Bye-bye Wuhan Virus

The Biden speech police have declared you can't speak of the Chinese Virus or the Wuhan Virus. There goes the Hong Kong flu (1968) and the Asian flu (1957). Also, if you read any article about the Swine Flu of 2009, it always includes the word Mexico where it apparently originated. But I suppose because Obama was being called the "deporter in chief" (untrue: Clinton deported 12,290,905 and Obama 5,281,115 during their 8 year terms) by some immigrant organizations, it wouldn't catch on if it were called "Mexican flu." Maybe on a slow day of rewriting history, some interns could go through all those government documents that included the word Mexico. The pork producers probably would have preferred a country of origin, because a lot of pigs lost their lives (early) due to political correctness.

Can we survive this pandemic’s economic fall out?

I survived the “Asian Flu,” 1957-1958 (was sick, but the college didn't close) with about 1.1 million deaths worldwide, 116,000 of those in the U.S. I survived the “Hong Kong Flu,” 1968-1972, with about 1 million people worldwide, including 100,000 in the U.S. I don't remember if we had it--maybe that time Phil threw up all over Dr. Batterson wasn't the chili. I also survived the 2009 H1N1 pandemic which was first detected in the U.S. in April 2009. There were an estimated 60.8 million cases, 274,304 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths. I don't remember anyone blaming President Obama. Certainly not the media.

You can read the summary at https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/cdcresponse.htm. Medical measures like testing, public announcements, and vaccines were used. The only economic measures I saw in the summary were travel advisories. The economy survived those pandemics. The schools didn't close. The elderly didn't die alone in nursing home lock downs. I just don't know about this pandemic. Can we survive our "leaders?"

What I said about the 2009 Swine Flu in April 2009: https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/search/label/swine%20flu

Is it H1N1, just regular flu or a cold?

There are reports that any flu patient seen by a hospital or doctor is being reported as having H1N1, which could account for the numbers in the latest crisis the government is promoting. A few days ago CBS reported in a month's long investigation, state-by-state results of tests for H1N1 found that most cases were negative. (Remember, never waste a crisis--Rahm Emanuel) Although why, during the health care push Obama would want to emphasize how ineffective and chaotic this drive to get people vaccinated is, I can't imagine. If they can't handle this, how will they handle 300 million? In Columbus, you can't even get the regular vaccine, and people stand in line for hours on a rumor for H1N1. Anyway, I looked it up, and maybe this is just another urban legend, but here's what I found, and I think I've read this before.

"H1N1 is a type of viruses, comprising dozens different strains. No specific strain was ever shown to be the cause of this particular new swine flu, chiefly because it was never shown to be present in all the cases, then or now. But from the outset, the national media was counting all these numbers as cases of the disease even there was no verifiable method for specifically identifying the disease. Without a screening test, the cases were being diagnosed by symptoms only. This is precisely what happened with the nonexistent Avian flu of 4 years ago. [5] If we're diagnosing by symptoms only, then any case of any flu can be counted. And that's exactly what has happening here all along with swine flu."

No longer than these vaccines have had to be developed and the short time to be proven effective, we're essentially testing them on children! Another doctor says there has been no testing since July--so why are these being counted as H1N1 if no one knows?

Does this sound like blackmail?

"The swine flu pandemic could kill millions and cause anarchy in the world's poorest nations unless £900m can be raised from rich countries to pay for vaccines and antiviral medicines, says a UN report leaked to the Observer."

Last week-end while volunteering at the Midwest Bird Symposium I was chatting with a school principal, also a volunteer. With nothing much to talk about except our duties and how difficult it was to wear the latex gloves, I asked how her school was preparing for the H1N1 virus. She began to rant and rave--thought it was all a plot to cover the disastrous health care take over. And the plan, which I won't divulge, did sound a bit invasive. Too bad they don't let school principals and teachers do the sensible thing about head lice.

