Swine Flu Could Infect Half of U.S.
Presidential Panel’s Estimate Is First To Gauge Possible Impact of Pandemic

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Swine flu could infect half the U.S. population this fall and winter, hospitalizing up to 1.8 million people and causing as many as 90,000 deaths — more than double the number that occur in an average flu season, according to an estimate from a presidential panel released Monday.

The virus could cause symptoms in 60 million to 120 million people, more than half of whom might seek medical attention, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology estimated in an 86-page report to the White House assessing the government’s response to the first influenza pandemic in 41 years.

Although most of the cases probably would be mild, up to 300,000 people could require intensive care, which could tie up all those beds in some parts of the country at the peak of the outbreak, the council said.

“This is going to be fairly serious,” said Harold E. Varmus of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, co-chair of the 21-member council. “It’s going to stress every aspect of our health system.”

The estimates mark the first time experts have released specific calculations about the possible U.S. impact of the pandemic. The “plausible scenario” is based on previous pandemics and how the swine flu behaved in the United States this spring and during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter over the past few months, said Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health, who helped prepare the estimate...read more here…

——————

Learn how vitamin D can help prevent swine flu

Wein Products, manufacturer of the Viramask and Fitseal. A great tool to help minimize risk of infection with H1N1 (swine) flu or  avian influenza.  Watch the video below to learn more about how it works.  To purchase, visit www.eHealthSupplies.com  , a certified Wein Products Distributor.

June 11 (Bloomberg) — Swine flu, causing mostly mild disease outbreaks on four continents, prompted the World Health Organization to declare the first influenza pandemic since 1968.

Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, moved the alert to the top of the agency’s six-stage pandemic scale today on evidence the virus is spreading in communities outside the Americas. The new H1N1 flu strain has taken root in Australia, Chile, the U.K. and Spain since its discovery in Mexico and the U.S. in April.

The pandemic declaration confirms the fourth time in the last century a new influenza strain has swept across the globe. It’s the third time since April 27 that Geneva-based WHO has raised the alert level over swine flu, which has turned up in more than 70 nations as far removed as Iceland, New Zealand and the Bahamas. The move doesn’t mean there will be more deaths or severe cases, Chan said.

“We are seeing a moderate pandemic,” Chan told reporters on a conference call before making the announcement. “We are satisfied that this virus is spreading to a number of countries and it is not stoppable.”

Drugmakers will be finishing their production of seasonal influenza vaccine for the Northern Hemisphere winter in coming weeks, Chan said.

“We would advise them, as soon as they finish their seasonal vaccine production, quickly prepare to make commercial- scale pandemic vaccine,” she said.

Response Plans

WHO urged countries not to implement pandemic response plans designed for a more severe threat after government leaders said last month that moving to phase 6 may spur some countries to restrict travel, ban public events and adopt other measures that aren’t needed for mild flu, worsening the deepest economic slump since the Great Depression.

“Some political leaders worry about some unwarranted overreaction and some are also concerned that, because of the mildness of the disease, people will say ‘so what’s the big deal about pandemic?’” she said. “The balance between overreaction or complacency is another issue that’s of great concern.”

U.S. health officials said they won’t be changing their response to the virus based on the new pandemic designation and have already been responding to the outbreak like they would for a pandemic. There have been more than 13,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., which have caused about 1,000 hospitalizations and 27 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

‘Strong Message’

“For all intensive purposes, the U.S. government has been in phase 6 of the pandemic level for some time,” Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a conference call today with reporters. “This does send a strong message that the virus is here and likely to stay.”

In the U.S., the virus has been most severe in children, young adults and those with asthma or who are pregnant, Frieden said. The virus has spread the most widely in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. About 7 percent of New Yorkers likely had swine flu in May, according to a survey released yesterday by the New York City health department.

The United Nations health agency doesn’t advise border closures or restrictions on travel and trade, Chan said.

WHO is watching for any sign the disease is worsening as the germ circulates during the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season, creating opportunities for its genes to mutate or combine with those of other viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu strain that’s lethal in three of every five reported cases. The new virus has genes from other strains that have sickened humans, pigs and birds.

Biggest Concern

“The tendency to move into complacency is our biggest concern because we need to continue to monitor this virus, follow its track and not allow it to come back in the second wave to give us more trouble,” Chan said…read more here…

The 1918 Flu killed between 20-100 million people worldwide.  Interestingly, it was a swine flu.   The first people were affected in the spring. The virus was latent during the summer and returned with a vengeance in the   fall.  Are  you and your family prepared for a fall flu epidemic?  I am almost certain that it WILL return. I would recommend that all families who are interested in protecting themselves invest a small amount of money ($30) in purchasing the Wein ViraMask- The only N99 protection self adhesive mask available.  

