SWINE FLU

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W.H.O. Raises Alert Level as Flu Spreads to 74 Countrieshttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/world/12who.html?em
GENEVA — The World Health Organization has told its member nations it is declaring a swine flu pandemic — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years, news services reported.

The move came after an emergency meeting with flu experts here that was convened after a sharp rise in cases in Australia, which reported 1,263 cases on Thursday, and rising numbers in Britain, Japan, Chile and elsewhere.

In a statement sent to member countries, the W.H.O. said it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, indicating a global pandemic outbreak, The Associated Press said, attributing the information to health officials from Scotland, Indonesia and Thailand. An official announcement of the change was due at 6 p.m. Geneva time on Thursday (noon in New York).

In an effort to avoid triggering panic with such an announcement, W.H.O. officials are expected to include a caveat that the flu, which has resulted in mostly mild cases, is not more deadly now that it has been declared a pandemic. Rather, the announcement reflects the global spread of the disease, not an increase in its severity.

According to W.H.O. rules, the organization should declare a pandemic once it finds evidence of widespread “community transmission” — meaning beyond travelers, schools and immediate contacts — on two continents.

In its latest report, the W.H.O. said Wednesday that 74 countries had reported 27,737 cases of the disease, and 141 deaths since the outbreak started in April. Those cases had been heavily concentrated in the Americas, but the rise in cases in Australia and elsewhere appeared to indicate communitywide spread in other world regions.

The declaration of a pandemic will trigger drug makers to speed up production of a swine flu vaccine and prompt governments to devote more money to containing the virus. While international health officials have said the flu appears to be less deadly than the annual bouts of seasonal flu that sweep the globe each year, they have warned that the virus could mutate into a more lethal strain during the Southern Hemisphere’s coming winter flu season. They are also worried that poorer countries could be overwhelmed with cases they do not have the capacity to treat.

The experts gathered at the request of the W.H.O. director-general, Margaret Chan, who held a teleconference on Wednesday with worst affected countries to try to determine if there was “indisputable” evidence that the spread of the disease met the organization’s criteria for declaring a pandemic.

The last pandemic, the Hong Kong flu of 1968, killed about 700,000 people worldwide. Ordinary flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people each year, international health officials have said.

Meanwhile, efforts to limit the spread of the flu around the world continue. In Hong Kong, which is especially skittish about the flu after its experience with a lethal SARS outbreak in 2003, authorities have ordered all kindergartens, primary schools and day care centers to close after an outbreak of swine flu was reported at a local secondary school. The order, effective Friday, will last at least two weeks and affect about a half million students.

Fifty cases of the H1N1 flu have been reported in Hong Kong, but health officials said the 12 infected students at St. Paul’s Convent School were the first cluster of cases. The students are being quarantined at a hospital while officials try to determine the source of the infections.

On Wednesday, a 55-year-old man became the first person to contract the case locally in Hong Kong, according to health officials. So far, the city has had no fatalities from the disease.

Hong Kong’s Health Department says it will order 5 million doses of flu vaccine and open eight flu clinics. “The government is well prepared,” Donald Tsang, the city’s chief executive, said at a news conference on Thursday announcing the school closings. “There’s no need to panic.”

China confirmed 10 new flu cases on Thursday, bringing the total number of infections on the mainland to 111. Health officials say all of the country’s flu cases have involved people returning from abroad. According to the Health Ministry, the 10 new cases included a Canadian-Chinese teenager who had just been in Toronto and two children in Shanghai who had been in the United States. There have been no deaths, and more than half of those infected have been discharged from the hospital, the ministry said.
A Health Ministry official boasted Thursday that the government’s stringent prevention measures had kept swine flu from spreading in China. Every passenger arriving from overseas is checked for fever, and those suspected of having had contact with an infected person are placed in quarantine for a week.

“We think the method we are using has been pretty successful,” said Mao Qun’an, a ministry spokesman.

Chinese officials released Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans from three days of quarantine in Shanghai on Wednesday. Mr. Nagin and his wife had been placed in isolation after a passenger who sat one row ahead of them on a flight from the United States came down with a fever.

Mr. Nagin, who had been set to attend a series of economic development meetings, described the experience as “surreal” and said he and his wife had their temperatures taken every three to four hours. “When you see people coming toward you with full hazmat gear on, it’s pretty interesting,” he told The Associated Press after his release, referring to hazardous material protection.

In New York City, health officials said Thursday that three more people had died from the H1N1 virus, bringing the city’s total to 15, The A.P. reported. One victim was a child under the age of 5, one was a person between 5 to 24 years old, and another was between 30 to 39 years old.

The deaths came one day after health officials announcedthat in a telephone poll of New Yorkers, 6.9 percent of the 1,006 surveyed reported having flulike illness, like fever and cough or a sore throat, between May 1 and May 20, that may or may not have been swine flu.

Extrapolated to the general population, that would mean that about 550,000 people could have become sick with the virus. The 530 citywide who have been hospitalized make up a tiny proportion — about one-tenth of 1 percent — of those who became ill, an indication of how mild the virus generally has been, officials said.

The total number of swine flu cases reported to the nation’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other national, state, and city health authorities worldwide likely do not account for hundreds of thousands of cases which were not tested by doctors because of their mildness, flu experts have said.

“The findings don’t tell us exactly how many New Yorkers have had H1N1 influenza,” Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s new health commissioner, said in a statement. “But they suggest it has been widespread and mild in most people.”

