Posted on 06/24/2009 8:04:24 AM PDT by metmom
Within minutes, six-year-old Rubjit Thindal went from happily chatting in the back seat of the car to collapsing and dying in her father's arms.
"If we had known it was so serious, we would have called 911,'' Kuldip Thindal, Rubjit's distraught mother, said in Punjabi yesterday. "She just had a stomach ache -- she wasn't even crying.''
Rubjit was pronounced dead at hospital barely 24 hours after showing signs of a fever. Later, doctors told her parents she had the H1N1 influenza virus. She is believed to be the youngest person in Canada with the virus to have died.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.guelphmercury.com ...
My complaint is as much about what isn’t presented here as what is.
Sure there’s area for concern here. Has this been overblown? I don’t see how any thinking person could deny it.
The mortality rates just don’t justify this constant barrage of moment by moment reporting from every nook and cranny world-wide.
One person dies in Vietnam, we hear about it. One person dies in India, we hear about that too. One person dies out of 700 million, and we need to hear about it? You don’t see that as perhaps a bit of overkill?
Yes, the typical flu doesn't hit liver and kidneys. I wish that those that just want to disrupt these threads would go play somewhere else.
You don’t want me to post swineflu articles , I understand that .
If someone doesn’t agree with an article they don’t have to read it .
I'm surprised at the time you wasted with talibansker as it is!
It is an honor to pray for you, dear brother in Christ!
My complaint is as much about what isn’t presented here as what is.
Solution : Post whatever newspaper article you want on this thread :)
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/updates/us/#totalcases
U.S. Influenza and Pneumonia-Associated Hospitalizations and Deaths from August 30 – September 19, 2009
Posted October 2, 2009, 11:00 AM ET
Data reported to CDC by October 2, 2009, 12:00 AM ET Cases
Defined by
Hospitalizations - Deaths
Influenza and Pneumonia Syndrome - 12,863 - 1,197
Influenza Laboratory-Tests - 3,311 - 182
Totals: 16,174 - 1,379
That’s not the link I was talking about.
What link ?
I was checking out the Israeli website "codes in the Torah" today, and I noticed they found the same Swine Flu codes that I found which are all located in the same passage in the Book of Numbers, check out (translated from the Hebrew with Google "Language Tools", it's barely understandable though):
Folks might try
or
biblecodedigest I forget which.
don’t know if they’d have a similar one or not.
I don’t know how to copy it . But when I go to the actual website I then click on the (codes that I found ) link & codes do appear.
I wouldn’t honestly say that DvdMom. I just want some perspective. So far this is not looking like a full blown pandemic. From what I have been able to read out there, this looks like something that may cause elevated deaths, but not really a true 1918 type pandemic. I am not even convinced it will be like one of the two lesser pandemics we’ve had since 1918.
Reports from the southern hemisphere state that normal Influenza has been severely reduced by the presence of H1N1. So this hear we may see as much as a 70% reduction in normal influenza, and a significant presence of H1N1 instead.
We may see reduced deaths from normal influenza and replacement deaths from the H1N1. We may see elevated deaths overall, or possibly not. I am not convinced from what I have seen, that we are on the slippery slope to major death here.
I want folks to know that. While there is always a chance we could see a major breakout, that is by no means certain. As I have said before, we stand a reasonable chance of winding up in March of 2010 with normal mortality rates for this flu season.
People should be concerned, but not overly so about this flu season. They should develop some safety measure like they do every year. Then they should go on about their business.
Just to be clear, that graph is supposed to represent the total deaths in the zero to 17 year old age group.
It’s an interesting set of statistics, because it raises some very interesting questions.
1. If this group represents one of the two most vulnerable groups to influenza, then what must the numbers be for the group that is less vulnerable?
2. If one of the two most at risk groups only has a mortality rate of 75 or so people on average, then how high can the total number of deaths be?
