DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum More cases of swine flu reported; WHO warns of 'health emergency'

WOW,, that's a heavy price tag I bet, but if that's what we need to do, then so be it... Thanks for the info... I really didn't feel like researching it....

Biden says avoid planes, subways; puts out clarifying statement

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would not recommend taking any commercial flight or riding in a subway car “at this point” because swine flu virus can spread “in confined places.” A little more than one hour later, Biden rushed out a statement backing off.

“I would tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show.. “It’s not that it’s going to Mexico. It’s [that] you’re in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft. That’s me. …

“So, from my perspective, what it relates to is mitigation. If you’re out in the middle of a field when someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”

That contradicted more restrained advice from President Barack Obama and the federal government — and the last thing the White House wants to do right now is shut down the airline industry and big-city subways out of mass panic.

The White House quickly arranged for Biden to make this statement through a spokesperson.

“On the Today Show this morning, the vice president was asked what he would tell a family member who was considering air travel to Mexico this week. The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans: that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico. If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways. This is the advice the vice president has given family members who are traveling by commercial airline this week. As the president said just last night, every American should take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu: Keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you're sick and keep your children home from school if they're sick.”

Host Matt Lauer had asked the vice president: “This is by no means a ‘gotcha’ type of question. … But if a member of your family came to you … and said, ‘Look, I want to go on a commercial airliner to Mexico, and back within the next week,’ would you think it’s a good idea?” Biden made it unmistakably clear he would not want his family to make any trips on planes or subways.

These sorts of comments are what the Obama administration fears from Biden, who after more than three decades in Washington is known for making gaffes.

Biden has had fewer of them since the election and even fewer since taking office. Recently, he stirred things up by saying he was once in the Oval Office with George W. Bush and told the president that no one was following his leadership. Karl Rove flatly called Biden a "liar."

“If you are feeling certain flu symptoms, don't get on an airplane, don't get on any system of public transportation where you're confined and you could potentially spread the virus. So those are the steps that I think we need to take right now. But understand that because this is a new strain, we have to be cautious.”

Before taking office, Biden was the unpredictable one in the Obama team. He compared the economic crisis with Sept. 11, saying, "We're at war!" and he said it was “a mistake” that Obama selected a CIA director without consulting the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Geoff Freeman, the senior vice president of the Travel Industry Association of America, called Biden's comments "unfortunate."

"We need to leave this in the hands of the medical experts, and medical experts are not discouraging anyone" from using these modes of transportation, he said.

Biden and other government officials "need to be very cognizant of the words they use and not make inflammatory comments."

"We're pleased to see the White House working to clarify these comments, and we urge all elected officials to watch their words because they can take on a life of their own."

To keep from getting sick, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends: “Try to avoid close contact with sick people. If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.”

Obama said at his news conference on Wednesday night that “individual families [need to] start taking very sensible precautions — that can make a huge difference.

“So wash your hands when you shake hands,” he advised. “Cover your mouth when you cough. I know it sounds trivial, but it makes a huge difference. If you are sick, stay home. If your child is sick, keep them out of school.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090430/pl_politico/21925

Just build up immunity at a young age . . .



You'll be sittin' pretty!

I literally just got that picture 30 seconds ago in an e-mail. The subject was :Found Swine Flu Source.

The caption on the picture was: YOU {Explicite}, you just killed us all.

You forgot " Wash behind your ears "

What's really troubling/hilarious to me about Joe Biden is that he's smarter than the other option for vice president.

This guy is a complete dunce. We're going to get some great stuff out of him in the next four years.

Quote:

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What's really troubling/hilarious to me about Joe Biden is that he's smarter than the other option for vice president.

