Is This The Long Awaited Pandemic?

[Peter Lemkin]

What is with the undead in Mexico? There are now only 25 confirmed deaths in Mexico from the swine flu. It was up to something like 150 a few days ago wasn't it? Are people being brought back to life by the miracles of modern science or were they not dead in the first place even though they were, or at least were said to be dead. Rubbery figures. Good for the share price though. Also where are the interviews with the grieving families? (or those in celebration for the return from the dead for that matter)

In part it is a matter of definition. The 159+ dead in Mexico is real...but only 25 dead confirmed [thus far] as having died of the swine-avian-flu; so....if they died of something else, what was it. Tosh posted an interesting thread speaking of a kind of pneumonia. Very odd things going on. Around the world now there are over 500 confired flu cases, but almost none have died from it....it will take some time to make sense of this all.

[Jan Klimkowski]

There's a hint of Monty Python to the following "scientific" article in the New York Times.

However, trying to ignore the Pythonesque elements, it may include important clues as to the genesis of this so-called swine flu:

Virus’s Tangled Genes Straddle Continents, Raising a Mystery About Its Origins


By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: April 30, 2009

The flu that is moving through humans appears to have a combination of genes from two normally separate sets of pigs, those from the Americas and from Eurasia, scientists say.

However, it is unknown how those pigs met, and there is not yet any genetic proof that this particular flu was ever in a pig.

And, despite current fears, some geneticists feel this strain may not be very deadly. As it circulates in humans, however, especially in the Southern Hemisphere winter, it could pick up dangerous human flu genes.

The only way to be sure, they say, is to wait and see. But world health authorities hope to have a vaccine soon that will put a stop to the flu’s circulation.

The first conundrum — a swine-type virus that has not yet been found in swine — is readily explained, scientists said. It was first identified in humans just last week, when Canadian and American authorities realized that the flus they had sequenced from sick people in California, Texas and Mexico were the same. No one ever tested pigs for it before, and those tests are just getting under way.

Such quirks are common in disease genetics. In the 1980s, for example, it was not known that the AIDS virus was sweeping Africa because the illness was first found in a few gay men in California, and it took years to find the source virus in chimpanzees.

Now, scientists say, the hunt is on for what is jokingly being called Pig Zero.

“No one that I’m aware of has swabbed pigs for this yet,” Dr. Juan Lubroth, chief of veterinary investigations for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, said Wednesday.

An international team, including Dr. Lubroth’s investigators and some from the World Organization for Animal Health, is in Mexico, planning to go to La Gloria, the location of the first known case involving a human, 5-year-old Édgar Hernández.

Mexican investigators have already visually inspected herds of pigs at the vast factory farms there, Dr. Lubroth said. But a flu strain that sickens humans may not bother pigs, just as the H5N1 avian flu kills chickens but usually not ducks.

It will take some time to swab the pigs’ snouts, fly the samples to a world-class laboratory and sequence it. And even then, Dr. Lubroth said, the La Gloria pigs may not be the key, so his team will scour Mexico’s library of routine swine swabs for matches. The only viral sequences on public databases thus far are human.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last week that the new virus had pieces of North American swine, bird and human flus and of Eurasian swine flu. Although rumors questioning that are circulating on the Internet, most geneticists believe it is correct.

It is essentially a blend of Eurasian swine flu and North American swine flu, but Western hemisphere strains have had an avian segment on the PB2 gene for at least 10 years and a human component on the PB1 gene since 1993, said Henry L. Niman, a biochemist who tracks flu mutations. “The original report is correct,” Dr. Niman said of the C.D.C.’s analysis. The rumors, he added in an e-mail message, stem from “someone who really doesn’t know how to analyze sequences (or is being misquoted.)”

It presumably is in pigs somewhere, perhaps in Mexico. The 1918 human H1N1 established itself in pigs by 1930. But, as Dr. Niman pointed out, it could be only in humans now — or even in a ferret.

The next question, said Dr. Robert G. Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is: “How did this virus get in? Is Mexico importing swine from Europe?”

While movement of live pigs between Canada, the United States and Mexico for fattening and slaughter is routine, legal movement of pigs across oceans is rare. Pigs carry many diseases, so importation requires expensive tests and quarantines. The only reason to bother would be for breeding, not meat.