3. If the total number of deaths is only 500 or less each year, how can hospitals across the nation be filled with influenza patents each year, and have a number of those patients pass away?
4. How can there be literally thousands of hospitals in this nation, all of them having influenza patients, a few to significantly more who die, and yet there only be a very insignificant number of people who die?
You post this figure from the CDC, but get upset when I post the CDCs projection that 36,000 people die each year from Influenza and complications related to contraction of Influenza.
Do you think the CDC is lying when they say the young are a high risk group? Do you think the CDC and the NIH would waste their time on Influenza each year, if the numbers were as small as you seem to think they are?
What’s your rationale to explain the CDC and NIH’s actions each year concerning their advice to get the vaccines?
There could be a shortage of hospital beds in 15 states if 35% of Americans get sick from the H1N1 (swine) flu virus, and 12 other states could reach or exceed 75% of their hospital bed capacity, a study released Thursday shows.
The number of people who could get sick with H1N1 flu in the United States ranges from a high of 12.9 million in California and a low of 186,434 in Wyoming, and the number of people who are hospitalized could range from a high of 168,025 in California to a low of 2,485 in Wyoming, according to the report from the non-profit group Trust for America’s Health.
The 15 states that could be at capacity or exceed hospital bed capacity are: Arizona (117 percent); California (125 percent); Connecticut (148 percent); Delaware (203 percent); Hawaii (143 percent); Maryland (143 percent); Massachusetts (110 percent); Nevada (137 percent); New Jersey (101 percent); New York (108 percent); Oregon (107 percent); Rhode Island (143 percent); Vermont (108 percent); Virginia (100 percent); and Washington (107 percent).
The 12 states that could be at 75% to 99% of hospital bed capacity are: Colorado (88 percent); Florida (80 percent); Georgia (78 percent); Maine (83 percent); Michigan (79 percent); New Hampshire (84 percent); New Mexico (93 percent); North Carolina (95 percent); Pennsylvania (77 percent): South Carolina (93 percent); Utah (83 percent); and Wisconsin (75 percent).
The estimates were created using the FluSurge model developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The country’s much more prepared than we were a few short years ago for a pandemic, but there are some long-term underlying problems which complicate response efforts, like surge capacity and the need to modernize core public health areas like communications and surveillance capabilities,” Jeff Levi, executive director at Trust for America’s Health, said in a news release.
more at link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-10-03-swine-flu-hospitals_N.htm
Freeper DoughtyOne Why don’t you contact this newspaper , the writer , & the doctor Dr. Sherif Zaki who commented in this article who is ( the chief of infectious diseases pathology at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control )
I’m sure your medical knowledge is quite more impressive then Dr. Sherif Zaki .....
Dr. Sherif Zaki is only the chief of infectious diseases pathology at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control .
Lungs of fatal swine flu patients badly damaged
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090903/h1n1_lungs_090903/20090903
Sep. 3 2009
The lungs of people who have died from swine flu look more like those of the victims of H5N1 avian influenza than those of people who succumb to regular flu, the chief of infectious diseases pathology at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says.
Study of about 70 fatal H1N1 cases so far also reveals there may be more incidences of co-infections with bacteria than was earlier thought, Dr. Sherif Zaki told The Canadian Press in an interview.
The damage to lung tissue is consistent with that inflicted by ARDS or acute respiratory distress symptom, Zaki says, referring to an often-fatal, difficult-to-treat syndrome that can have a number of causes. The U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute estimates about 30 per cent of people who develop ARDS die.
“In terms of the disease, yes, it (H1N1) is remarkably different than seasonal flu,” Zaki says. “The pathology looks very similar to H5(N1).”
The dangerous avian flu virus has killed 60 per cent of the 440 people known to have been infected with it. To date, though, the virus hasn’t acquired the capacity to spread easily from person to person.
The swine flu patients who went on to die suffered lung damage and changes in the lungs that would have made it difficult to deliver enough oxygen into their bloodstreams, Zaki says.