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Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva and Andrew Jacobs from Beijing. Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.

[gym gravity]

the novavax platform has been in various phase II in the form of a few different seasonal formulations and as a pandemic formulation.

I think there are "combined" safety data on about a thousand people from these dose ranging studies. Glaxo uses the vlp backbone for it's HPV vaccine that has been in more than 30,0000 women and is approved in austrailia, phillipines and the european union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervarix

Once they have an AH1N1 vlp in bulk I think they will be permitted to go straight to a large trial, just like the egg grown vaccine is different every year, so every year the seasonal egg vaccine needs initial testing.

[pygdogg]

Hello rkor-

Any of these up for FDA approvals or nearing end of testing? TIA

[Zoofire]

Thanks for posting that. There are some very disturbing paragraphs in it. More people need to be made aware.

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WHO gets ready declare a swine flu pandemic
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jTkkEKE5LtPih_5Jcc-3MpD0gOYQD98O1NF80
By MARIA CHENG AND FRANK JORDANS – 5 hours ago

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization is gearing up to declare a swine flu pandemic, a move that could trigger both the large-scale production of vaccines and questions about why the step was delayed for weeks as the virus continued to spread.

On Wednesday, WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan quizzed eight countries with large swine flu outbreaks to see if a pandemic, or global epidemic, should be declared. After Chan's teleconference, the agency announced that an emergency meeting with its flu experts would be held Thursday.

Since swine flu first emerged in Mexico and the United States in April, it has spread to 74 countries around the globe. On Wednesday, WHO reported 27,737 cases including 141 deaths. Most cases are mild and require no treatment.

The world is in phase 5 of WHO's pandemic alert scale, meaning a global outbreak is imminent. Moving to phase 6, the highest level, means a pandemic has begun. If that declaration is made, it will push drugmakers to fast-track production of a swine flu vaccine.

Chan says she personally believes that a pandemic is under way, but was seeking clear proof that swine flu is spreading rapidly from person to person outside the Americas before declaring a global epidemic.

"Once I get indisputable evidence I will make the announcement," she told reporters Tuesday.

It would be the first flu pandemic in 41 years, since the Hong Kong flu of 1968.

At GlaxoSmithKline PLC, spokesman Stephen Rea said the company was already working with a key ingredient of the swine flu vaccine to see how quickly doses could be produced. Other major pharmaceuticals like Sanofi Pasteur have also been working on a swine flu vaccine since WHO gave them a "seed stock" of the virus last month created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rea said it could take up to six months before large amounts of a swine flu vaccine are available. At the moment, GlaxoSmithKline is still making regular flu vaccine, which it expects to be completed by July.

After that, Rea said GlaxoSMithKline could speed up its swine flu vaccine production if a pandemic is declared. Once that announcement is made, the company would be obliged to fulfill contracts it signed with countries including Britain, Belgium and France, promising to provide a pandemic vaccine as soon as possible.

If a global outbreak is announced, countries would likely activate their own pandemic preparedness plans if they haven't already. That could mean devoting more money to health services or imposing measures like quarantines, school closures, travel bans and trade restrictions — some of which WHO opposes.

According to WHO's own pandemic criteria, a global outbreak means a new flu virus is spreading in at least two world regions.

With thousands of cases in North America and hundreds in Japan, Australia and Europe, many experts say that threshold has already been reached, but the U.N. agency has held off on making the pandemic call for political reasons.

"If you look at the science, we were at phase 6 weeks ago," said Michael Osterholm, a flu expert at the University of Minnesota who has advised the U.S. government on pandemic preparations.

"What's happening right now is not about public health surveillance and science," he told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "It's about politics and risk communication."

Osterholm said WHO's delayed decision has cost the agency credibility.

"As soon as you try to incorporate risk messaging into science, you are on a slippery slope," he said. "WHO has exacerbated the issue by dancing around it."

In May, several countries urged WHO not to declare a pandemic, fearing it would spark mass panic. The agency appeared to cave into the requests, saying it would rewrite its definition of a global outbreak so that it wouldn't have to declare one right away for swine flu.

But WHO officials have been concerned in recent days after seeing media reports and health experts discussing more swine flu cases than were being reported by the countries themselves.

In one of the most glaring examples, Britain rushed to report another 75 infections Wednesday, for a total of 750 cases, after some outside health officials said the country was not looking very hard for swine flu.

Britain's Health Protection Agency insists the virus is not spreading in communities. But three Greek students recently returned home after catching swine flu in the U.K., proof the virus is spreading more widely than British authorities admit. Two of the cases were documented in the journal of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

WHO said announcing a pandemic would not mean the situation was worsening, since no mutations have been detected in the virus to show it is getting more deadly.

One flu expert said WHO's pandemic declaration would mean little in terms of how countries are responding to the outbreak.

"The writing has been on the wall for weeks," said Chris Smith, a flu virologist at Cambridge University, adding he didn't know why WHO had waited so long to declare a pandemic. "WHO probably doesn't want people to panic, but the virus is now unstoppable."

AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng reported from London, Frank Jordans reported from Geneva.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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GILD

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SVA

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gnbt

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dvax

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BCRX

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cvm

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vicl

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heb

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gnvc

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NVAX

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APT

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most of the swine flu stocks are back near their highs in anticipation of WHO pandemic alert level being raised to 6.

[gym gravity]

I found an interesting non-financial blog on swine flu spread. This nerd girl is pretty hot, too.