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Biden is a harmless puppy, But damn if that man isn't a human gaff machine

j/c Is it in poor taste for me to post this. Now you can create your own swine flu and kill the world's population off.

http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Pandemic-2.html

Our all inclusive pre paid vacation to Los Cabos...Cancelled! We don't have a clue when we'll get to go, if ever, or even get reinburstment for this or all the other excursions and reservations we made and paid for. We are still working on the cancellations. We where to leave this Sunday. What a wicked bummer this has been. Next time.... I'll get vaction insurance when I book. I don't think we would have gotten the swine in Los Cabos but we probably would have caught it on the plane.

Dude, sorry to hear about that. Stinks.

Swine-Flu Hysteria
By BRET STEPHENS


In the matter of swine flu -- and the single dumbest response to it yet -- first prize was about to go to the government of Egypt, which last week ordered a cull of the country's estimated 400,000 pigs, never mind that the disease, name notwithstanding, is mainly transmitted human-to-human.

But then an Egyptian health official admitted "the authorities took advantage of the situation to resolve the question of disorderly pig rearing." More likely, as the country's Coptic minority was quick to suspect, was that health and sanitation were merely pretexts to extend anti-Christian bigotry into matters of livelihood and diet.

So that leaves the runners-up: protectionist Russia, which used the flu panic to ban pork imports from Spain and Canada; U.S. immigration restrictionists, who see in the "Mexican flu" a fresh reason to argue for a wall along the border; and panicky Joe Biden, who unwittingly made the case against Amtrak ("I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now") until his handlers interceded. Who knew Mr. Biden was talking about himself when he warned last year that Barack Obama would be tested by crisis early in his presidency?

Of course the winner of the contest is Mr. Biden, since he lacks even the excuse of a self-interested motive. But standing right behind the vice president is a legion of heavily credentialed panic proliferators.

These are the people whose terrifying forecasts you last heard during the avian flu panic of 2005 (deaths to date: 257, according to the World Health Organization) and the SARS panic of 2002-2003 (774 deaths). By contrast, garden-variety flus typically kill upwards of 30,000 Americans a year.

You might also have a vague memory of the "mad cow" panic that gripped the world in the 1990s. In his 1997 book "Deadly Feasts," Richard Rhodes warned that the human variant of mad cow, known as vCJD, might kill as many as 500,000 people a year in Britain alone. So far, total confirmed cases world-wide run to around 150.

Today's touchstone for panic is the 1918-20 Spanish Flu, mention of which seems to be included in nearly every news account of the swine flu outbreak. The Spanish Flu killed anywhere between 20 and 50 million people, at a time when the world's population numbered around 1.9 billion. Adjusting for population growth, the University of Minnesota's Michael Osterholm has suggested a modern-day outbreak could claim as many as 360 million lives.

But wait: Hasn't medical science made some progress in the past 90 years? An article in yesterday's Times of London notes that in 1919 the recommended precautions included mustard baths, Bovril (a salty meat extract, apparently), and salt water for gargling. Also, "the good effects of wine continue to be emphasized, and most agree in selecting port as the best of these."

Now we know better. Now, also, there are not several million exhausted and frightened men living in filthy conditions and close quarters along two sides of a 450-mile front. Or troops and sailors being moved in crowded trains and crowded ships, or being treated in overcrowded hospitals. And at least in Western cities, it is no longer typically five-to-a-room in squalid tenement housing.

These details matter because, as science writer Wendy Orent has pointed out in the New Republic, "only the precise conditions of World War I's Western Front -- a true disease factory -- could have created a flu as virulent as the one responsible for the 1918 pandemic. . . . The virus didn't need to keep people well enough to walk about -- fresh victims were close at hand."

Sure enough, no flu pandemic has been even remotely comparable: The worst was the Asian flu of 1957-58, which killed an estimated two million people, including 70,000 in the U.S. (or about twice the annual average.) That's been true despite the more than tripling of the world's population, the advent of factory farming, "climate change" and planeloads of potentially disease-bearing people bouncing between Mexico City and Hong Kong and New York and Paris.

