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sti Lamonaca's illness started with a high fever, a cough and achy bones, just a couple of days after she returned from a spring break trip on the beach in Cancun with friends. By the weekend, her voice was hoarse and she was wearing a surgical mask. The 18-year-old senior was one of a dozen students from several New York City high schools who traveled to Mexico earlier this month, and she thinks she has swine flu. Health officials have confirmed that eight students from her school have been infected with the strain, which has caused a deadly outbreak in...

Did you hear some things have gone missing from the Army's Bio Lab? Oddly though you are not supposed to be worried Nazi Napolitano who does not see fit to actually close and contain the Pandemic from crossing our borders is in charge. While other countries are starting to issue Quarantines and stop travel into America and Mexico we continue to leave our borders wide open for Illegal Aliens and Pandemic Swine Flu you would almost believe The Resident thinks nothing of American citizens lives! I guess you can be replaced easily and for far less money than the criminals...

MEXICO CITY – Mexico closed its schools across its capital Friday after at least 16 otherwise healthy people died and more than 900 others fell ill from what could be a new strain of swine flu. The World Health Organization worried that it could mark the start of a flu pandemic. Scientists in the U.S. and Mexico were trying to determine if the deaths were due to the same new strain of swine flu that sickened seven people in Texas and California. The World Health Organization counted at least 57 deaths in Mexico, although it wasn't yet clear if this...

MEXICO CITY, April 24 (Reuters) - The majority of the people killed in Mexico's fatal flu outbreak were adults between 25 and 45 years old, a Mexican health official said on Friday. "The majority were young adults between 25 and 45 years old," the official said under the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press. Mexican officials said 20 people had been killed by the outbreak in Mexico and 1,004 people had been infected. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Miguel Angel Gutierrez)

Readers in Mexico have been emailing the BBC describing the sense of fear gripping the country as a result of a flu virus outbreak, which has so far claimed up to 60 lives. The World Health Organization says the virus has the potential to become a pandemic. Read a selection of BBC readers' comments below. I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel...

Mexico City is a place where the feeling is that the "end is near". This sense of impending doom is part of a longstanding tradition: even great pre-Colombian cities like Teotihuacan or Chichen Itza were suddenly abandoned for reasons that are unknown. Although the city formerly known as Tenochtitlan is still going strong after almost seven centuries, its own population lives in constant fear of sudden demise. In fact, if Mexico City hasn't been destroyed by proxy in disaster movies it's only because the national film industry lacks the kind of production money needed for monsters to crush buildings or...

When Patrick Henshaw's son became sick last Friday, little did he know that the 18-year-old had acquired a potentially deadly disease that made its way across the U.S.-Mexico border -- the swine flu. "It started out where he was sick earlier in the week. Then there was a message ... from the superintendent of our school that two children had tested positive for the swine flu virus, so ... we had him tested for that. And they said, 'Oh my gosh, he tested positive,'" Henshaw told ABC News. --snip-- The Henshaws know how dire the situation is. They have not...

Concern that the world could be on the brink of the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years escalated Sunday as France, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Spain reported potential new cases in which people had been infected with swine flu and Canada confirmed several new cases. In the U.S., where 20 such infections have been confirmed, federal health officials declared a public-health emergency and are preparing to distribute to state and local agenciesa quarter of the country's 50 million-dose stockpile of antiviral drugs. Meanwhile, in hard-hit Mexico, where more than 80 people have died from what is believed...

In 2019, we may look a decade into our past and laugh about today's panic regarding the recent outbreak of swine flu-bird flu hybrid. While I earnestly hope that fears of a flu pandemic are overreactions, it seems to be more likely than not that the swine flu will spread to epidemic proportions. Amid confessions from the Centers for Disease Control that containment of the virus is "highly unlikely", many families are scrambling to do whatever possible to prevent the infection from spreading to them and their loved ones. I am an herbalist and nutritionist, and my pantry is stockpiled...

HONG KONG - A CHINESE virologist who helped fight SARS and bird flu warned on Monday of a possible swine flu pandemic that the most populous countries in Asia, China and India, would be ill-prepared to handle. 'We are counting down to a pandemic,' said Guan Yi, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who helped trace the outbreak of SARS in 2003 to the civet cat. 'I think the spread of this virus in humans cannot possibly be contained within a short time ... there are already cases in almost every region. The picture is changing every moment.'...