———————

WHO: Swine flu pandemic has begun, 1st in 41 years By MARIA CHENG and FRANK JORDANS – 6 hours ago GENEVA (AP) — Swine flu is now formally a pandemic, a declaration by U.N. health officials that will speed vaccine production and spur government spending to combat the first global flu epidemic in 41 years. Thursday’s announcement by the World Health Organization doesn’t mean the virus is any more lethal — only that its spread is considered unstoppable. Since it was first detected in late April in Mexico and the United States, swine flu has reached 74 countries, infecting nearly 29,000 people. Most who catch the bug have only mild symptoms and don’t need medical treatment. WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan made the long-awaited declaration after the U.N. agency held an emergency meeting with flu experts and said she was moving to phase 6 — the agency’s highest alert level — which means a pandemic is under way. “The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century,” Chan said in Geneva. Dr. Thomas Frieden, the new head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in Atlanta that he does not expect widespread public anxiety in the United States as a result of the declaration, noting it came nearly two months after the virus was identified. For many weeks, U.S. health officials have been treating it as a pandemic, increasing the availability of anti-viral flu medicines and pouring money into a possible vaccination program. And scientists have grown to understand that the virus is generally not much more severe than the seasonal flu….read more here…

NEW BOOK RELEASED: Vitamin D Prescription: The Healing Power of the Sun -Learn about Vitamin D and how it can protect you and your family from the Flu

=========================================================

May 19 (Bloomberg) — Dozens of swine flu cases in Japan may prompt the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic, a former WHO adviser said, spurring demand for vaccines to fight the contagion.

Japan reported its first locally-transmitted case on May 16, and the number of people infected with the virus, formally known as A/H1N1, has jumped to 135 from 4 in less than two weeks. Evidence of human-to-human transmission in a region outside North America may prompt the WHO to raise its pandemic alert to the highest level, said Hitoshi Oshitani, the former head of the agency’s Western Pacific region.

“Japan is definitely having human-to-human transmission,” Oshitani said yesterday in a telephone interview. “The WHO will have to take the Japanese cases into consideration when deciding whether to raise the pandemic alert.”

Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon are scheduled to broker an accord with executives from drugmakers such as Sanofi-Aventis SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc in Geneva today to ensure developing countries can gain access to pandemic vaccines.

The outbreak worldwide extended to 8,829 infections in 40 nations as health officials from more than 190 countries began a meeting yesterday of the World Health Assembly in Geneva to debate whether swine flu is spreading widely enough to upgrade the threat to level 6, and declare it the first pandemic since 1968…read rest of story…

H1N1 is on the move.   The 1918 Flu epidemic was a Swine Flu which is known to have killed between 20 million  to 100 million people worldwide.  The 1918 flu started in the spring, was fairly calm during the summer and then took off with a vengeance during the fall and winter.  Until recently, few understood the seasonal variation of the flu.  However, recent evidence by Dr. John Cannell suggests that vitamin D deficiency plays a role.  Let me explain.  Vitamin D blood levels start trending downwards during the fall and winter.  Studies show that vitamin D increases immunity by making White Blood Cells more effective. Since  vitamin D blood levels tend to be higher during the summer, when people spend more time in the sun, they are less likely to become susceptible to the virus when exposed.  To read more about vitamin D and influenza, check out the new book, Vitamin D Presciption- The Healing Power of the Sun by Eric Madrid MD.

————-

ZURICH (Reuters) – The number of confirmed cases of the new Influenza A (H1N1) flu has climbed to 8,480 and the death toll has remained static at 72, the World Health Organization said in its latest update on Sunday.

The confirmation of cases in India, Malaysia and Turkey brought the number of countries with confirmed cases of H1N1, commonly known as swine flu, to 39, the WHO said.

The vast majority of cases have been in Mexico and the United States. The spread of the disease has led the WHO to declare a pandemic is imminent. On April 29 it raised its pandemic alert to 5 on a 6-level scale.

The virus is behaving much like a seasonal influenza strain, which kills 500,000 annually, by spreading rapidly and causing mainly mild disease, but severe illness in some people.…read more here…

THE FLU VIRUS DANGERS

Complacency. Many people think Influenza is just a seasonal nuisance. It is not just a nuisance . It is ONE OF THE WORST VIRAL INFECTIONS KNOWN TO MAN!

Even with modern Man’s advanced medical technology, it kills over a million people world wide every year with over 200,000 birth defects and with over 35,000 deaths in the US alone! For some unfathomable reason it is not A REPORTING DISEASE as designated by the CDC. No accurate records are kept. The worldwide economy also loses over a TRILLION….that is a thousand BILLION dollars a year in unrealized productivity yearly.