But back to blackmail. The aid that has gone to "poorest" countries by governments, churches and NGOs could long ago have floated them out of poverty, but why should those countries build roads, provide fresh water, drain swamps, improve their economies and elect honest leaders, if France, England or the US continue to bail them out? Even President Obama's father's home village is waiting for a bailout, and his own family still lives in poverty.

The H1N1 Pandemic?

It seems we have a pandemic because the definition of pandemic was changed?

"Before the arrival of novel A/H1N1 virus, pandemics were said to occur when a new subtype of influenza virus to which humans have no immunity enters the population, begins spreading widely, and causes severe illness . . . But the 2009 pandemic, taken as a whole, bears little resemblance to the forecasted pandemic. Pandemic A/H1N1 virus is not a new subtype but the same subtype as seasonal A/H1N1 that has been circulating since 1977. . . Experts are unsure that the 2009 pandemic—which the World Health Organization presently characterises as moderate—will be any worse than seasonal flu." from article by Peter Doshi, doctor student, MIT, BMJ 2009;339:b3471

HT Junkfood Sciene

Filthy lucre and H1N1

Filthy Lucre usually means obscene or shameful profit, but just plain old paper money is really dirty. I learned this sanitation tip when I was clerking at Zickuhr's Drug store in high school. According to a cartoon health item on the dangers of swine flu I saw this morning viruses can live on paper money for 2 weeks. I always shudder a bit when the coffee clerk pats or rubs the top of the paper top while serving me after handling the money. It would be much better to have the customer pick up and place the cover over the cup.

When I was the veterinary medicine librarian at Ohio State we were constantly washing our circ desk where the returned books came in--zoonotic diseases, you know. Books and hard surfaces in libraries, including keyboards, are really dirty--you could probably scrape them before you washed them.

Americans have a really bad nervous tic of constantly touching their face, nose, eyes, ears or hair while speaking, either casually, in conversation or from the podium. They even do it while on the phone, although the listerner can't see them. Thirty years ago I used to attend the "brown bag" sharing of the agricultural credit group at Ohio State. Over half of the grad students were from Asia or Africa. Since it wasn't my field (I was the librarian), I would amuse myself by noting face touching and nose rubbing by the speakers. I almost never saw a 3rd world student do that--it was about 100 to 1, in favor of the Americans.

Priorities for swine flu vaccine

Usually the elderly are told to get flu vaccines. Maybe we're at no risk for this one--after all, older people die in great numbers in any year from the flu and no one except the family gets too concerned, certainly not the media. However, the Obama health care plan promoted for older Americans pretty much writes them off as not worth anything. At least as recently as 2003 JAMA reported that vaccinating those over 65 was a high priority because it was so successful in reducing morbidity and mortality. Oh well, those were the Bush years and values were different. People mattered. (In 2009, CDC published additional estimates of flu-related deaths comparing different methods, including the methods used in the 2003 JAMA study. The seasons studied included the 1993-94 through the 2002-03 flu seasons. Results from this study showed that during this time period, 36,171 flu-related deaths occurred per year, on average. CDC

"A CDC vaccine advisory panel on Wednesday recommended that first shots should go to pregnant women, household contacts of infants younger than 6 months, health care workers, young people ages 6 months to 24 years and non-elderly adults at high risk for the flu."

Swine flu deaths now at 12

Another 30,000 and there will be as many as the regular, non-hyped flu.

Perspective on the Sebelius Flu

"In 2005, the flu killed 63,001 people in the United States, according to the CDC. But that year the President of the United States did not use a primetime news conference to admonish the American people that they must wash their hands, and the Vice President did not say he would not want his family to have to ride on a plane or a subway because someone might sneeze near them.

An average of 36,171 people died each year of flu in the United States from 1993 to 2003, according to a recent CDC study.

Despite the recent fervor surrounding swine flu, conventional flu viruses have killed far more people than other, more publicized, strains in recent years. Avian flu, for example, has killed 257 people worldwide since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. It has killed no people at all in the United States."