As reports of a unique form of swine flu erupt around the world, the inevitable question arises: Is this the big one? Is this the next big global flu epidemic that public health experts have long anticipated and worried about? Is this the novel virus that will kill millions around the world, as pandemics did in 1918, 1957 and 1968? The short answer is it's too soon to tell. "What makes this so difficult is we may be somewhere between an important but yet still uneventful public health occurrence here — with something that could literally die out over the...

Per Twitter: Mexico health secretary says suspected swine flu cases rise to 1,614 with 103 believed dead, AP reports. 30 suspected cases in Jalisco. -- Based solely on these numbers, yields a mortality rate among reported cases in Mexico of 6.3%. -- Still no reported deaths outside of Mexico. -- Still too few cases outside of Mexico to draw any conclusions (other than the obvious "close the border" conclusion).

Nikkei news announces urgent measures by Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare, starting with the next aircraft arriving on 29 April, (there are two direct flights a week from Mexico to Japan), passengers will not be allowed off the aircraft and on to Japanese soil, until a team of 3-6 Japanese doctors and nurses, who have entered the landed craft, check each passenger, survey the group in total, interview, use thermographic testing imagery equipment, etc. to look for Mexican Swine Flu symptoms; passengers will be monitored for 10 days after entering Japan as well. Passengers coming in from California, which...

Two websites that you need to watch regarding swine flu outbreaks: http://healthmap.org/enhttp://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html

<p>COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- The Ohio Department of Health says a 9-year-old boy who recently traveled to Mexico on vacation with his family has a confirmed case of swine flu.</p> <p>Health department spokesman Robert Jennings said Sunday the boy is recovering at his home in Elyria, in northern Ohio's Lorain County. The child's name was not released.</p>

Although the CDC has not explained whether the current swine flu outbreak in Mexico and the United States is bioterrorism, influenza can be very readily manipulated and may be one of the best candidates for weaponization for several reasons: 1) Terrorists can prepare a vaccine to protect themselves and their host populations in advance of its release. 2) Influenza is airborne, it is transmitted through either solid or lipid aerosol, therefore it’s easy to spread. 3) There is a normal period of incubation during which time the carrier displays no symptoms, but can infect others. Therefore, dispersion is very efficient....

Doctors in America are advising worried patients to buy painters’ masks as a precaution against the global outbreak of swine flu that appears to have spread from Mexico to the United States, New Zealand and possibly Europe. With the worldwide death toll standing at about 81 and with about 1,300 people infected, authorities across the globe are torn between the desire to slow down a potential flu pandemic and the need to avoid bringing major cities on every continent to an economic standstill. As of today, the US was still allowing people to cross the border from Mexico – where...

Please keep chat and one-liners to a minimum. This thread is intended to be a one-stop-shop for all of todays NEWS and info related to the Mexican Swine Flu. To make it faster for everyone to catch up on the actual NEWS, PLEASE PLEASE minimize chat, jokes, bashing the administration, soapboxes, and so forth. These live threads can become useless monster threads if everyone throws in their one-liners, and we all have 'em! So let's try to keep this thread useful for the latest NEWS. Thank you all in advance.

LIMA -- Public health authorities of South American countries took precautionary measures to fend off a possible pandemic after a deadly swine flu virus claimed dozens of lives in Mexico and infected at least 11 people in the United States. In Peru, experts with the Health Ministry said the ministry had initiated a nationwide precautionary plan to deal with potential threats, though no suspicious cases have been reported so far in the country. The Chilean Health Ministry expressed concern over the situation and drafted a contingency plan for epidemic prevention. It also ordered a public health alert that included health...

Gov. Rick Perry Saturday asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile as a precaution after three cases of swine flu were confirmed in Texas. The medication will be available for treatment of those with confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu as well as for healthcare providers who may come into contact with the patients, Perry said. All three of the Texas cases involved high school students from the same school in Guadalupe County. The first two became ill in early April and on Thursday test results...