Ugh, more bullshit coming my way. I guess something like 2 or 3 students at OSU have been confirmed by the CDC to have swine flu. I've been getting emails like mad saying how the students are being isolated and quarantined and that people who are currently living at OSU need to be uber careful. It's really annoying, and I feel bad for the kids who have swine flu because I'm sure all the hype and fear that people have of them is probably more detrimental than the actual fucking sickness.
Well, it looks like Madagascar's closing its ports.
Didn't they recently have a coup d'etat that resulted in a former DJ taking control of the government? Obviously a former bouncer is in control of their Health Department.
Well, it looks like Madagascar's closing its ports.
Didn't they recently have a coup d'etat that resulted in a former DJ taking control of the government? Obviously a former bouncer is in control of their Health Department.
I was meant to go to Madagascar earlier this year, but it just so happened that it was a day after the some violent protests! Riots and police brutality for the fail! I wanted to see some lemurs.
I mentioned this on another thread, but my boss was going around the other day asking if people could work from home if the "pandemic" gets worse. Sigh, I would love to work from home, but still...
A couple of months ago it was someone's birthday in the office, and we had cake. One woman says almost kiddingly "haha, we should have some hand sanitizer here." Not everyone heard her and after a few moments, she goes "Seriously, I need some hand sanitizer." She repeats this about 5 times and starts to get hysterical and says "we should really be worrying about this right now!" To my amazement, everyone nodded their heads gravely and someone rushed to get an enormous bottle. Then they preceded to talk about how important it was to have hand sanitizer, and how the swine flu was mutating dangerously, omg there are no vaccines! etc. Next week little bottles appear at every sink in the bathroom, and there are signs saying to go to the receptionist to get free purell. I would scream at everyone, if not for probably getting fired.
At worst lots of people will get it, we'll run out of medicine and everyone will have to be sick a little longer than usual while they recover the slow, normal way. In all likelyhood, in such a case, medicine would be rationed so that it went to those who needed it. Honestly, that doesn't sound that bad to me.
The inevitable slowdown in the economy if such a thing happened would be pretty annoying though. But oh well. Still better than the Bubonic plague!
Would it be audacious to say that I live in the safest place in the world when it comes to swineflu? If Hong Kong is good at anything, it's dealing with viral outbreaks.
Would it be audacious to say that I live in the safest place in the world when it comes to swineflu? If Hong Kong is good at anything, it's dealing with viral outbreaks.
People on islands like to feel all safe from outbreaks because it is hard for them to get to you across the ocean. Just remember that if the virus starts on your island, you'll wish you were on the mainland.
Apparently my city - Melbourne, Australia, has the greatest number of people positively diagnosed with swine flu per capita in the world. I'm surprised at how involved the media has gotten in trying to mimic the US type hysterics as SARS wasn't huge here even though we were very close to the South East Asian countries who bore the brunt of the disease. I've even seen 3 people wearing face masks, football games being delayed, defence forces kept out of the state and ofcourse, schools shutting down.
It's completely stupid, it's just another influenza. Just like the first strains they mutated down from birds - hence the typing - "A" for avian, where aquatic birds are the most common natural carriers of the virus. Pigs have always been the animals in which viruses mutate fastest and get to the point where they are contagious to humans.
The way the media handles stuff like this is stupid and desensitising to the point where the greater majority of the public view them as crying "wolf" over and over again. Now if it were smallpox then the shit would really hit the fan and is probably the best bio-weapon of choice by terrorists as no country in the world would be able to keep up with the spread and production of the inadequate vaccination would be too slow to keep up.
A co-worker's uncle died a week ago. The autopsy revealed that he died of Swine Flu. He was middle aged, obese, and had high blood pressure - so he wasn't a model of health.
It's completely stupid, it's just another influenza. Just like the first strains they mutated down from birds - hence the typing - "A" for avian, where aquatic birds are the most common natural carriers of the virus. Pigs have always been the animals in which viruses mutate fastest and get to the point where they are contagious to humans.