Finish reading the article here.

On March 15-20 about 170 of us from the Columbus area returned from the Middle East. About 20 of us got sick on the way home. Some got sick after arriving home--some 2 or 3 days later with fever, aches and chills. It took about 4 weeks for my GI track to return to normal, although I didn't go to the hospital. Still I was lying on the floor of the airport for several hours, and someone had to get me to the front of the line at customs. I'm just thankful it wasn't during this scare. I'd still be at LaGuardia!

Renaming the swine flu

President Obama formally picked Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services with nary a squawk. She is another tax cheat, now almost obligatory for an Obama cabinet member, and daughter of Ohio's former Governor Gilligan. She is a tax and spend Democrat getting Kansas deeply in debt during the good years, and most recently solved a financial crisis in her state by cutting education funding. The nomination went through easily because of the made-up hysteria by the press and the government (Emmanuel: "never waste a crisis") about the pandemic called "the swine flu." Sibelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services will oversee a massive department with wide-ranging responsibilities, the key to the President’s vision for health care--to nationalize it--or spread limited, low level care, as it were. The 61 year old Sebelius was raised a Catholic in Cincinnati, however, she will have no problem rescinding whatever few rights and protections are left for the unborn American children. Being a Catholic means nothing on this issue (Kennedy, Kerry, Pelosi, et al)--party comes before Pope and Church when you've got a new messiah to follow. President Obama owes the radical, pro-abortion feminists because he squashed their dream of a woman president, just like he owes the unions and ACORN handing them the auto and mortgage/foreclosure bailouts.

Therefore, I propose renaming the swine flu the "Sebelius Flu." For too long, American women have languished in the background with very little named for them--diseases, laws (even Roe v. Wade didn't use a real name), mountains, buildings, etc. With four syllables, eight if you count influenza, the newly named disease will help fill up the time on the 24 hour cable news, broadcast news, and presidential news conferences. Although an awkward space filler on a teleprompter, Sebelius Influenza can be learned by even the least fluent of speakers.

Swine flu--Mexico and the U.S.

In Mexico, they are dying. In the U.S. they are getting sick, being treated, and going home.

Besser CDC update today, Apr. 28:"The CDC today raised the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. to 64, with 45 of them in New York. No deaths have been confirmed in the U.S. That will change, Besser said."

In Mexico, no one really knows how many are sick, or how many have died. I doubt that the government has reported it accurately. The government is in charge of their health care and their media may have about the same independence (none) as ours. So that may be the head scratcher answer for our journalists who can't seem to figure out why Mexicans are dying and Americans aren't.

The Mexican government for years has been dependent on money sent home by its illegal immigrants in the U.S., instead of developing its own infrastructure. Mexico is a country rich in natural resources, but entire cities and families have been descimated by emigration (who are probably now returning home). So far, their health care system hasn't even been able to get help to family members of those who have died, and this is spread person to person. I saw this from a blogger in Mexico (Medical News Today)

I live in Cancun, on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, about 1hour and 30 minutes by plane from Mexico City. Mexico City is the Swine Flu ground zero. A few days ago most of the Cancun population watched news coming from Mexico City with detachment. "This is over 1000 kilometers away," I heard one person say "we are fine." Gradually, local attitudes have changed.

Yesterday we all watched the national news and heard that restaurants, nightclubs, schools, theatres, sports stadia, and anywhere that might hold large groups of people had not only been closed in Mexico City, but along the vacation resorts of the Pacific coast - Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Zihuatanejo. Can you imagine the economic consequences of closing restaurants, bars and nightclubs in tourist resorts?

Friends in Mexico City phone me and describe empty streets. The few who do venture out wear masks and go about their business as swiftly as they can.

The whole of Mexico is scared. "Will I get this? If I do what will happen to me? Am I hearing the truth? They say it is not so bad and easily treatable, but they would say that, wouldn't they?"

