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The swine flu? (I just heard about this on today’s morning news…)
The World Health Organization, (WHO), reports Mexico’s infection-count at 26 cases with 7 death while the U.S. Government having a count of 91 confirmed cases with no deaths: until now.
Having traveled to Texas from his home in Mexico for following medical treatment, Reuters.com describes the 23-month-old child as “the first [death] outside Mexico and the first in U.S.”
“This is obviously a serious situation. Serious enough to take the utmost precautions,” President Obama said while speaking at the White House before a short trip to Missouri.
“Every American should know that the federal government is prepared to do whatever is necessary to control the impact of this virus,” Obama said.
Follow the current standings on the swine influenza with WHO. Updated daily.
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Katie on April 29 at 7:11 p.m.
Yeah…this is all really strange. It reminds me of that SARS outbreak a few years ago. I guess the scary thing about this one is that it has pretty much the same symptoms of a normal flu. Could that be the cause of so many deaths? People didn't know to watch out for swine flu, so they treated it like a regular flu?
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Chloe on May 01 at 5:50 a.m.
that's what i'm thinking too - it's so like the other flu that its not being so heavily tracked or watched out for. yet everyone in my school is going crazy with the hand sanitizer and little packages of hand wipes.
the sanitizers are everywhere….
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Jeremiah_Salinger on May 01 at 11:06 a.m.
You want to know what the real problem is with the swine flu? I'll explain, as far as I understand it (and as a biology major, I sure hope I understand it pretty well, or else I'm gonna be in some deep dung three years from now…):
1) Swine flu has the same designation as the Spanish flu of 1918-1919 did—H1N1 (I'll be buggered if I remember what it stands for…microbio is still a bit ways off)
2) It didn't just originate from pigs…yes, it started in pigs, but apparently it is also now combined with elements of the avian flu and 'normal' human flu
3) Almost all strains of influenza started in some animal host, usually a vertebrate host—once the strain has evolved (the news media says 'mutates,' but evolution by natural selection works by the same principles whether you're talking about insects, monkeys, humans, weeds, viruses, bacteria, etc.) to the point that it can survive in a human host, then it does the same thing it did in its animal host—multiplies and spreads exponentially
The solution? Quarantining those who definitely have the virus—viruses need to spread in order to survive; if they can't spread, they die…that's why when there's an ebola outbreak in Africa, for example, as soon as they have confirmed that there actually is an ebola outbreak, the medical folks quarantine all those who have been around the patients with ebola and the bodies of people who have died from the ebola are incinerated…in the case of ebola, it's too efficient for it's own good because it usually kills its host before it can spread.
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