I was searching for more information on the aboriginal canadians that are being hit particularly hard, and also searching for information on southern hemisphere community transmission (brazil and australia).

http://www.globecampus.ca/blogs/nerd-girl/tags/h1n1/

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=242817

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Swine Flu Outbreak Offers Sneak Peak of Pandemic to Come
by admin on June 3, 2009
Statement of Worldwatch Senior Researcher Danielle Nierenberg to Mexican Congress
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6132
Washington, D.C.-As health officials scramble to develop a vaccine for the H1N1 virus, commonly referred to as swine flu, there is reason to believe that the current swell is merely a sign of the larger pandemic to come. We should regard the current outbreak of H1N1 as a bad dress rehearsal for opening night. It is not a question of whether the virus will reemerge, but when, and we are woefully unprepared.

Influenza pandemics are often preceded by "herald waves" of a flu strain at the end of one flu season, only to return stronger the next flu season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. This was true of the 1918 pandemic, which first emerged as a moderate flu virus in the spring and returned much stronger in the fall, killing as many as 40 million people worldwide. While much has changed since then, this new strain poses new challenges and we are not prepared to handle the consequences of quarantining and treating people who are infected or limiting global air travel and international trade.

Rather than focusing all of our attention on developing a vaccine, we must find ways to stop these diseases before they start. Prevention of zoonotic diseases-diseases that animals can transfer to humans-requires a fundamental change in the way we raise animals. We can begin by raising fewer animals for food overall and phasing out the most intensive confinement practices.

While the connection between the Granjas Carroll industrial pig operation in Vera Cruz, Mexico (a Smithfield Foods subsidiary) and the emergence of H1N1 is circumstantial, there is some evidence to suggest that factory farming practices are to blame. Crowded conditions and the genetic uniformity of animals on factory farms make them ideal incubators for disease. Furthermore, the overuse and misuse of antibiotics to combat these diseases create multidrug-resistant bacteria, making it harder to fight illness among animals and humans alike.

As we raise more animals in industrial-style operations, confining them by the tens of thousands, it is likely that we will see other diseases emerging and jumping the species barrier from animals to humans. Because of their genetic similarity to humans, pigs and chickens often serve as "mixing vessels" for various diseases, stirring up their genetic traits and making them easier to pass along.

As we brace for the next wave of the swine flu pandemic, perhaps we will all become more aware of the conditions under which more than 40 percent of the world's nearly 1 billion pigs are raised. Ultimately, we must realize that how we raise animals for food is inherently linked to our own health and the health of our environment.

This statement is based on remarks Danielle Nierenberg will deliver to members of the Mexican Congress on June 3, 2009.

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i am liking NVAX as one likely to receive funding based on thurs news of signed agreement with 3 gvt agencies to test and produce their vaccine and the speed in which they are able to create vaccines that have been in gvt trials already....
congress begins appropriating 2-15 billion next week.

Novavax and the NIH Agree to Evaluate a Virus-like Particle (VLP) Vaccine Candidate Against the Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus

* On Thursday June 4, 2009, 8:00 am EDT

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Novavax-and-the-NIH-Agree-to-prnews-15436468.html?.v=2
ROCKVILLE, Md., June 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX - News) and the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) have signed an agreement to cooperate in the evaluation of a virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine candidate against the novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. Novavax has produced influenza A (H1N1) VLP vaccine against the strain recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Novavax scientists produced the first batch of H1N1 VLPs within the company's laboratories in May, just three weeks after the CDC announced the genetic sequence of a novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. This strain of influenza was isolated from an infected person located in California. These VLPs contain the hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA) and matrix 1 (M1) proteins found in the newly emerged H1N1 influenza strain. The size and structure of the VLPs are nearly identical to those of the novel H1N1 virus but the VLPs are not infectious as they lack the genes necessary for replication. Novavax has made purified influenza A (H1N1) VLPs, which are being sent to scientists at the CDC and DMID for studies in animal models.

"The Company has committed necessary resources to respond as rapidly as possible to construct and manufacture VLP vaccine against this new H1N1 influenza virus," said Rahul Singhvi, President and CEO of Novavax. "Our proprietary recombinant cell culture technology has enabled production of custom VLPs against this strain of influenza within weeks. This ability to respond rapidly is an important factor in the evaluation of alternative investigational vaccines against this emerging threat to public health."

The influenza A (H1N1) virus was first detected in April 2009, in Mexico, the United States and Canada and has subsequently spread rapidly to over sixty countries worldwide. Although illnesses to date have been of a similar severity as that of typical seasonal influenza, it is unclear if the strain will evolve to become more deadly over the course of the next several months. Therefore, technology that can lead to rapid production of vaccines is important to reduce the spread of the virus and to potentially prevent a pandemic from occurring. Novavax believes that its influenza VLP vaccine technology could be part of the solution for influenza pandemics as will be demonstrated in this instance by release of a vaccine lot produced under cGMP against the novel influenza A H1N1 strain within approximately 12 weeks or less of the CDC announcement of the new strain.

Novavax has completed genetic engineering and manufacture of the master seed stock necessary to produce larger quantities of the investigational influenza A (H1N1) VLP vaccine under cGMP conditions in its manufacturing facility in Rockville, MD. More details on the progress in making influenza A (H1N1) VLP vaccine may be found at the Novavax web site: www.novavax.com.