Wrong, influenza has 3 virus species: A, B, C. They are not named after the animals they infect. Influenza A infects humans, pigs, dogs, ferrets, horses, birds, cats, tigers, leopards, etc. B infects humans and a few other animals. C infects seals, swine and humans (rarely). What would be considered its preferred host depends on which receptors that particular influenza virus binds. Also we really don't know the endemic levels of every avian or swine population. I know that in migratory birds on the eastern US coast it can range from non-detectable levels to 50% of the flock depending on when you take samples.
Viruses also do not mutate faster in one animal over another. Their polymerase protein behaves the same and has the same error rate regardless of which host it infects. What can happen in pigs is increased reassortment of genome segments but, this reassortment can happen just as much in birds and humans as well.
We've also been at a pandemic status for a while now, it was only recently that it was upgraded to level 6. However I've heard my professors, even some of the ones that work in the flu center, talk about how WHO is probably going to reevaluate the pandemic levels to include severity of disease so we don't get this debacle all over again. Right now as it stands this influenza has a mortality rate of 0.4% whereas normal seasonal influenza has a mortality rate of about 0.05% - 0.23%. The warmer parts of the northern hemisphere have even less to worry about since influenza transmission drops when your environment is humid and warm. The southern hemisphere, just starting with their normal influenza season, will have many more cases as the temperatures and humidity drops for winter. If anything is going to happen it will be this coming fall after the flu has had all summer to reassort in the southern hemisphere. I won't be worried until it swaps out one or two specific gene segments for its avian equivalent gene segment.
I agree with you about people on Islands, Scott. Hong Kong island itself however, covers about 15% of the whole Hong Kong special administrative region which directly connects to mainland China; The HK-Shenzhen border being the busiest in the world.
How accurate is the swine flu test? Obviously the swine flu is spreading all around, but my skeptical nature makes me think that a lot of the people testing positive for swine flu are false positives. Like, maybe they are just sick, and the swine flu test is flaky. How exactly does the test work?
How accurate is the swine flu test? Obviously the swine flu is spreading all around, but my skeptical nature makes me think that a lot of the people testing positive for swine flu are false positives. Like, maybe they are just sick, and the swine flu test is flaky. How exactly does the test work?
How accurate is the swine flu test? Obviously the swine flu is spreading all around, but my skeptical nature makes me think that a lot of the people testing positive for swine flu are false positives. Like, maybe they are just sick, and the swine flu test is flaky. How exactly does the test work?
Many immunoassays have an appreciable false-positive rate, but I'm not sure how most of them are when handling clinical specimens. Generally, as you have a larger background of similar or competing microorganisms, the false-positive rate increases. I doubt there's much influenza background in most patients, so I can't imagine that an H1N1 assay would have a very high false-positive rate. They may also use a PCR-based assay, which would have a substantially lower false-positive rate.
Aside: One of my professors started out his lecture today with a slide on how to slow the spread of H1N1 and admonished us that, "this is a very serious problem." In another class (a large lecture), everyone was coughing; it was like a plague ward. So I'm not sweating it, I've just accepted the inevitability and noted that I might get to go home for a bit in the event that I DO get it (our health center has been sending students off-campus as a quarantine measure).
There's two tests that are done from what I can get on the CDC website. http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/rapid_testing.htm Rapid testing just looks for nucleoprotein that all influenza strains have. If you have any influenza, you will test positive with this.
The next test is rRT-PCR. This test is super specific for H1N1 pandemic influenza, and this technique is used in research quite a bit. If the rRT-PCR is testing positive, you're positive for H1N1 pandemic flu. You're more likely to get false negatives (not enough sample collected/not stored properly/etc) from the rRT-PCR than positives. As a result the number of people with H1N1 pandemic flu is probably being under reported.