Even pig semen is restricted, said Kent Parker, swine facility manager at the University of California, Davis. “The boars have to be tested and the facility they live in has to be authorized,” Mr. Parker said. Frozen semen can transmit blue-ear pig disease, he said. It cannot transmit flu, said a spokeswoman for the National Pork Board.

Peter Daszak, president of the Wildlife Trust, found records showing that Mexico imported two pigs from France in 2007, the United States imported a few from Britain and Ireland, and Canada imported hundreds from Europe. “And surely this isn’t the whole truth,” he said. “There must be a hidden illegal trade.”

While some scientists looking at the virus genome debated its origin, Peter Palese, chairman of microbiology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, found cause for optimism about the future. All the pandemic viruses of the last century — the 1918, 1957 and 1968 flus — had a mutation in the gene coding for a protein known as PB1-F2 that is thought to make a virus more lethal. The mutation, he said, is not in the new strain.

Dr. Niman, looking at the same sequences, saw a mutation that, at the same position in H5N1, appeared to speed the virus’s spread in Egypt.

Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/health....html?_r=1

[Magda Hassan]

Is this the first verified case of pigs flying?

[Myra Bronstein]

Is this the first verified case of pigs flying?

:hahaha:

[David Guyatt]

Clearly this was not a pandemic. It was not even close to an average common or garden flu season. It was a small - actually tiny - bubble that couldn't be sustained (not enough deaths) and thus quickly burst under its own atmospheric pressure.

So why was the world placed on such high alert? And why did governments and the media (in the UK anyway) discuss mass graves, thousands of deaths daily, area quarantines and mass vaccinations?

It seems to me that we are not being told the truth or have been sold a pile of BS -- possibly both.

[Bruce Clemens]

...and the fact that only Hispanics died? Will that be conveniently forgotten as the media moves on to other things? Will that fact be the WTC 7 of this event?

[David Guyatt]

Regarding your comments Bruce, I most cautiously mention the fact - first brought to light by Michael Riconosciuto - about "race specific" bio-weapons. He helped develop them for the US he claimed, and many years later the Israeli's were said in a newspaper article to also have developed them.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Is this the first verified case of pigs flying?

:marchmellow:

I think that flying pig came from the dark side of the moon...

Clearly this was not a pandemic. It was not even close to an average common or garden flu season. It was a small - actually tiny - bubble that couldn't be sustained (not enough deaths) and thus quickly burst under its own atmospheric pressure.

So why was the world placed on such high alert? And why did governments and the media (in the UK anyway) discuss mass graves, thousands of deaths daily, area quarantines and mass vaccinations?

It seems to me that we are not being told the truth or have been sold a pile of BS -- possibly both.

It could have been probing at the defences in many senses.

Personally, I'd quite like to have had a dose of this Mark 1 "Swine Flu". If it comes back in a mutated form (whether thanks to Nature or deep black Nurture), it will also certainly be more lethal. And those individuals who've had, and survived, the relatively mild version will be potential Omega Men....

[Bruce Clemens]

Ok, this is the sinister side of me thinking...

The behavior of this "flu" might represent the successful outcome of a field-test of a gene-specific bio weapon.

I mean consider: Extremely virulent and deadly within a select group of people, doing its damage and then quickly expanding, losing potency out from the epicenter like a bomb blast until it is all but innocuous in the greater population. Only lethal to the target population, easily defended against by all others. Kills primarily young, vigorous "targets".

Perhaps, somewhere in the world, there is a group of people congratulating themselves right now for a job well done...and looking forward to expanding the trial.

[Bruce Clemens]

I just can't find ANY more details in the MSM...

(Newser) – Texas health officials said today that a US woman who lived near the Mexico border has died from swine flu—the second death in the nation and first of a US resident, USA Today reports. The news, however, comes amid continued confidence that the H1N1 virus remains relatively mild here, and the Centers for Disease Control reversed guidelines saying that schools should close if they have suspected or confirmed cases.
Few details were available about the Texas woman’s death, except that she had chronic health problems beyond the flu. Meanwhile, CDC acting chief Richard Besser said schools no longer need to shut down for two weeks when cases emerge. He said, however, that parents should continue to keep an eye on their kids and keep them home if they show symptoms.
Source: USA Today