About Novavax

Novavax, Inc. is a clinical stage biotechnology company, creating novel vaccines to address a broad range of infectious diseases worldwide using advanced proprietary virus like particle (VLP) technology. The Company produces these VLP based, potent, recombinant vaccines utilizing new, and efficient manufacturing approaches. Additional information about Novavax is available at www.novavax.com and in the Company's various filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Obama seeks more funds for novel flu fight

Robert Roos * News Editor
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/news/jun0509funding.html
Jun 5, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – President Barack Obama this week asked Congress for another $2 billion in supplemental funds to fight the novel H1N1 influenza epidemic, on top of $2 billion requested a month ago, and also proposed to tap federal economic stimulus funds for up to another $3.1 billion for the same purpose.

Meanwhile, public health advocates said even more may be needed if a nationwide H1N1 vaccination campaign is launched in the fall.

House and Senate conferees are working to reconcile supplemental appropriations bills that provide $2.05 billion in the House version and $1.5 billion in the Senate version for the H1N1 flu fight. The administration, in a Jun 2 letter, asked Congress to pass the House version and add another $2 billion to it.

In addition, Obama proposed to use up to 1% of unspent stimulus funds to battle the flu if needed. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that that would amount to about $3.1 billion out of the $311 billion in discretionary stimulus funds.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Obama said he was asking for the money "out of an abundance of caution" and appealed for "maximum flexibility" in how the funds are used.

Public health advocates welcomed the administration's new request, but Dr. Paul Jarris, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), estimated that a nationwide H1N1 vaccination campaign could cost as much as $15 billion.

In an interview this week, Jarris said that 600 million doses of an H1N1 vaccine—two doses per American—could cost about $6 billion ($10 per dose). Administering the vaccine might cost another $15 per dose, or roughly $9 billion, he said.

"We need to make sure we have the people and resources to give the vaccine to people, which is on the order of $15 per dose," he said.

Meanwhile, the Democratic leader in the House said Obama might not get the extra $2 billion he asked for, and Republicans criticized the proposal to take money from the stimulus fund, according to news reports.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., was skeptical that Congress would add any more funds to the amounts approved by the two houses already, according to a Jun 3 Reuters report. He said more funds could be appropriated later if needed.

Republican critics derided the proposal to funnel stimulus money into the flu response as an effort to turn the stimulus package into an all-purpose "slush fund," according to the WSJ report.

Diverting Bioshield funds?
Besides seeking to use some of the stimulus money, the administration is proposing to take money from the Bioshield program and harness it for the H1N1 battle, a plan that drew fire from public health advocates at a press conference yesterday.

The administration proposes to "amend the purpose of Project Bioshield's authority to include pandemic influenza," according to a copy of the proposal, which was provided by the nonprofit group Trust for America's Health (TFAH).

The Bioshield program, enacted in 2004, provides funds to support private-sector-development of medical defenses against biological, chemical, and other unconventional weapons.

At a press briefing yesterday on the H1N1 situation, TFAH Executive Director Jeff Levi, PhD, criticized the proposal to use Bioshield money.

"The administration proposes to use $2.9 billion from the program to support H1N1 vaccine development," he said. "This means programs for things like anthrax and smallpox will need to be put on hold. This would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. If we need this money for an H1N1 vaccine, we should appropriate it."

Levi's criticism was seconded by Thomas V. Inglesby, MD, deputy director of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who also spoke at the briefing. "This is an extraordinary event, and the funding provided years ago for the acquisition of contracts and development work for anthrax, for example, should not be diverted for this particular problem," he said.

Groups support House version
Earlier this week, a coalition of groups led by TFAH urged the House and Senate conferees to adopt the House version of the pandemic funding proposal and add more funds to it. (The list of health and medical organizations and biomedical companies that signed the letter included the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, publisher of CIDRAP News.)

The coalition's letter to Congress said the House's proposed $2.05 billion appropriation for the H1N1 epidemic includes:

* $350 million for state and local pandemic preparedness efforts
* At least $1.5 billion in flexible funding to the Department of Health and Human Services' Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, for use to continue building domestic vaccine capacity, replenish and build antiviral stockpiles, and expand domestic and international disease surveillance
* $200 million to support global efforts to track, contain, and slow the spread of a pandemic

The coalition endorsed all of the above items and urged the congressional conferees to consider several other needs it said are not addressed in the current House or Senate bill.

At the top of the list was extra money for vaccinations. The group voiced concern that the $1.5 billion in flexible funds in the House bill would not be nearly enough to buy, distribute, and administer a vaccine and set up electronic systems to track the program and monitors adverse reactions. But the letter did not specify an amount.

The coalition also called for:

* A contingency fund for the ongoing H1N1 response by state and local governments, to be used in the case of a public health emergency
* $122 million to complete state antiviral stockpiles and extend the shelf life of antivirals that will soon expire; the group said more than 8 million treatment courses are still needed to meet the original stockpile goal of 75 million courses
* At least $563 million to help states and localities buy personal protective equipment and antivirals for workers in public health, healthcare, and critical infrastructure operations

In a separate letter this week, ASTHO and the National Association of City and County Health Officials also urged the congressional leaders to adopt the House version of the pandemic funding. The letter said state public health agencies spent more than $80 million on the response to the H1N1 epidemic between Apr 21 and May 15.

The pandemic funding is part of a supplemental appropriations bill mainly dedicated to funding the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Don’t Overreact to Swine Flu, Chan Warns Governments (Update1)
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a1OeX_3t1Z5c&refer=japan
By Jason Gale

June 4 (Bloomberg) -- The head of the World Health Organization urged governments not to overreact to global outbreaks of swine flu as the agency moves closer to declaring the first pandemic in four decades.

Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, may declare an influenza pandemic within days, said three people familiar with the organization’s plans. Chan, in an interview late yesterday, said a final decision hasn’t been taken, and authorities must use the time before swine flu becomes global to revise emergency plans and convey the measures to their countries’ populations.

Most pandemic plans were crafted for the H5N1 bird flu virus, deadly in three out of five cases. Swine flu, the new bug racing across the world, so far causes little more than a fever and a cough in most patients. Governments must resist the temptation to restrict travel, close borders and adopt other measures that aren’t justified, according to Chan.

“Every country has some kind of pandemic preparedness plan originally meant for H5N1,” she said in a telephone interview from her office at WHO’s Geneva headquarters. “Now they need to look at the plan and make appropriate revisions. It is most important to get the messages right.”

The new H1N1 flu strain, discovered in April, has turned up in 66 countries as far removed as Japan, Iceland and New Zealand. The virus is now starting to spread in Australia, Japan, U.K., Spain and Chile among people with no travel history and outside of schools and institutional settings, Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general of health security and environment, said on a conference call with reporters June 2.

‘Extremely Cautious’

The United Nations health agency currently is at phase 5 on its six-step pandemic alert scale, meaning a global epidemic is imminent.

“We are closer to phase 6 than we were one week ago, but I don’t want to come out and make an announcement of phase 6 and cause debate,” Chan said. “I am extremely cautious in a sense. By the time I come out, no countries will dispute the evidence that we have on hand.”

The new virus has sickened 19,273 people and caused 117 deaths since it was discovered in Mexico and the U.S. in April, WHO said yesterday. Bird flu, which isn’t easily transmitted among people, has killed 262 of the 433 people known to have been infected since 2003.

WHO’s guidelines say a pandemic is imminent when a new virus causes outbreaks in at least “two countries in one WHO region.” It’s under way when the disease is widespread in “at least one other country in another WHO region.”

Second Flu Season

When the most recent pandemic plans were designed, “everybody was mesmerized by H5N1,” said Peter Sandman, a New Jersey risk-communication consultant whose client list includes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the WHO. “And what we got is essentially a second flu season.”

The new bug is showing signs of becoming the dominant flu strain this winter in Chile, where as least 360 people have fallen ill, Chan said. A similar picture is emerging in Australia, where 870 patients have caught the disease. Victoria, the worst-hit state, confirmed 231 more cases overnight.

The trend, if confirmed, will support calls for declaring a pandemic, and a recommendation that drugmakers switch from making a vaccine against seasonal flu to a shot that can protect against the pandemic strain, Chan said. In previous pandemics, seasonal flu was “crowded out” by the new virus, she said.

Living With Uncertainty

“We need to monitor for the next week or two” signs that swine flu is supplanting seasonal flu, Chan said. “If this is indeed the case, it may have an impact on our decision on when and how to take into action the pandemic vaccine manufacturing.”

WHO also wants to ensure adequate supplies of immunizations against the influenza strains that circulate every winter.

The agency has said the new virus is more contagious than the germs that cause annual epidemics, which kill 250,000 to 500,000 people each year. A study in the journal Science estimates the virus is as severe as the 1957 Asian flu pandemic that caused about 2 million deaths.

Chan has said it’s possible the pig-derived strain might become more virulent later, a pattern that occurred with the 1918 Spanish flu, killing at least 40 million people.

“The most certain thing about the influenza virus is uncertainty,” Chan said. “Health officials worldwide, including those of us working in WHO, have to live with this level of uncertainty for the weeks and months ahead.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at [e-mail]
Last Updated: June 4, 2009 04:33 EDT

[Crazy Money]

Are we all gonna die from da Swine Flu?

[Zoofire]

Swine Flu reported in all 50 states:

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/vaccinations/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100239593>1=31049#

[Crazy Money]

Swine flu still has not killed me been trying to catch it...

How many people died today in da world today alone from something besides swine flu

Keep up the good work though. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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Two more deaths in NYC linked to swine flu
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/longisland/ny-nyskul2712804406may26,0,5234990.story

BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN | Special to Newsday
4:59 PM EDT, May 26, 2009

A 34-year-old man from Brooklyn and a 41-year-old woman from Queens appear to be the latest victims of swine flu, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said the two had "culture confirmed" cases of H1N1 flu but that autopsies were being performed to determine the exact cause of death.

Twenty private and public schools reopened in the city Tuesday, Frieden said, leaving 17 still closed. PS 811, a special education school in Queens, closed its doors Tuesday because of swine flu.

Frieden, speaking Tuesday at a news conference at the health department, said people coming to city emergency rooms complaining of flulike symptoms remained high, especially in Queens and in the Bronx.


Also Tuesday, IS 238 reopened its doors, nine days after the Hollis, Queens, middle school lost assistant principal Mitchell Wiener to swine flu.

School staff threw away the flowers and put away the candles and balloons left in Wiener's remembrance by the school's entrance and sign.

"We just want to move on and move forward the way Mr. Wiener would want us to," principal Joseph Gates said.

Some parents and students expressed concern about the school's safety from the illness as they continued to mourn Wiener, the city's first swine flu fatality.

"It's not going to be the same without him," said an eighth-grader, who recently received a flu shot in response to the outbreak. "I still think there are more people going to be sick at the school."

