CDC: 'Fully expect we will see deaths'

http://www.breitbart.com ^ | 28 APR 09 | By MIKE STOBBE

[DCBryan1]

CDC: 'Fully expect we will see deaths'

Apr 28 02:29 PM US/Eastern By MIKE STOBBE ATLANTA (AP)

- A U.S. health official said at least five people are hospitalized with swine flu in the United States and deaths are likely. "I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection," as swine flu cases are investigated, said Richard Besser, acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control.

He said he did not know about a newspaper report of two deaths in two southern California hospitals in which the victims seemed to be suffering from swine flu symptoms. "I would say I'm very concerned," Besser said.

"We are dealing with a new strain of influenza, we're dealing with a strain of influenza that appears to be moving through our community." Based on the latest lab analysis, Besser said new flu infections are still occurring.

He noted, however, that ordinary human flu accounts for about 36,000 deaths every year in the U.S.

He said hospitalizations nationwide include three in California and two in Texas. Besser said the country has 64 confirmed cases in five states, with 45 in New York, one in Ohio, two in Kansas, six in Texas and 10 in California. At least four other cases have been reported by states.

[1000 silverlings]

No, I don't think so. First of all, the rural population is going to look after itself, as per usual, poor people will just be sick and weather it, as per usual, and even though some people, on this very site, seek to assure us that there are no great stockpiles of tamiflu, which doesn't work anyway, apparently there are and they can call them up at a day or sos notice. So, what is really going on?

[Centurion2000]

wow ... nice information and thanks. Got any more tech information on this one like maybe why in particular is this virus causing what looks like cytokine storms in healthy humans? Has that feature been mapped to a genetic sequence?

[1000 silverlings]

The Hong Kong flu of 1968 was avian. I spent a week on a couch in college with it, so I know it well. No health insurance, did not go to doctor. hope I have antibodies.

[1000 silverlings]

I've had two episodes of deadly flu in my life, once in high school, when I almost died (did not go to doctor, we were poor people, lol) and once in college, a few years later.

Still did not go to doctor) It will take a lot to kill us off, IMHO

[Atlas Sneezed]

Somehow 36,000 people dieing EVERY YEAR is not an epidemic but a few people dieing of “Swine Flu,” which is still a flu related sickness, is.

---

There’s something real here. The noise level of annual deaths is about old or sick people succumbing, and does not represent an opportunity to “break” out. What’s different here, and it may be a low probability outcome, is that this (like the epidemic that killed 50,000,000 in 1918) seems to hit healthy adults with string immune systems, and thus can break out and expand exponentially.

That’s a low probability, but it is a VERY grave concern if it proves true. and we have no way of knowing now if it will.

[Carry_Okie]

What about toilet paper, tylenol, and everyones favorites, tincture of elderberry? (sambucol)

Well, we've got all of that except the tincture, but we do have loads of elderberry bushes, so I guess we'll have to learn to make it.

[Doe Eyes]

Obviously, the CDC is a useless organization. An expensive one at that.

Why is that?

[Shaun_MD]

DCF or Dreaded Chupacabra Flu

[LibertyRocks]

LOL... That was close to one of the names my daughter and I thought of the other day! :)

[Polarik]

One question for you — in your research/reading are you leaning towards the “terrorist bio-weapon” theory, or a “lab accident/mistake” theory? Don’t worry about replying if it’s going to take you away from your research on this or anything! LOL I’m just curious.

This was a deliberate act, and the perpetrator may be an American biotechnical company (look up Baxter International)

[TBall]

Over 8,000 rabies? Hard to believe as I can’t recall ever seeing a reported rabies death in the news. I wonder how many people die tetanus every year?

[icwhatudo]

The numbers were “reported cases of” not “deaths by”. Sorry for the confusion.

[LibertyRocks]

Thanks. I’ve been reading a bit about that tainted vaccine and such. Interesting to say the least...

[Polarik]

From FluWiki:

It is hard to understand what “cytokine storm” means. It is a summary term for a very complicated situation. It also suggests we only have a vague idea of what is happening. This is indeed the case. Cytokine dysregulation is involved in other syndromes with symptoms much like those seen in complicated influenza (e.g., toxic shock syndrome or gram negative sepsis). In these cases the causes are more related to “always on” T-cell activation (loke a stuck gas pedal in a car).

Whether “always on” activation and thus continuous pro-inflammatory cytokine production, some other kind of cytokine dysregulation, or nothing to do with cytokines happens in influenza is still open to question. The strongest evidence comes from the clinical presentation of virulent influenza cases and the evidence in mice that infection with influenza virus carrying the HA gene from the 1918 virus seems to strongly activate some immune cells to over-produce a half dozen or more cytokines.