In other words, despite all the processes of globalization that are said to be leading us toward nature's great comeuppance, trend lines indicate we are better equipped than ever to minimize the effects of a pandemic.

Why? Because wealthier people tend to be healthier people, and because wealthier societies have more to invest in medicine and research, and because a higher standard of living tends to correlate with more personal space. Also, because globalization means information sharing across boundaries, and rapid adoption of best practices, and greater transparency.

Just look at Mexico: In September 1985, following a devastating earthquake, an incompetent authoritarian government thought it could do the job without outside help. Wrong. This time around, an accountable government was, comparatively, a model of responsibility and openness. That's a result of two decades of political and economic liberalization.

So at least Mexico is making progress. As are we -- a point we too often forget amid occasional pandemic bouts of hysteria.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124147910689984999.html

Interesting. 30,000 Americans die each year from flu.

And how many Americans have died from swine flu? I'm asking because I am really not following this ridiculous craze.

one ... I think.

I said this earlier. Judging by the death numbers out of Mexico, swine flu is less contagious than regular flu, and far less fatal ... but let's not let that deter us from stirring up mass pandemonium in the media.

I saw WHO, or whatever issue a statement the other day that people shouldn't get to complacent when they issue a high pandemic rating ... maybe if the media would stop crying wolf everytime two people cough at the same time in two different countries ... then people might not get complacent.

Hola...Feliz Cinco DeMayo!

Officially renamed to 'World Swine Flu Observance Day'

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer Christopher Sherman, Associated Press Writer – 42 mins ago
HARLINGEN, Texas – This week should have been a joyous time for Judy Trunnell, a 33-year-old schoolteacher who had just given birth to a healthy baby girl.

But the friends and relatives whose cars lined the quiet street in front of her home in a quiet subdivision Tuesday instead were mourning her, the first American with swine flu to die.

"We're grieving now," said a woman with tear-streaked eyes who declined to give her name.

In Maryland, her cousin told WMAR-TV in Baltimore that Trunnell had died after spending two weeks in the hospital. She slipped into a coma, and her baby was delivered by Cesarean section, Mario Zamora said.

"She was just a beautiful person, warm at heart. She worked with disabled children as a teacher," Zamora said. "Those that knew her will always remember her."

Texas health officials stopped short of saying that swine flu caused Trunnell's death. State health department spokeswoman Carrie Williams said the schoolteacher had "chronic underlying health conditions" but wouldn't give any more details.

She died early Tuesday after being hospitalized since April 19, said Leonel Lopez, Cameron County epidemiologist.

Trunnell's death came as life in the areas hardest hit by the outbreak began returning to normal. In Mexico, where the current strain is thought to have originated, stores, restaurants and factories were officially allowed to reopen Tuesday. And U.S. health officials withdrew their recommendation that schools with suspected swine flu cases shut down for two weeks.

The only other swine flu death in the U.S. was that of a Mexico City toddler who also had other health problems and had been visiting relatives in Brownsville, near Harlingen. He died last week at a Houston children's hospital.

There have been 29 other confirmed swine flu deaths, all in Mexico. Hundreds of cases of the disease have been confirmed in several countries, but mostly in Mexico and the U.S.

Trunnell was from Harlingen, a city of about 63,000 near the U.S.-Mexico border, and taught in the Mercedes Independent School District about 15 miles west of her hometown.

She was first seen by a physician April 14 and was hospitalized on the April 19. Zamora said she had complained of difficulty breathing and was put on life support.

Doctors knew she had a flu when she came in, but did not know what kind, Lopez said. The area is undergoing a Type A influenza epidemic right now, and swine flu is one variety of that, he said. She was confirmed to have swine flu shortly before she died, he said.

Dr. Joseph McCormick, regional dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health's Brownsville campus, said the woman was extremely ill when she was hospitalized.

Mercedes school district officials announced that it would close its schools for the rest of the week and reopen Monday.

___

Associated Press writers Alicia A. Caldwell in El Paso and Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report.