Swine Flu Info Blog

4 comments:

Tee said...

I think you have a misunderstanding about the question of the class project. There's no average year for this Influenza A "swine" flu because it's new. Your project might ask about average influenza deaths per year and those are up to 500 000 per year worldwide.
Regarding "yarpa darpa"'s long answer: It's amazing that you quote and wrote so much and yet could get it so wrong.
The designation H1N1 has nothing to do with "the first virus of the year". The designations have to do with the proteins that are part of the influenza virus and the different genes it has to express these.
The reason why it was called "swine flu" first was that the strand was 2 parts swine influenza, 1 part human influenza, and 1 part avian influenza, so it caught on like that. However, when all this confusion arose about pigs and pork and several countries rushed to kill thousands of healthy pigs they decided to change the name, because it's an inaccurate name that leads plenty of people to the wrong conclusions.
Nevertheless, this swine/human/avian Influenza A H1N1 IS a new influenza virus.
On the contrary the seasonal influenza this year is human influenza A (H1), A (H3), and B.

July 3, 2009 at 2:11 PM

Yarpa Darpa Doo said...

Interesting question.
In the U.S., approximately 36,000 people die of "Swine" flu. How is this possible, you ask?
Go to the CDC and the WHO and see all the backpedaling they're doing. This year's "Swine Flu" was nothing more than the standard flu that cycles every year. Every year, approximately 36,000 young, elderly, or immune compromised people die of the flu (and that's in the U.S. alone).
But you asked about "Swine" flu, no? Well, just as I said before the CDC even attempted to call this a "pandemic" the "Swine" flu is NOT a Swine Flu at all. It is, 100%, nothing more than the common yearly flu. What happened is this (and yes, you can verify this on the CDC and WHO's websites if you do some digging):
1.) Every year, people get the flu. Each year it mutates slightly from the last year.
2.) A technician at the CDC found two "swine flu" markers among thousands and immediately called it "swine flu."
3.) The CDC, in an attempt to justify their existence and paychecks announce it as a "Pandemic!" (They do this every year. Think about it. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Mono, Bird Flu, Mad Cow Disease, E. Coli, Meningitis, West Nile Virus, etc. etc. etc. etc. Each year they have a new scare that amounts to nothing so they can justify the billions of dollars the government dumps into their pockets every year.)
4.) Newspapers pick up the story since they love to sensationalize pointless crap.
5.) CDC/WHO actually finally finish doing their research and find that the flu also has the common markers for bird flu, human, and other flus, and is, in fact, just the normal every-day flu.
6.) CDC/WHO take down any mention of "Swine" flu on their websites, and start calling it "H1N1"
7.) What they don't tell you is that every year, "Seasonal Influenza A" is broken into different strains (H1, H3, Untyped, etc.) Any identifiable sub strains each year are then given a "number" designator. So the first of the season would be, guess? -> N1 Thus, H1N1 means "First H1 strain of Seasonal Influenza A. And guess what? The H1N1 designator has been used for DECADES to denote a trackable strain of Seasonal Influenza A.
8.) The CDC/WHO are now playing word games to try and hide the unnecessary panic that they started. Now, instead of calling H1N1 "Seasonal Influenza A" like they have for so many decades in the past, they are now pretending to differentiate "Seasonal Influenza A (H1N1)" and "Novel Influenza A (H1N1)".
The fact is, "swine flu" IS H1N1, always has been, always will be. It's the flu. That's it. A regular... Old... Flu... Nothing unique about it. The CDC/WHO, despite saying as much in so many words will never come out and just say, "We were wrong. There's nothing special about it. Sorry." Why? Because their whole "pandemic" scare cost the U.S. BILLIONS of dollars.
But what they will say:
"Treat it just as you would treat regular H1N1."
"It's just as contagious as regular H1N1."
"It's just as deadly as regular H1N1."
"Oh, yeah... It's not swine flu. Call it H1N1 from now on."

July 3, 2009 at 6:48 PM

the_real said...

1 million

July 3, 2009 at 10:04 PM

datrod1 said...

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July 4, 2009 at 1:01 AM