That reflects the observation of intensive care doctors who’ve struggled to save these profoundly ill patients.
“That’s what they saw in Winnipeg,” Dr. Paul Hebert, an intensive care physician and editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, said recently of how hard it is to oxygenate swine flu patients who become gravely ill.
“They have everybody on experimental ventilators and techniques. They can barely keep them alive.”
A number of doctors who have treated novel H1N1 patients — and colleagues who haven’t yet — were meeting in Winnipeg this week discussing what steps hospitals and ICUs need to take to get ready for an expected increase in pandemic flu cases this fall and winter.
Zaki says finding ways to prevent cases from progressing to severe illness should be the goal, “because once it happens in these patients . . . it’s very difficult to treat.”
Strikingly high levels of virus were spotted in the lungs of people who died rapidly from swine flu, he says, though less is seen in those who die after a longer battle with the virus.
“Some people die very quickly of it, within days. And some have more protracted illness, maybe two, three weeks,” he says.
“It’s surprising the amounts (of virus) that you see.... But it’s not unheard of,” he adds, pointing to what was seen with SARS.
Earlier studies conducted in tissue culture and in ferrets — the best animal model for human flu — found the new virus is drawn to tissue found deep in the lung. That’s a penchant it shares with H5N1. Seasonal flu viruses attack the upper airways.
Zaki says about a third of the fatal cases his team has reviewed involved co-infection with a bacterium, though the culprit varies.
Sometimes it is Staphylococcus aureus — the drug-resistant kind, known by the nickname MRSA and antibiotic-sensitive varieties as well. Some cases have involved group A Streptococcus. And some have been co-infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae.
“Those are the main three that we found.”
“It was not very clear initially,” Zaki adds of the frequency with which co-infection seems to occur in these cases. “But the more we studied, the more we realized that these do happen.”
He suggests pneumococcal vaccine, used in the elderly to lower the risk of pneumonia, could be a useful tool if given to younger people. The highest numbers of deaths so far have been in people in their late 30s and 40s.
Some of the cases of co-infection have been in people who were hospitalized for an extended period, which wouldn’t be all that surprising. But some were seen in people who weren’t hospitalized.
With the new virus causing severe disease in only a small portion of cases, public health authorities have been criticized for overreacting and overhyping the threat swine flu poses. Some critics have suggested the new flu isn’t really much worse than seasonal influenza.
From Zaki’s vantage point, however, this is not regular flu.
“This is a new virus. It causes a different disease than what we’re used to,” he says. “So I don’t think anybody can predict exactly, but it would be foolish not to be trying to study the disease more.”
Hospitals see surge in swine flu concerns
Dallas Business Journal - by By Joyce Tsai Staff writer
North Texas hospitals are seeing a surge of patients come through their emergency rooms because of heightened concern over swine flu.
A number of hospitals are seeing as much as a 25% to 35% increase in potential swine flu patients, said W. Stephen Love, president and chief executive officer of Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council.
And in particular, the children’s hospitals in the area, such as Children’s Medical Centers in Dallas and Plano and Cooks Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, are seeing surges in possible swine flu patients.
To keep up with that increased number of potential swine flu patients, the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council announced that its 75 member hospitals in the North Texas area are adhering to a consistent set of guidelines for the H1N1 testing of patients that it wants people to be aware of before going to a hospital.
At hospitals in the D-FW area, H1N1 testing generally will be performed for the following types of patients:
a patient hospitalized with a flu-like illness with a fever more than 100 degrees and cough or sore throat, as well as one or both of the following conditions – severe illness, such as lower respiratory infection or pneumonia or “unusual presentation” in a person with immunosuppression,
pregnant women with flu-like symptoms,
a person who has died with a flu-like illness with no other cause of death,
those involved in a public health investigation, with samples submitted by these people.
more at link: http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2009/09/28/daily50.html
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