Blame the Republicans for swine flu

Ya... no kiddin':

Apparently the Obama administration is not yet ready for prime time. From Politico: “As flu hits, holes in W.H. health team.”

Which explains why the White House is desperately blaming the swine flu on the Republican Congress vote against the $787,000,000,000 “stimulus” package.*

(See post...)

Politico pointed out, President Obama has no Secretary of Health and Human Services because his first appointee was another one of his tax-cheating limo liberals.

“President Barack Obama has not yet chosen a surgeon general or the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His choice to run the Food and Drug Administration awaits confirmation,” Politico reported.

In all, 19 positions and the secretary are empty desks.

Maybe if Obama did something more than preen and pat himself on the back for his first 100 days in office, we would actually have a government that did more than just blame Republicans for all the troubles of the world.

Maybe if the press would also quit preening and patting the man on the back and actually report the news and do some investigating...

... but who am I kidding?

I might as well feel a tingle up my leg.

Comments

[renee]

After 9-11, Bush was responsible for getting us leap years ahead in being able to respond to bio-terrorism...Obama can't take credit for that one but he's stuck in the blame bush excuse. Someone should get him a button to wear with that. No one is to blame for swine flu, well, maybe...

one could look at the Baxter corporation and their live avian combination mix up sent to three international labs labeled as something else last month and after all the ferrets died, they admitted it...

it was a combination that shouldn't have been tried and was no way accidental...

you know the same company that jumped the press with its offer to find a vaccine for the swine flu the other day...

or maybe you'd want to hear about the nine bullet-riddled men from various terrorist states that were found in Alcapulco with bio-terrorism supplies in their vehicles just after the first cases came to light. The Russians are talking about it, but you can't trust them..

or consider the large pig farms in one Mexican towns earliest hit could have been the cooking pot...

or the new information discovered by MIT in February of last year, unlocking the reason why/how the 1918 virus was so well equipped to attach itself to the lungs and perhaps that missing link fell into the hands of someone like Dr. Death out of Africa who is free as a bird out there with the knowledge of how to bio-engineer germ warfare...

but I'm sure that's all way too tin hat for most of this crowd...

anyway, while it is possible for this strange mix to have occured in nature without any help, it's not following an identifiable tracking path as one normally would find. From what I've been told, usually you find the initial breakout nearer to the genetic source, like the Asian virus starting off in a village in Asia, mixing with the swine there, picking up that marker and off it is passed to be tracked across the continents.

This mix of Asian avian, Europe, North America swine and influenzas just appeared out of no where and started killing. If you talk to a doctor in the locations hardest hit you are going to get a different story on what's being reported. They are saying there is a coverup to downplay the number of deaths.

Healthcare providers are dying from this and many are taking time off or refusing to come in. They are being told to write other things on the cause of death than swine flu. One doctor a few days ago responding to a British blog said the deaths were double what they are reporting, two interns working with him had died. They had been told the flu shot would protect them and he said it wasn't.

It was hitting young to middle age adults the hardest. One of the theories the 1918 flu was so deadly was because it caused a cytokine storm in healthy individuals. A compromised immune system will not induce as much reaction, the very young and the very old survive with milder forms while the stronger healthy adult population experiences more mortality.

A cytokine storm occurs in a healthy immune system, where the response creates a cascade effect and over-reacts to the virus, causing damage in itself. You end up dying not because the virus kills you, but because your immune response to the virus kills you.

If it escaped or was purposely released from a lab, we will know in a few weeks based on its natural, or unnatural behavior...I always consider who stands to gain what in a situation like this if there is any possiblity it could have been on purpose...

now, don't let all those advisors in Obama's administration or the UN that have said we need to reduce the world population, especially in third world countries concern you...

I wonder if they have found the liberal gene verses the conservative gene yet? All kidding asside, this could be a stong fizzle out to a less harmful recombination or the dice could roll and we could see it hit us in a couple of phases yet to come where it could become more virulent a few months down the road.