An animation from The New England Journal article on H5N1 influenza by Mike Osterholm is meant to illustrate how a positive feedback could cause a cytokine storm, but it is only suggestive of one possibility, because we don’t know how a cytokine storm is produced in influenza (if indeed it is).

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 steriods. 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.)

In 2003, researchers at Imperial College London tested a drug that interferes with a “survival signal” that keeps activated T-cells working at the site of inflammation during influenza infection in mice. The signal, another cytokine designated OX40, essentially disables the brakes on the T-cell response. By blocking the OX40 receptor on T-cells, researchers were able protect mice from the serious symptoms of virulent flu (paper in J. of Experimental Medicine and reported in New Scientist). The drug, to be made by a company called Xenova Research, was supposed to be in phase I clinical trial in 2004, but we have no further information of its status (additional information solicited for this entry).

[Centurion2000]

Thanks.

[bdeaner]

Any sign yet that this flu bug is any deadlier than other flu strains?

Yes, it appears to be deadlier. The most vulnerable are people who are healthy, between 25-45 years of age, who have healthy immune systems. The virus triggers a reaction from the immune system that can kill you -- make you drown in your own fluids, basically.

[bdeaner]

Well I’m getting a little more interested in this. Because I have no faith or trust in the government I can’t decide if they’re just manufacturing a crisis for other reasons- or if this is really serious and they’re not telling us a lot they already know...

I've been following this story very closely, and unfortunately it's the latter case that appears to be more the case. They don't want to cause a panic, but all signs point in the direction that this is pretty much inevitably going to be a pandemic. It has spread globally. It's clearly passing from human to human and seems very contagious. In a matter of a week, almost an entire Catholic School was infected, and two other schools in the area are not shut down with infections. Not a good sign.

Also, watch how other countries are responding. They are responding much more vigorously to this than the U.S. is, and that is very telling. For example, New Zealand has authorized quarantines of potential infected individuals. Airplanes coming from North America are not allowed to land until the pilot screens the passengers for symptoms. In Asian, they are screening everyone in the airports for fever. Etc etc. This points to the seriousness here.

There are a few things that are red flags. One, it is a Type A flu, the only kind of flu that can become a pandemic. There is clearly human-to-human transition, and it is obviously very contagious, or else it would not be spreading so quickly already. There are deaths, and those who are dying are not the usual vulnerable populations of young and old, but people in their prime. This is the major red flag, because this is what happened in the 1918 flu that killed more people than WWI and the bubonic plague. If that is the case, we could see somewhere between 2 million and 6 million deaths from the flu in the U.S. alone, and it will spread to a large proportion of the population with a month or two, unless it peters out -- but then it could come back with a vengeance in the flu season, starting around next October.

This situation is about as serious as a heart attack. I don't think the media is underplaying this. Get your family prepared. Better safe than sorry. What to do: As some posters have already mentioned, have extra supplies of food and water in case you need to self-quarantine. You can buy masks, but more important is hand washing and use of disinfectants. So, buy a lot of Purell or some other kind of alcohol hand cleaner, and if there is an outbreak in your area, you will have some when the stores run dry of it. You'll also want to avoid crowds. So you might want to re-think going to sports events or movies, or similar crowd-related events, until this blows over.

[bdeaner]

“Somehow 36,000 people dieing EVERY YEAR is not an epidemic but a few people dieing of “Swine Flu,” which is still a flu related sickness, is.”

If this terms out to be the pandemic they think it is, and it is killing 2% of the people who get it -- as may be the case based on the numbers in Mexico -- then we could be looking at a figure between 2 and 6 million dead in the U.S. alone. That would pretty much dwarf the 36,000 mark. It is better to prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. This thing has the potential to get very ugly very fast.

[bdeaner]

It might help if we closed the damn border where it originated! DUH!

Research using computer simulation models suggest that closing the borders would not contain the virus, and actually wouldn't even slow it down very much. It's already here in the States. All it takes is 50 people infected in one part of the U.S. and it can spread to half the population in a month, according to one computer simulation I saw of a similar type of virus.

Other than a vaccine (which won't be ready for another 6 months or so), the things that seem to work are Tamiflu (or similar antivirals) and social distancing (closing schools, public events, etc) as they are already doing in Mexico. If you have kids get prepared to have them home for awhile as this potentially heats up over the next week or two. I have a feeling that most schools will end up shutting down early this year.

[bdeaner]

While we were at the dr, I asked if they were testing patients with flu-like symptoms for Mexican swine flu and her answer was, “Not really.”

I'm not at all surprised by this. That's why I think this flu is already much wider spread than we think it is. The question is how lethal it may be. It's a good sign your family is doing well, in spite of infections that could potentially be swine flu. Let's hope that will continue to be the pattern!