Darlene Brown, 43, said her son Michael, an eighth-grader, was still feeling sad about Wiener's death and was nervous about returning to school.

"I don't know how much of it is in the air, or how much the school's been cleaned," said Brown, a paralegal for a law firm in Great Neck.

Kassandra Armstead, 31, has two sons at the school - sixth-grader John, 13, and seventh-grader Melvin, 14.

Armstead dropped off John at school Tuesday morning but not Melvin.

"It's really crazy. John says he just wants school to be over with, while my other son won't even go back," Armstead said.

Shirmin Jahan, 35, was resigned to sending her son back to the school.

"It's all over Queens so you can't protect him," Jahan said. "These kids are going to be in the library, they're going to be in the park, they're going to be shopping. So we'll see what happens and pray to God that nothing does."

Students have returned to more than two dozen New York City public schools that were closed because of swine flu.

PS 19 in Corona was among the schools to reopen Tuesday. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein welcomed the children back.

Staff writer Sophia Chang contributed to this story, which was supplemented by The Associated Press.

[wise1man]

CVM Huge NEWS TOday,SWINE FLU PLAY....jmo

[rstar]

Global swine flu cases top 11,000; U.S. deaths hit double-digits
May 22, 7:43 PM
http://www.examiner.com/x-8543-SF-Health-News-Examiner~y2009m5d22-Flu-alert-Global-cases-top-11000-US-deaths-hit-doubledigits

The death of a 21-year old Utah man marks the nation's 10th fatality associated with the H1N1 swine flu virus that continues to spread across the globe. Marcos Sanchez checked into a suburban hospital on a Saturday, vomiting blood and burning with fever. By Tuesday he was suffering from multiple organ failure.

Sanchez had not travelled recently, and so authorities are trying to figure out how Sanchez became exposed. Dagmar Vitek, medical director for the Salt Lake Valley Health Department, said Utah has 122 confirmed cases of the virus.

Meanwhile, health officials in Arizona said that the death of a a 13-year-old Tucson boy was also due to swine flu. The teenager was hospitalized May 10, and died of complications from the flu. Arizona Department of Health Services spokeswoman Patti Woodcock said an older sibling of the teen remains in the hospital with the virus, while other family members have recovered.

In New York City, officials closed two more public schools, raising to 23 the total of city public and private schools closed so far. Across the Hudson River in Fort Lee, N.J., another school closed, while schools have also closed in Reno, Nev., and Lodi, Wis., after students were sickened

[rstar]

The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4724.shtml
May 21, 2009, 00:20

Email this article
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(WMR) -- The history of the extraction of the genetic material from the corpses of victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus who were buried in Arctic permafrost is part “X-Files” and part “Jurassic Park.”

After an unsuccessful 1951 mission, that involved U.S. biological warfare specialists, to extract 1918 Spanish flu genetic material in 1951 from a cemetery in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, scientists made another attempt, a successful one it turns out, in 1997.

Dr. Johan Hultin, from the State University of Iowa, successfully extracted genetic material from the corpse of an obese 30-something female who died from the Spanish flu in 1918, along with 85 percent of Brevig Mission’s (called Teller Mission in 1918) villagers in a single week. The pandemic killed at least 50 million people around the world.

Once the Spanish flu genetic material was obtained from the lungs, spleen, liver, and heart of the Eskimo woman’s corpse, scientists, in a scene reminiscent of the fictional movie “Jurassic Park,” in which genetic material from extinct dinosaurs is used to bring the creatures back to life, recreated the long-since dead 1918 Spanish flu in a U.S. government-funded laboratory. The woman’s organs were cut into one-inch cubes and shipped to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, where the virus’s genetic RNA material was identified and the 1918 Spanish flu was successfully brought back to life.

The search for the frozen bodies of 1918 flu victims was not limited to Alaska. Another team of scientists, acting like Dr. Frankenstein’s “Igor,” set out to dig up the graves of miners who died from the flu in the remote Norwegian mining village of Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen, which lies north of the Arctic Circle.

WMR has learned from a research scientist who has been working on the recreation of the 1918 flu that the genetic material has been re-engineered to synthetically create what is now known as the A/H1N1 virus, or as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls it, the “novel flu.”

The A/H1N1 influenza, which contains genetic material from two strains of swine flu, two strains of human flu, and a single strain of avian flu, has, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), infected, as of May 13, a total of 4,880 people in North America: 2,059 in Mexico; 2,535 in the United States, and 286 in Canada. There have been 56 reported deaths from the flu in Mexico, three in the United States, and one in Canada.

WMR has learned from an A/H1N1 researcher that the current “novel” flu strain is mutating rapidly in humans but no animals have contracted the virus. The enzyme in A/H1N1, as with all influenza A viruses, is called a polymerase. Scientists have calculated the molecular clock of A/H1N1 form the virus’s polymerase rate. Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months.

What is different about A/H1N1 is that, unlike other new strains of viruses that rapidly mutate upon emerging and then slow down mutation and then stop entirely, the “novel” or incorrectly-named “swine flu” is showing no signs yet of slowing down its mutation rate and that, according to scientists who worry about A/H1N1 being synthetically-generated, does not happen in nature.