Americans may have already been exposed to enough of one of its pieces that there is some immunity to it whereas the Mexican population is missing that exposure. Me, myself, I am taking this bug very seriously until otherwise informed.

Anti-virals aid like Tamiflu in the reduction of a cytokine storm and there are two said not to be resistant to this strain of virus...wonder why the other two didn't fare as well...

but there are natural anti-virals available, too...Sambucol being one, Green tea, Red wine, Curcumin (be careful with this on if on blood thinners) and things like garlic, and ginger, barley, green and bright orange vegetables like sweet potatoes and winter squash, and pumpkin seeds will help fight a virus...cranberry juice inhibits adhesion and if you aren't allergic to peanuts, eating raw peanuts within six hours of experiencing symptoms for a day is supposed to help greatly...

do your own homework...

but I'd be stocking up on those just in case the goverment can't rescue all of us with antivirals if this thing should hit the fan...

yes, I wear tin foil and am one of those Bible believing constitutional patriot right wing extremists you've been warned about and I don't trust the DHS to watch out for me...had family in Katrina and Rita...a sheepal, I am not.

[renee]

oh, those raw peanuts are supposed to be boiled right before you eat them...but again, do your own homework, don't take my word for it, I'm not an expert by any means...I was just taught to see value in the natural things God gave us as well as the ability men were gifted with to develop medicines and treatments, many of which were first found in nature or inspired by it.

[renee]

Where is the flu now...

Mexico (as of Sunday 04/26, 19 out of Mexico's 32 states, per WHO)
Partial listing:
Aguascalientes
Baja California (2 states)
---Norte and Sur
Chihuahua
Guanajuato
Hidalgo
Jalisco
Mexico State (Estado de Mexico)
Nayarit
Nuevo Leon
Oaxaca
Quintana Roo
San Luis Potosi
Sonora
Tamaulipas
Tlaxcala
Veracruz

California
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Massachusetts (Lowell)
Michigan
New Jersey
New York (including Upstate)
Ohio
South Carolina
North Carolina (suspected)
South Dakota
Texas
Tennessee
Wisconsin

Australia
Brazil

Canada
-- British Columbia
-- Ontario
-- Nova Scotia
-- Prince Edward Island
-- Saskatchewan, Canada

Columbia
Czech Republic
Chile
China
-- Hong Kong
Columbia
France
Germany
Guatemala
Ireland
Israel
Auckland, New Zealand
Peru
Scotland
South Korea
Spain
Switzerland
UK
-- East Midlands

[renee]

Not counting our US press to get the story...this was first reported on blogs...looks like a real journalist checked up on it...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/swine-flu-search-outbreak-source/print

A Mexican village whose inhabitants were overwhelmed by an outbreak of respiratory illness starting in February has emerged as a possible source of the swine flu outbreak which has now spread across the world.

The state government of Veracruz in eastern Mexico has confirmed one case of swine flu in the village of La Gloria with the sufferer named locally as a four-year-old boy, Edgar Hernandez Hernandez. The federal government said tonight that he tested positive for the same strain of the virus which has claimed lives in Mexico.

The boy's case earlier this month came amid an outbreak of respiratory illness in the area in which around 400 people requested medical help. The boy was treated in hospital and survived. But two babies from the same village died during the outbreak. Sufferers complained of symptoms including fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm...

The statement came after Mexico's national public health authority, the Mexican social security institute, raised concerns that waste from the Granjas Carrol facility may be responsible for the outbreak of illness, according to local media.

"According to state agents of the Mexican social security institute, the vector of this outbreak are the clouds of flies that come out of the hog barns, and the waste lagoons into which the Mexican-US company spews tons of excrement," reported Mexico City newspaper La Jornada.

Swine flu can be caught through contact with infected animals, but it is unclear if contact with flies or excrement has the same effect.

