Infinite Unknown

- China’s Bird Flu Goes Airborne (ZeroHedge, May 23, 2013)

As if China was not suffering enough from a slumping economy, the South China Morning Post now reports that the H7N9 ‘bird flu’ virus that has infected 131 people (and killed 36) so far can be transmitted not only by close contact but by airborne exposure. Domestic reports suggest the virus appears to be brought under control largely through restrictions at bird markets but the team at the University of Hong Kong has also found that pigs can be infected (cue ‘when pigs can fly’ pun). The findings suggest that there may be many more cases that have been detected or reported since “people may be transmitting the virus before they know they’ve even got it.”

Click image for interactive map of ‘bird flu’ infections…

For more information on individual patients infected: blue, patients infected with the H7N9 virus under treatment; red, those infected with H7N9 who have died; yellow, those who have fully recovered; and pink, those infected other types of the Influenza A virus, including H1N1.

Via SCMP,

The H7N9 bird flu virus can be transmitted not only through close contact but by airborne exposure, a team at the University of Hong Kong found after extensive laboratory experiments.

…

“We also found that the virus can infect pigs, which was not previously known,” said Dr Maria Zhu Huachen, a research assistant professor at HKU’s School of Public Health.

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Tags: bird flu, China, Flu, Global News, H7N9, Health, Virus

- US invokes emergency act to keep H7N9 flu at bay (New Scientist, May 8, 2013):

THE US government has declared that H7N9 bird flu “poses a significant potential for a public health emergency”, and has given “emergency use authorisation” for diagnostic kits for the virus. This means tests can be used that haven’t gone through the usual lengthy approval process by the US Food and Drug Administration.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Flu, Global News, Government, H7N9, Obama administration, Politics, U.S., Virus

- One in Five Dying of H7N9 Flu (MedPage, May 3, 2013):

The mortality rate in the H7N9 avian influenza outbreak has reached 20%, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.

With 128 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection as of May 2, there have also been 26 deaths, or 20.3%. At the same time, 26 people have recovered from the novel illness, according to the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Tags: Environment, Flu, Global News, H7N9, Health, Influenza, Virus, WHO

- China H7N9 Bird Flu Cases Keep Rising, Mainland Total Reaches 120 (Forbes, April 28, 2013):

The number of confirmed H7N9 bird flu cases in mainland China stood at 120 as of yesterday at 7 p.m. Beijing time, according to China National Radio. The number of dead was 23.

…

Tags: bird flu, China, Flu, Global News, H7N9, Health

- Scary new H7N9 bird flu strain leaps from China to Taiwan; human transmission already achieved? (Natural News, April 24, 2013)

The H7N9 bird flu strain is on the rise, having already killed 22 people in China while infecting 108. That’s a kill rate of 20% — among the highest ever witnessed in a bird flu strain. It has also spread outside of China, infecting a Taiwan national who brought the infection back to Taiwan and now rests in critical condition in a Taiwan hospital. 

Health authorities in the region haven’t yet said this strain of bird flu has achieved human-to-human transmission, but it seems increasingly likely that such a trait either already exists or will develop very quickly. That’s because the virus has been spreading among chickens without any symptoms showing. It doesn’t make the chickens sick, in other words, allowing chickens to be “stealth carriers” of a virus that can easily leap to unsuspecting humans.

H7N9 is a “triple reassortment” virus that combines genetic code from three different flu virus strains. This makes it “…one of the most lethal influenza viruses that we’ve seen so far,” said Keiji Fukuda, the assistant director-general for health security with the World Health Organization. “This is an unusually dangerous virus for humans.”

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Tags: bird flu, China, Flu, Global News, H7N9, Health, Taiwan, Virus

- China’s Animal Apocalypse Spreads To Dogs (ZeroHedge, April 17, 2013):

First it was floating dead pigs, then ducks, then black swans, then mass chicken exterminations, then fish, and now more pigs and also a brand new entrant to the Chinese animal apocalypse: dogs.

AP reports that hundreds more pigs have been found dead in China – this time together with dozens of dogs. ” A total of 410 pigs and 122 dogs were discovered in homes and at farms earlier this week in a village that comes under Yanshi city’s jurisdiction in central Henan province, authorities said Wednesday. The city’s propaganda office said that the deaths were being investigated but that they suspected they had to do with nearby chemical factories. The factories have been ordered to suspend production and help police with a criminal investigation into the incident, according to a report on a Henan provincial news website.”