Rapid testing just looks for nucleoprotein that all influenza strains have. If you have any influenza, you will test positive with this.
When I was tested, they took a swab from my nose, and came back ten minutes later to say I had some strain of influenza A (which was probably H1N1). Does that sound consistent?
Comments
...nationwide.
Madagascar has closed its ports.
I still think this could get bad, but I'm not quite worried yet. Whichever way it goes this really going to suck for the economy.
A couple of months ago it was someone's birthday in the office, and we had cake. One woman says almost kiddingly "haha, we should have some hand sanitizer here." Not everyone heard her and after a few moments, she goes "Seriously, I need some hand sanitizer." She repeats this about 5 times and starts to get hysterical and says "we should really be worrying about this right now!" To my amazement, everyone nodded their heads gravely and someone rushed to get an enormous bottle. Then they preceded to talk about how important it was to have hand sanitizer, and how the swine flu was mutating dangerously, omg there are no vaccines! etc. Next week little bottles appear at every sink in the bathroom, and there are signs saying to go to the receptionist to get free purell. I would scream at everyone, if not for probably getting fired.
The inevitable slowdown in the economy if such a thing happened would be pretty annoying though. But oh well. Still better than the Bubonic plague!
I'm surprised at how involved the media has gotten in trying to mimic the US type hysterics as SARS wasn't huge here even though we were very close to the South East Asian countries who bore the brunt of the disease.
I've even seen 3 people wearing face masks, football games being delayed, defence forces kept out of the state and ofcourse, schools shutting down.
It's completely stupid, it's just another influenza. Just like the first strains they mutated down from birds - hence the typing - "A" for avian, where aquatic birds are the most common natural carriers of the virus.
Pigs have always been the animals in which viruses mutate fastest and get to the point where they are contagious to humans.
The way the media handles stuff like this is stupid and desensitising to the point where the greater majority of the public view them as crying "wolf" over and over again.
Now if it were smallpox then the shit would really hit the fan and is probably the best bio-weapon of choice by terrorists as no country in the world would be able to keep up with the spread and production of the inadequate vaccination would be too slow to keep up.
SWINE FLU
Viruses also do not mutate faster in one animal over another. Their polymerase protein behaves the same and has the same error rate regardless of which host it infects. What can happen in pigs is increased reassortment of genome segments but, this reassortment can happen just as much in birds and humans as well.
We've also been at a pandemic status for a while now, it was only recently that it was upgraded to level 6. However I've heard my professors, even some of the ones that work in the flu center, talk about how WHO is probably going to reevaluate the pandemic levels to include severity of disease so we don't get this debacle all over again. Right now as it stands this influenza has a mortality rate of 0.4% whereas normal seasonal influenza has a mortality rate of about 0.05% - 0.23%. The warmer parts of the northern hemisphere have even less to worry about since influenza transmission drops when your environment is humid and warm. The southern hemisphere, just starting with their normal influenza season, will have many more cases as the temperatures and humidity drops for winter. If anything is going to happen it will be this coming fall after the flu has had all summer to reassort in the southern hemisphere. I won't be worried until it swaps out one or two specific gene segments for its avian equivalent gene segment.
Maybe we need to do a show on this after all.
How accurate is the swine flu test? Obviously the swine flu is spreading all around, but my skeptical nature makes me think that a lot of the people testing positive for swine flu are false positives. Like, maybe they are just sick, and the swine flu test is flaky. How exactly does the test work?
The next test is rRT-PCR. This test is super specific for H1N1 pandemic influenza, and this technique is used in research quite a bit. If the rRT-PCR is testing positive, you're positive for H1N1 pandemic flu. You're more likely to get false negatives (not enough sample collected/not stored properly/etc) from the rRT-PCR than positives. As a result the number of people with H1N1 pandemic flu is probably being under reported.
EDIT: They also will try to culture the virus it seems to confirm which strain it is. http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/specimencollection.htm