A La Gloria resident who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity yesterday described how illness swept through the village. "Some people started getting ill in February and an eight-month-old baby died," she said. "After that another baby died on 21 March. Suddenly most of the village got ill. It was weekend and the tiny clinic here was closed. The state health authorities then did send doctors and nurses to look after us, and give us medication. About 60% of the village were ill and we asked them what it was and they said it was a severe and atypical cold. We talked about influenza and they said that was impossible, that influenza had been eradicated from Mexico."

Smithfield, which is led by pork baron Joseph W Luter III, has previously been fined for environmental damage in the US. In October 2000 the supreme court upheld a $12.6m (£8.6m) fine levied by the US environmental protection agency which found that the company had violated its pollution permits in the Pagan River in Virginia which runs towards Chesapeake Bay. The company faced accusations that faecal and other bodily waste from slaughtered pigs had been dumped directly into the river since the 1970s .

The outbreak of respiratory illness in the area of the Granjas Carroll plant was first detected at the beginning of this month by Veratect, a company based in Washington state which monitors the spread of disease and pandemics around the world for corporate clients.

On 6 April it reported local officials had declared a health alert. According to its dispatch: "Sources characterised the event as a 'strange' outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to pneumonia in some paediatric cases. Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town's population, approximately 1,800 cases, has been affected."

[renee]

Fox News Reporting two deaths in LA, first week of April, now being tested to see if cause was swine flu...

I've been monitoring a few discussions on forums/blogs saying they knew of people that had contact with Mexico or a Mexican immigrant, had died with flu type symptoms a few weeks ago and wondering if it was the swine flu, too. Now, they could have be normal influenza casuality but they are reported to be young healthy adults-not the normal flu casuality. The medical profession didn't know to look for a few weeks ago, so we don't really know the full extent of what this virus is capable of yet.

You can't go by the numbers being reported because as they did in Queen's, out of 100 kids reporting to be ill, they have only tested 40 of them, and have only officially counted those that were tested even though they told all 100 that they most likely had swine flu, too. That and family members have come down with it and they aren't being included, either.

People with flu symptoms are being told by their doctors and employers to stay at home and only come in if they get worse; as per other people reporting having flu symptoms now on blogs and forums. They aren't being tested and they aren't being counted. The numbers anyone comes up with aren't going to be accurate.

Then we have to consider this is a new virus; the virus could it ramp up or down depending how it mutates now that it has jumped into the human to human transmission mode. Mexico is supposedly reporting a slight decrease in confirmed cases over the last two days, let's hope its fizzling out.

[renee]

18 days later...

Wash. state company detected swine flu spread early

KIRKLAND, Wash. -- A Washington state company is being credited with being the first to sound the alarm about the swine flu epidemic.

"We're sort of like the fire tower where they're looking for the few wisps of smoke so you send people in when it's a smoldering fire instead of waiting until it's got half the Cascades," said Veratect CEO Bob Hart.

Veratect Corp. tracks global unrest and relays early detection warnings to its clients, ranging from terrorist activity to 200 different diseases.
The company uses information from tens of thousands of sources, including local health departments, aid workers and media reports.

"This is like a weather system for infectious diseases around the world," explained Dr. James M. Wilson, the CTO for Veratect.

Dr. Wilson said Veratect first traced what looked like the swine flu to Mexico at the end of March. Then, on April 6th, the team alerted the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.

On April 16th, Veratect issued a second alert. And by April 20th, with the disease spreading, the company called the CDC directly.

"I am very concerned. The indicators are very similar to a lot of other major influenza events of the past like the 1968 pandemic," Dr. Wilson said.

"We literally got on the phone to the CDC and said to their emergency operations center, ‘we see this happening, you really need to look at it,’" Hart added. “At that point they started looking at it."

Eighteen days after Veratect’s initial report, the CDC and WHO issued their first warnings. The company’s database is now deluged with suspected swine flu cases from all over the world.

Dr. Wilson said there was one on common denominator: "What this proves to is we need a global early warning system. This could be unpredictable in its effects."

[michigan legal forms]

blame the republicans is so funny. in the last week i have not heard much about swine flu. i am not sure if it dying off or it is not a big deal. i hope it just disappears.