One would assume that something is responsible for these mass animal  deaths, and one of these years, not the propaganda office, but someone actually accountable (so not CNN) will report what it is. Although we are not holding our breath, which if one were to live in Beijing, would not be a bad idea. Continue reading »

Tags: bird flu, China, Dogs, Environment, Flu, Global News, Government, H7N9, Pigs, Politics, Society

- Chinese army colonel says avian flu is an American plot against China (Washington Post, April 9, 2013):

Colonel Dai Xu of the People’s Liberation Army wrote online that the new strain of bird flu hitting China, known as H7N9, is an American “bio-psychological weapon” meant to destabilize China. The rant, posted to Dai’s account on the Twitter-like service Weibo, had already been shared by more than 30,000 fellow users by the time that the South China Morning Post reported it on Monday. Dai now has a quarter million followers on Weibo, which is quite a platform.

In general, Chinese Web users appear to have rejected Dai’s argument. In response to the criticism, though, he’s only dug in. “It is common knowledge that a group of people in China have been injected with mental toxin by the U.S.,” he wrote at one point. “I will not retreat even half a step.” He urged Chinese officials to ignore the virus’s apparent spread and argued that the disastrous 2003 SARS outbreak was also an American plot.

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Tags: China, Flu, Global News, Government, H7N9, Military, Politics, SARS, U.S.

Flashback:

- All 40 H5N1 Exposed Ferrets DIED

- US Government Paid Dutch Researchers To Mutate Deadly H5N1 Virus And Make It Go AIRBORNE!!!

The discovery has led advisers to the United States government, which paid for the research, to urge that the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to prevent the work from being replicated by terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.

- Scientists Push to Resume Research On Virulent Man-Made Flu Virus (TIME, Jan 23, 2013):

Researchers who voluntarily stopped work on a potent strain of influenza they created in the lab are hoping to end the moratorium on their studies.

In January 2012, scientists agreed to halt their research on the dangerous H5N1 avian flu–or bird flu virus–that they had manipulated to become more easily transmissible from person to person. H5N1 became known as avian influenza because it thrives in fowl populations, including ducks and migrating geese, and while it caused severe illness in people, the virus was less adept at jumping between human hosts, and presumably, among other mammals as well. Since 1997, when the virus was identified in Hong Kong, about 600 people have been infected and nearly 60% have died.

But two groups of scientists, one led by Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and another led by Yoshi Kawaoke at University of Wisconsin, independently managed to create strains of H5N1 in their labs that could pass between ferrets, marking the first time that a version of the avian flu could easily spread among mammals. The potential for a pandemic with H5N1, which, to date, may have a 50% mortality rate among those infected, was concerning enough to biosafety officials that the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) requested that scientific journals not publish the details of how the virulent strains of H5N1 were made. The papers, the officials feared, could serve as a how-to guide for human catastrophe if the results were used by bioterrorists.

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Tags: Flu, Global News, H5N1, Health, Science, Virus

- Insight: Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot (Reuters, Jan 22, 2013):

STOCKHOLM – Emelie is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she’s often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

Finland, Norway, Ireland and France have seen spikes in narcolepsy cases, too, and people familiar with the results of a soon-to-be-published study in Britain have told Reuters it will show a similar pattern in children there.

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Tags: Flu, Global News, Health, Narcolepsy, Science, swine flu, Vaccination, Vaccine

- FDA Approves Neurotoxic Flu Drug For Infants Less Than One (GreenMedInfo, Dec 27, 2012):

Whereas the flu is self-limiting, the FDA’s capacity for bad decisions is not…

The recent decision by the FDA to approve the use of the antiviral drug Tamiflu for treating influenza in infants as young as two weeks old, belies an underlying trajectory within our regulatory agencies towards sheer insanity.

Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, has already drawn international concern over its link with suicide deaths in children given the drug after its approval in 1999. In fact, in 2004, the Japanese pharmaceutical company Chugai added “abnormal behavior” as a possible side effect inside Tamiflu’s package.  The FDA also acknowledged in its April, 2012 “Pediatric Postmarket Adverse Event Review” of Tamiflu that “abnormal behavior, delirium, including symptoms such as hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, altered level of consciousness, confusion, nightmares, delusions” are possible side effects.[i]

Recent animal research on Tamiflu has found that the infant brain absorbs the drug more readily than the adult brain,[ii] [iii]lending a possible explanation for why neuropsychiatric side effects have been observed disproportionately in younger patients.

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Tags: Big Pharma, Brain, Children, Drugs, FDA, Flu, Global News, Government, Health, neurotoxic, neurotoxicity, Pharmaceutical Industry, Politics, Tamiflu, toxic, toxicity, U.S.