In 2006, at a summit meeting in Cancun, Mexico, President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed for their nations to coordinate their response to avian flu, which was spreading in Asia. National Public Radio, on April 2, 2006, ran a segment on how bird flu wreaked havoc in 1918 in Brevig Mission. NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a report from Brevig Mission by Lori Townsend of Alaska Public Radio: “The grave has been opened twice by the same pathologist. In 1951, Johann Hultin convinced village elders to allow him to take tissue samples from bodies buried in permafrost. His lab attempts to map the virus were unsuccessful, but he returned in 1997, and when he did, he was once again given permission to re-open the grave.”

WMR has learned from a journalist from Anchorage who covered the 1997 grave exhumation that there was CIA personnel with the team of scientists. Inuit elders of Brevig Mission argued that digging up the graves of the flu victims would release evil spirits. However, money allegedly changed hands between the U.S. government research team and some of the elders, so permission to dig up the graves was granted.

NPR and Alaska Public Radio was reporting what was extracted from the 1918 flu victim’s corpse was the H5N1 avian flu virus, but that was erroneous. Or was it? If what was extracted from the dead woman’s body in Brevig Mission was used to synthetically create the current A/H1N1 virus, there is a strain of avian flu in the virus. But the current A/H1N1 virus also contains swine and human flu strains.

What has been relayed by the researcher is that the original 1918 virus was the H1N1 virus. In Bio-safety level 3 (BSL-s) laboratory work that was largely classified, the virus was artificially combined with common H3N2 and a minor gene splice from the H5N1 Eurasian avian flu strain.

The avian flu or H5N1 virus that struck Asia in 2006 contained some genetic mutations of the 1918 virus. And scientists researching pandemic flu strains have, since the recreation of the 1918 flu, been playing fast and loose with flu samples. On April 17, 2005, The Washington Post reported that Meridian Bioscience, which was under contract to the College of American Pathologists, accidentally distributed the pandemic H2N2/Japan flu strain, as part of a flu testing kit, to influenza laboratories around the world. WHO ordered the labs to immediately destroy the flu sample because it was worried about an accidental release of the pandemic virus, resulting in a global health crisis. In 1957, H2N2 killed a million people around the world.

The Post’s article, by Wendy Orent, states that scientists were working to create an artificial strain of the 1918 virus: “[Scientists] can combine some 1918 genes either with laboratory strains that have been adapted to grow in mice, which don’t normally catch human flu, or with ordinary human flu strains to yield new artificial strains. Then the researcher infects mice with his new strain. Strains using three of the 1918 genes are already known to kill mice.”

The same Post article quotes Peter B. Jahrling, the chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the danger of the virus recreation research. Jahrling stated the research was like ”looking for a gas leak with a lighted match.” The article continues: “What concerns Jahrling and Brown, among others, is that experiments involving 1918 genes are not being carried out under the highest biosafety level, BSL-4. While most of the scientists use what is known as BSL-3 plus, or enhanced, conditions, they do not use space suits, chemical showers or gas-tight cabinets in their work.”

Lastly, the article has a stark warning regarding the 1918 flu reconstruction at the military laboratory in Rockville, research led by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger. The article states: “Even more disturbing is what may happen when Taubenberger publishes the remaining three gene sequences. Then the entire 1918 flu could be built from scratch by anyone, anywhere, who has sufficient resources and skill. It is quite conceivable that resurrected 1918 flu could someday be used as a bioterrorist agent.”

In a January 29, 2006, New York Times article by Jamie Shreeve, titled “Why Revive a Deadly Flu Virus?,” it is reported that the 1918 flu had been successfully revived. The article states: “In October, a team of scientists, [CDC’s Terrence] Tumpey among them, announced that they had recreated the extinct organism from its genetic code -- essentially the scenario played out in the movie ‘‘Jurassic Park,’’ albeit on a microbial scale. In the movie, the scientists’ self-serving revivification of dinosaurs leads to mayhem and death . . . How dangerous is the 1918 virus to today’s population? Its genetic code is now in public databases, where other researchers can download it to conduct experiments. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada have already collaborated to reconstruct the virus from the publicly available sequence. How easy would it be for a bioterrorist to exploit the same information for malevolent ends?”

The article details how the 1918 genetic material was extracted and who worked on the project: “The resurrection of the 1918 influenza virus was a team effort engaging the resources of the C.D.C. in Atlanta, an obscure military pathology lab outside Washington, D.C., an esteemed group of influenza experts at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one elderly Swede. Though the story has been told before, it is impossible not to begin with the Swede. In 1950, Johan Hultin, then a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Iowa, was searching for a Ph.D. topic when he heard a visiting virologist say that the only way to solve the mystery of the 1918 pandemic would be to recover the virus from a victim who had been buried in permafrost.”

There has been yet another secretive U.S. government group involved in researching bio-warfare agents like influenza. Known simply as JASON, the group consists of civilian scientists, the top experts in their fields and a number of Nobel laureates, who meet periodically and issue reports, many of which are classified. JASON has been in existence for 40 years and is thought to be a follow-on to the Manhattan Project, the top secret scientific group that created the atomic bomb during World War II. In fact, some of JASON’s earliest members helped to design both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Its first three members were scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the home of the Manhattan Project.

