Swine Flu Cases Double Overnight

The number of swine flu cases keep increasing all the time, with twice as many cases in the US today as there were yesterday. And the countries affected increase as well, with confirmed cases in Mexico (now 149 deaths), Canada, Scotland, Spain, and possibly France and Israel, and most recently spread to Asia and the Middle East. In the US there are confirmed cases in California, New York, Texas, Ohio and Kansas.

Swine flu spreads in Mexico and the government has issued face masks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has now upgraded the disease to Phase #4, which means that human to human transmission is occuring, the first time that high of ranking has been given for a disease since the first outbreak of bird flu. With the Phase #4 ranking this is no longer a strict pig to human transmission, as I had written yesterday on this site.

Mexico City has become a ghost town (see pictures here). Individuals suspected of infection must be quarantined for ten days. Most people are staying home and most public places have been closed. For video of the city click here. For Youtube of conspiracy theory about the virus click here. And this in from Marian, deaths from swine flu in the US are approaching the death rate from bear attacks (one every other year, if you don’t want to watch the video).

As I have written here and here, about how strains of the type A H1N1 flu (the same that are reported popping up now as “swine flu”) emerged last year with a resistance to Tamiflu, the drug stockpiled by the US government for treatment of a possible epidemic. I did a run-down on the different strains of the flu and what drugs they are susceptible to yesterday. The different strains and drugs are confusing even to me, who has been writing about this for the past two years. For instance, H1N1 was described as a “human” flu (I incorrectly called it bird flu last year, I guess), however now it is a pig-to-human flu that is apparently converting to a human-to-human flu, if you believe the WHO. The answer is that the virus can mutate and still be labeled as the same strain. 

As for what drugs will be effective and how dangerous the virus is, noone knows. It was reported today that CDC has blood samples and is testing effectiveness of various drugs against it, so we will know in a few days. Nevertheless it is being claimed by CDC that Tamiflu and Relenza are effective, although based on what evidence I don’t know the details. As for whether current vaccines are effective, the answer so far from CDC is not. It will take six months to develop a vaccine specific to this flu.

The WHO has announced that they have given up on trying to prevent the spread of swine flu. That means it is probably only a matter of time before they declare it a pandemic, or Phase #6. Nevertheless there continue to be confusing travel advisories issued around the world. In Hong Kong they are using infrared devices in the airport to detect incoming passengers with fevers, and then putting them in quarantine.

Hong Kong using infrared devices to find passengers infected with Swine Flu

Interestingly, there was an outbreak of swine flu in 1976 that turned out to be no big deal. 40 million people were vaccinated though, and 30 died of Guillain Barre syndrome. An epidemic in 1918 of “Spanish flu” was a big deal, and was found to be a form of bird flu that killed 10% of those infected, or 40 million people (not 10 million like I said yesterday), or 3% of the world’s population. That was said to be a much more aggressive disease.

So what do you do? Wash your hands and don’t cough on people. That is how the virus is transmitted. Interestingly, the CDC says that masks don’t do much. And I wouldn’t take any drugs for prevention at this point.