CDC and NIH have their marching orders: make wild swine flu predictions or face funding cuts!
Achtung!

I'd ask for a link to back this assertion up but, given the poster, why bother.

because it will be the same as the west nile farce and the first swine flu fraud

There were funding cuts when they didn't make predictions for those?

Be here to admit it and do not change your handle to hide.

Haven't changed it in over three years (was never here before that) and I don't plan on it any time soon.

Same goes for you too. If this thing does warrant the attention it's received, make sure you stick around to kiss my ass.

If the swine flu was as strong as most other flu's then the death toll would be much higher. but where is the panic, death and gloom in that?

I'm sure this statement is based in your profound knowledge of virology and influenza. Oh, it's not you say? Surprise surprise.

And what if it's only "as strong as" seasonal flu? Does that mean we shouldn't give it any attention?

Where is the outrage with this Administration for not having enough vaccines available for this years flu season?

How exactly do you propose this administration fix that problem? Producing influenza vaccine is not timely or easy.

The need for the vaccine came up late, therefore the vaccine won't be ready until late AND the production facilities were probably in the middle of making the seasonal vaccine, which would limit production capacity.

# Editor's comment

This was a quick email survey which simply asked: Do you plan to have the swine flu vaccine yourself? It was sent to several hundred GPs who weren't selected apart from the fact that they are all known Pulse readers. We didn't press release the results, but the national newspapers do closely monitor our website and I did provide a comment for a Daily Mail reporter. I would agree that the survey was relatively small, but it was the third such survey in the last week to find that healthcare professionals are likely to refuse swine flu vaccination in fairly large numbers. A peer-reviewed study in Hong Kong has found the same thing. Richard Hoey Editor, Pulse

It seems the docs are likely not going to get it because they fall outside of risk groups for serious illness and realize the dose would be wasted on them. They'll also have access to other preventative measures such as masks and gloves ect that your average person does not have access to.

...except for the "frontline worker" part.

I said serious illness, not risk of infection.

That was in reference to the outrage, when the former Administration was criticized for not having enough vaccines on hand. Mostly a tongue in cheek post.

Oh. My bad, I don't remember that.

Yippie for immunosupressive drugs that trap white blood cells in the lympocites. Means there are fewer blood cells for the virus to attack and turn into factories.

Influenza doesn't replicate in lymphocytes. It replicates in the cells that line your airway and bronchial tubes in your lungs.

JPW assumes that scientific credentials and an employer qualify him as an informed objective observer, and we should believe him.

What a fool I am to believe that being educated in virology puts me in a position to better understand this topic. Fuck, I'm an idiot!

All one needs is to have experienced the flu. It's no big deal.

LOL so you're saying all flus are created equal? Once you have one, it makes you an expert on influenza? LOL

The scaremongering is all out of proportion to the severity of the disease. JPW doth protest too much.

All we've seen is the slow smoldering of the virus in the population during off peak months. Yet you want to write it off as already done. Not prudent.

LOL Ray, you're a perfect example of why this country has fucked itself by convincing everyone that their opinions matter all the time. It's not gotten to the point that one doesn't even have to know anything about the topic, yet their opinion is as good as gold.

What I see is a counting of anything with flu-like symptoms as Swine Flu.

Initially, yes, that was what was done because it was considered better to err on the side of caution and treat EVERYONE as if they had it.

Now, however, detection assays have been optimized and distributed. Also, most articles I read now are reporting CONFIRMED cases and deaths, not suspected.

BTW you never did tell us your credentials.

I'm a fifth year graduate student studying virology. As an undergrad I spent two years working with HIV and one year working with Francisella tularensis. As a graduate student, I've been working with picornaviruses for the past four years.

I should be done with my Ph.D in about a year.

You?

I've heard it all. They're bullshiting. They won't get the statistics they want if they make an honest effort to test every suspicious case.

What exactly are the "statistics they want"?

Believe it or not, the WHO and CDC have NOT set some number of cases they are aiming to meet. This isn't influenza affirmative action here. The fewer the cases the better and I'm sure you won't find another group of people who'd be more happy to be proven wrong.

I volunteered at the county health department doing surveillance when this thing first started this spring. Believe me, the place was a mad house with ALL available staff dedicated to the task of monitoring influenza cases in the county. It is not a joke. It is not a scam.

