one, solumedrol, all the time. I've seen several national back orders for that drug in recent years.

[holly go-rightly]

bump for later

[Sequoyah101]

Chaos isn’t the firt thing that came to mind.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Science.PrimerCytokineStorm

“However, it is reasonable and plausible to say cytokine dysregulation might be involved in some virulent influenza infections. In desperation, clinicians have treated patients with potent anti-inflammatory drugs, usually steroids. There is no evidence that this helps.

“A “cytokine storm” of a more limited nature is sometimes seen in cancer chemotherapy patients, where it is treated in its earliest stages by iv. Benadryl and steroids, with some success. However in these cases, there is no infectious agent involved; even if steroids worked for influenza-induced cytokine storm, they cause a general downshift of the immune system which might allow the virus to run rampant and kill the patient via ordinary viral pneumonia.

“In ordinary infection-related sepsis, steroids are shown to slightly increase mortality (Crit Care Med. 1995 Aug;23(8):1430–9.) This is but one of the complicating considerations that clinicians will have to navigate during an outbreak. An isolated study showed that in children with central nervous system (brain) symptoms—an early sign of cytokine storm—due to (human, not H5N1) influenza infection, mild and controlled reduction in body core temperature (hypothermia) seems to reduce damage to brain cells as well as reducing the progression to a full-blown cytokine storm and multi-organ failure. (Pediatrics International Volume 42 Issue 2 Page 197 - April 2000.)”