If H5N1 mutates to become the next pandemic ( this has happened three times in the last hundred years ) it could destroy the entire world economy for years.

It remains one of the top ten causes of death in the United States. During an ordinary flu season in the USA, over 25% of the population is infected with ordinary type A Influenza in spite of Flu shots . That is in a good year. The shots are only 50% effective for Americans 50 or older and that is if the yearly vaccine components are accurately gauged against the prevalent strains coming from Asia. The chicken egg vaccine production is also outmoded and incapable of ramping up for any extraordinary Public Health threat such as human to human transmissible Avian Influenza like H5N1. This ancient vaccine formulation method developed about 50 years ago, depends on GUESSES by the epidemiologists and is composed of a cocktail of three or four dominant strains based on the viral coatings of these strains which change each year. If they guess wrong as has happened then there is minimal protection.

None of these Methods are applicable to N5N1 as Humans have no resistance to this new emerging disease.

H5N1 virus has over 52% mortality. It can become airborne and it is rapidly mutating to become the next worldwide PANDEMIIC. There is now a raging scientific/medical controversy whether in fact any of the anti viral medicines work against this killer virus.

1918 PANDEMIC

Avian flu struck in 1918 and wiped out over 50 million people in less than six months. This was the worst epidemic in human history and it happened in the 20th century. It was far worse than the BLACK DEATH in Europe. Sars has a mortality of about 10%, 1918 flu about 15%. H5N1 about 52%.

If it happens again as most epidemiologist say it will , we will be almost defenseless. WE ARE RIPE FOR ANOTHER PANDEMIC RIGHT NOW

VIRULENT INFLUENZA MUTATIONS CAN KILL IN HOURS!

In 1918 a person could wake up feeling fine and be dead that evening and turning blue...read more here…

The Age of Pandemics- Wall Street Journal

The threat of deadly new viruses is on the rise due to population growth, climate change and increased contact between humans and animals. What the world needs to do to prepare.

By LARRY BRILLIANT

In 1967, the country’s surgeon general, William Stewart, famously said, “The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States.” This premature victory declaration, perhaps based on early public health victories over 19th-century infectious diseases, has entered the lore of epidemiologists who know that, if anything, the time has come to open the book to a new and dangerous chapter on 21st-century communicable diseases.

Indeed, to the epidemiological community, the Influenza Pandemic of 2009 is one of the most widely anticipated diseases in history. Epidemiologists have been shouting from rooftops that a pandemic (or, a world-wide epidemic) of influenza is overdue, and that it is not a matter of “if” but “when.” The current pathogen creating the threat is actually a mixture of viral genetic elements from all over the globe that have sorted, shifted, sorted, shifted, drifted and recombined to form this worrisome virus.

No one knows if the 2009 swine flu will behave like the 1918 Spanish flu that killed 50 million to 100 million world-wide, or like the 1957 Asian flu and 1968 Hong Kong flu that killed far fewer. This 2009 flu may weaken and lose its virulence, or strengthen and gain virulence — we just do not know.

Here’s the good news: Compared with a few years ago, the world is somewhat better prepared to deal with pandemic influenza. There have been training meetings, table-top exercises, dry runs and preparedness drills at virtually every level of government and civil society. World Health Organization member states have agreed on a set of regulations that require all members to report the status of diseases of global significance within their borders. We have two effective antiviral drugs, at least for the time being. There have been some breakthroughs to reduce the time required to get effective vaccines into the field, and there is even a small chance that last year’s seasonal vaccine will help protect lives from H1N1. In the U.S. at least, influenza surveillance has improved…read more here…

Swine Flu Update- Get the latest as of May 3rd, 2009—

——————————-

By Tom Randall and Dermot Doherty

May 3 (Bloomberg) — The World Health Organization may designate the outbreak of H1N1 influenza as a pandemic by raising its six-stage alert level to its highest step even as many cases of swine flu show symptoms no more severe than seasonal flu, health officials said.

The WHO isn’t seeing sustained community transmission of the virus, known formally as influenza A H1N1, outside of North America, said Michael Ryan, the WHO’s director of global alert and response, at a news conference yesterday in Geneva where the UN health agency is based.

Ireland became the 17th country yesterday to confirm swine flu and the new virus may be spreading in five nations among people unconnected to Mexico, where cases were first reported. The health minister in Mexico said yesterday the country had no new deaths attributed to the virus.

“At this stage we have to expect that phase 6 will be reached; we have to hope that it won’t be reached,” Ryan said. “I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent.”..read more here…