I heard a young mother say today that she was told not to bring her daughter to preschool because she had a temp (teething), but she had the little girl at the senior center where I was volunteering. Doesn't seem to be much alarm here--although I think that was poor planning on her part, considering many elders are immune compromised. Probably because Americans know they don't have government health care. YET. However, a pandemic will be a good excuse for the government to take over, just like Obama took over the auto industry, to share it with the unions, who supported him and the banks. If we already had Obama-care, I think there would be a different story--a much larger, faster spread and many already dead. The government handled the last swine flu outbreak (1976) badly, with more people dying from the vaccine than from the flu.

Another thing journalists are asking is why young, healthy adults are dying. My parents' generation didn't die in the last flu pandemic in 1918. They were young children. It was young healthy adults that died--like our soldiers called to fight in Europe, but dying before they got there. That's how it spread--lots of young, healthy people crowded together. We lost more soliders to the flu than we did to the war, a war in which it wasn't unusual to lose more men in one campaign than the 6years we've been in Iraq. Most of that generation is gone now. The immunity is over. It died with my parents' generation.

We know now how to treat the effects of the flu, but it will be interesting to see if Obama uses this as a crisis to take over health care with out a vote or objection.

If we already had Obama-care, we'd be holed up in our homes like the Mexicans, whimpering, wondering why the people ever voted for the man who nationalized our industries, destroyed our military, created a constitutional crisis by attacking the former president, and groveled and pandered before foreign leaders. Oh well.

Update: In Wednesday's WSJ article about the swine flu, you had to get all the way to the end to find, "the sorry state of Mexico's public and private health system. . . patients often wait hours to days to see the doctor." Just the kind of Obama-care we need north of the border.

Update 2: On the way to the grocery store Wednesday I heard a young child had died in the U.S. of swine flu. On the way home, I learned the child was a Mexican brought to the U.S. for better treatment. It's a tragedy for the family, but a plus for Obama's team which is looking for opportunities to nationalize health care, so maybe it's not as good as an American death, but it's close.

A message from Joe Alutto and Larry Lewellen

The Provost and Vice President for HR of Ohio State University want you to do what I was taught in kindergarten. "Understand that the symptoms of swine flu closely resemble seasonal flu and include fever, weakness, coughing and lack of appetite. It is contagious. The best way to prevent swine flu is to continue to follow these steps:

Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue or your forearm (not your hand) when you sneeze.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth to prevent germs from spreading.

Wash your hands often with soap and water and use hand sanitizers.

Avoid being in close contact with those who are ill. If you are ill, please limit your exposure to others by staying home from work or school.

Swine flu can be successfully treated with medication. If you think you might have the flu, please see your primary care doctor. He or she can test you for the flu and will be able to identify the strain of the flu you may have. University students should call or visit the Wilce Student Health Center if they have questions or concerns."

I remember about 15 years ago we had a big cost cutting campaign in the OSU Libraries. My suggestion was to launch a hand washing campaign to cut down on sick days. I was told it was not a line item, therefore it wouldn't count even if we could do it. All the things they are saying about prevention are common sense, and you should have been doing anyway. I also carry a squeeze bottle of alcohol hand rub in my car and my purse. And every time I see a cashier pick up my coffee cup by the lip and hand it too me, I want to smack him.

Also, if swine flu had been on the uptick after George W. Bush had returned from Mexico, you can bet your patooty that the press would have blamed him. As it is, because Bush stressed the spread of disease as a weapon of terrorists and beefed up that component of security, we should be in good shape--as long as Obama doesn't wait as long as he did with the pirates. But if he fails, he can blame Bush anyway as not having done it right. Nothing was achieved in his 100 days, and he can either use the excuse he was a baby, out of the office campaigning in Illinois, or it was Bush's fault. The press was so sickening over this 100 day meme over the week-end it was enough to give one flu symptoms. And nothing but taking over large sectors of the economy, creating a constitutional crisis over interrogation techniques and raising more debt has been accomplished. Way to go BO.