Also, I'm assuming you have some way to proving "they're bullshitting?" You must have some super-secret source of information that allows you to know such things because no one else does.

I can understand one's distrust of government, but the lengths to which you go to justify YOUR particular mistrust are pretty ludicrous.

Well I had my Doctorates in bootylogy at 15, my Ph.D in cigars at 28 and got my Grand Masters 10th Degree Red Belt in Scotch at 45.

Well shit I need to find out what the requirements are because I'm fairly sure I've met those too LOL

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm scotch.........

You're still a kid yet. The day you grow up is the day you realize that government is not your friend; it's your enemy.

Uh huh. Sure.

The day you grow up is the day you stop looking at everything through the same lens.

BTW, the information presented in the article you linked is not new, nor is it completely accurate.

I would add, that low levels of Vitamin D during winter months has a direct connection for why we have a cold and flu season. It would too rational and too cheap to promote adequate levels of vitamin D. And best of all, there is no risk of toxic side effects.

Ray, there is not single vitamin or supplement that will prevent you from getting sick. Does it help to eat nutritiously, sleep the right amount and be as stress free as possible? Absolutely. No one will ever disagree that being healthy will help lessen illness. However, it will not COMPLETELY prevent you from being infected or getting sick.

Like what?

First of all, that WWI was not the sole cause of the 1918 pandemic. It contributed greatly by causing a large flux of people traveling between the continents, that's to be sure (note-that very thing happens today, probably at even higher levels). However, it does not explain the huge numbers of infected and dead.

All of his talk of the conditions causing mutations in the virus are not really relevant, since past influenza epidemics have shown that the virus doesn't begin to significantly mutate until selective pressure is applied-read immunity. It usually takes two to three waves of infections before significant immunity exists in the population for mutant strains to begin to predominate. This is the same thing we're seeing now.

His whole confinement argument is rather disingenuous, as is the rest of the analysis regarding the soldiers, given that the disease was not confined to soldiers. There were millions of cases across the US and tens of millions of cases across the globe. How exactly does one figure these into his argument? You can't and that's why he ignored them.

The evolutionary strategy, from the virus's perspective, is to stay one step ahead of the immune systems of both humans and animals but not two steps ahead. The flu virus aims to infect and reproduce without killing a critical mass of the hosts, of the herd, so the virus's virulence is ameliorated after it becomes fatal for people on the margins of the host population the weak and the elderly.

Great example of a little bit of information being used dangerously. While what he is saying is true, his interpretation is complete unmitigated bullshit. The reason pandemic flus represent the threat they do and have the potential for increased mortality that they do is because there is no cross protection provided by previous exposures. The reason the seasonal flu kills immunocompromised (ie elderly) individuals is because that cross protection is reduced or gone while it is still present and strong in young adults with more robust immune systems. With pandemic flu, the opposite is true. Those with healthier immune systems are often killed by an over-reactive immune response (the cytokine storm he mentions) but it is NOT a guarantee that it will in fact occur and is completely dependent on the virus and the virulence factors is carries. Also, it's not the killing of elderly and susceptible populations that causes virulence to decrease in pandemic strains-it's the build up of immunity in the population as the virus spreads. The fact that susceptible populations remain at high risk of death years or decades after pandemic strains become endemic shows that they don't lose potency, they just settle in niches that can't fight them off.

World War I disrupted this synchronized, co-evolutionary relationship between flu viruses and human populations.

Complete BS. As said above, WWI allowed for massive and rapid transport of the virus. Notice he doesn't give any sources for this statement? That's because he pulled it straight from his ass.

In normal flu pandemics, even in severe ones, the flu virus kills a portion of the weak and elderly. This appears to be the case in 1837 for Germany and in 1890 for Russia, though reliable medical evidence is scarce. It was certainly true for the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu of 1968, neither of which were significantly fatal for young adults.

He's treating every influenza virus equally, as if they're equivalent. Anyone with even a base knowledge of virology knows the extreme fallacy being committed here. Different viruses have different combinations of virulence factors which will make them behave differently in human and animal hosts. Hell, if you took the reconstituted 1918 virus and compared it to H3N2 and other H1N1 pandemic strains, you'll see a higher morbidity and mortality in ferret models (the standard model for influenza) which mirrors the same differences seen in humans.

The origins of the 1918 pandemic can be traced back to the trenches of the Western Front in 1915, 1916, and 1917 to the world's first large-scale industrial and international war.

Now on to H1N1 swine flu:

If the current H1N1 swine flu virus does become abnormally lethal, there would be three leading explanations: first, that the virus was accidentally released, or escaped, from a laboratory; second, that a disgruntled lab employee unleashed the virus (as happened, according to the official version of events, with the 2001 anthrax attack); or third, that a group, corporation or government agency intentionally released the virus in the interests of profit and power.

Complete fucking bullshit. There is ZERO evidence to support this and it is intellectually vacuous to make such a bullshit statement in such an authoritative manner. Zoonosis of viruses, influenza viruses included, is not an uncommon event. The 1918 virus included segments of avian influenza along with human adapted segments, making it a chimera just like H1N1. The formation of these chimeras if inevitable given the biology of the virus and is well established in influenza research.

The Propaganda Campaign

Oh, propaganda, what a poor poor word. As tortured as the word "logic" is whenever BuffaloBob uses it. Unfortunately for folks such as yourself Ray, the word "propaganda" has become nothing more than the description for ANY information that disagrees with your notions.

Across the mainstream media, reports announce one swine flu death after another (even though ordinary flu kills about 35,000 Americans each year). Upon closer scrutiny of what passes for journalism, the victims have "underlying health problems," or "a common underlying health condition," or "significant medical conditions."

This isn't surprising given we're in the season that is suboptimal for influenza transmission. You'd think that the fact that we're seeing cases of H1N1 persist would be significant to you as it is to everyone else, but no, we have to have cases AND deaths for it to be important. He also makes the common mistake of comparing it to seasonal flu for the same reason as above-we're not in the regular flu season.

The media has never been in the habit of reporting the cases of people who, for no known reason, die of the flu. Out of the 35,000 Americans who die each year from flu-related illnesses, some are bound to be relatively young and healthy. It happens. This year, however, their stories are front-page news.

Because deaths amongst otherwise healthy young adults from influenza is a rare event, even during seasonal outbreaks. A trademark of pandemic flus is an DISPROPORTIONATE (as in higher than normal) number of deaths amongst young adults-something we're seeing with this strain.

More recently, news reports now claim that the H1N1 swine flu can affect people in the lungs and lead to pneumonia. This, however, is what separates the flu from the common cold in the first place; and this is why tens of thousands of elderly people die of flu-related symptoms each year.

Another example of a little information being used dangerously.

Yes,that is a difference between influenza viruses and rhinoviruses (which cause the common cold)-one replicates in the upper airway (rhinoviruses-can't replicate at body temperature) and the other replicates upper respiratory tract (influenza viruses). What he leaves out, however, is that it is not common for influenza to replicate in the LOWER respiratory tract (lower bronchials and alveolar of the lungs). Animal model infections with the H1N1 swine flu show a slightly higher level of replication in the lower respiratory tract than seasonal influenza strains. That fact alone is not reason to believe this virus will kill us all, but it is a trait we'd rather not observe.

First, the historical section on the 1918 virus is intellectually dishonest, making absolutely no link between the unique conditions of World War I and the flu pandemic; instead, the site propagates the erroneous notion that this virus came out of the blue.

What a pompous POS. The views he espouses in the beginning of his column are not mainstream at all and contain distortions of what is generally accepted. Then he gets pissed that his fringe explanation is not give a place of honor on a website that uses REAL data and information over wishful thinking. The origins of the 1918 flu are not known and possibly never will be.

1976 + 1984 = 2009

In sum, it appears that the 2009 swine flu pandemic will not be 1918. It might be a 1976-style hoax, however, serving profit and power

His column in no way disproved or really said much of anything at all to warrant his final conclusion. It does look like the current H1N1 probably won't be as bad as the 1918 flu due to the absence of a particular virulence factor that was present in the 1918 virus, but that doesn't mean it won't be worse than seasonal flu. We'll have to wait and see.

with a bit of Orwell's 1984 thrown in for good measure.

Speaking of throwing in a bit of 1984 for good measure, he should re-read his column. The final four paragraphs or so are nothing more than anti-government sensationalist rantings applied to a topic that he is clearly lacking in knowledge to address (or has the knowledge but chooses to misrepresent it anyway) with a dash of 1984 to scare the readers with.

Final post, I swear.