Operating under the aegis of the MITRE Corporation, a federally-funded contracting entity, JASON scientists primarily met in the highly-secured Building 29 at 3550 General Atomics Court in San Diego. The location is the address of the Torrey Pines Institute. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), JASON also has links, according to distribution lists on JASON reports, to the CIA. The CIA maintains an element called the IC [Intelligence Community] JASON Program under the Chief Technical Officer. Traditionally, JASON self-selects its members from a number of academic disciplines. However, JASON almost lost its funding a few years ago, when, after issuing a report critical of the Bush administration’s ballistic missile defense program, DARPA attempted to force three new members, obviously political overseers, on to the JASON membership rolls. DARPA’s chief, Tony Tether, pulled funding for JASON, forcing the group for the first time since its inception in 1959 to look for another Pentagon sponsor. The ballistic missile defense program, also called Star Wars II, was a personal pet project of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

JASON survived when DARPA’s parent orgzniation, the Pentagon’s Directorate for Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), provided JASON with direct funding, an indication of the power enjoyed by the secretive JASON organization. JASON also has other federal government sponsors, including the Department of Energy.

JASON is also very much involved in issues of biological warfare. JASON produced a report on Civilian Biodefense in January 2000, which was highly redacted when released. Even the names of the report’s authors and the information on four bio-warfare scenarios is completely blacked out, except for a discussion of a 1947 smallpox incident in Scenario Two. The report also states that the CIA’s Clandestine Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) Operations Center and Counter-Proliferation Center were interested in biological weapons intelligence collection and signatures. A section of the report on “Managing Civilian Response” to a bio-war attack is also completely redacted, as is a section on domestic intelligence. A page on the anthrax threat references “psychological BW [biological weapons] warfare.” The JASON report was completed almost two years before anthrax attacks all but suspended the work of Congress after 9/11 and saw the quick passage of the USAPATRIOT Act.

The JASON report also discusses the mining of medical data, including patient billing records, to find out if a disease outbreak has occurred and how far and what direction it is spreading by examining “spatiotemporal patterns,” including “averaging statistics for humans traveling globally.”

In fact, the JASON Civilian Biodefense report mirrors, in many respects, the analysis being currently conducted by medical intelligence (MEDINT) agencies around the world on the outbreak and spread of A/H1N1. And that begs the question: is A/H1N1, artificially-developed by U.S. government scientists, the real thing or a test run for something much worse?

SIDEBAR:

The JASON report on bio-war discusses “managing civilian response.” That also appears be a major concern of the CDC on A/H1N1 at the present time judging from the following internal CDC memo obtained by WMR (note that “swine flu” is being referred to as the “novel H1N1 flu”):

From: CDC Announcements
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 10:31 AM
To: CDC All - [REDACTED]

Subject: Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu – CDC-INFO

Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu – CDC-INFO

The CDC National Contact Center, CDC-INFO, is available to assist CDC programs in responding to calls and emails related to the novel H1N1 flu. CDC-INFO maintains current content for phone and email responses; maintains records of calls/emails; collects and analyzes quality assurance and customer satisfaction data; and provides on-demand reports for program partners.

If the general public is contacting you with questions related to the novel H1N1 outbreak, we encourage you to direct those inquires you receive to CDC-INFO. CDC-INFO representatives are available to respond to inquiries 24 hours, 7 days a week via email and phone, in English and Spanish. Emails should be forwarded to [e-mail]. Telephone inquiries may be routed to 1-800-CDC-INFO (1-800-232-4636).

If you have any questions regarding this email, or for assistance in routing public inquiries, please contact [e-mail].

CDC-INFO’s Novel H1N1 Flu Response

Since April 22, 2009, CDC-INFO has answered more than 29,000 phone and email inquiries from the general public and health care professionals in support of CDC’s novel H1N1 flu response. As of Friday, May 8, 2009, the average hold time for phone calls related to novel H1N1 flu was less than 5 seconds. To date, the states with the highest number of phone inquiries are: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Georgia.

On Thursday, April 30, 2009, CDC-INFO answered the highest number of inquiries on a single topic in its 4-year history, with 3,127 calls and emails answered related to the novel H1N1 outbreak.

As of May 5, 2009, 75 percent of survey respondents gave CDC-INFO their highest satisfaction rating for the novel H1N1 flu-related services they received.

Supporting CDC’s Mission

The CDC-INFO National Contact Center (1800-CDC-INFO or [e-mail]) supports CDC’s mission by providing a single trusted source of accurate, timely, consistent, and science-based information for the general public, healthcare providers and public health partners. Information is available on more than 400 CDC health and safety topics, disease prevention, and health promotion information through phone, TTY, and email. CDC-INFO provides critical health information to vulnerable populations, including those without access to CDC’s internet resources or those with low health literacy.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2009 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor

[gym gravity]

nvax is perky today...above the 200sma on some volume. macd curling for another run upwards.

the "patient" momentum buyers are being paid back. they are the ones that bought the gap closure at $1.51.

I think a daily close above the 200sma or about $2.02 would cause shorts to panic. short interest is at near 52 week highs. volume says only one day to cover, but the volume is misleading because of the monster volume days that got this ball rolling.

Date Short Interest Avg Daily Share Volume Days To Cover
4/30/2009 5,444,813 10,798,563 1.000000

[rstar]

school around the corner from me in williamsburg brooklyn closed with over 50 students w flu...


First NY Death Connected to Swine Flu, City Closes More Schools
by Beth Fertig
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/132170

NEW YORK, NY May 18, 2009 —An assistant principal has become New York's first death in connection to the swine flu virus. The city has closed a total of 11 schools over the past few days, because hundreds of students have come down with flu-like symptoms. And the mayor is scheduled to give an update on the city's response to the situation later this morning. WNYC's Beth Fertig has more.

REPORTER: Mitchell Wiener had worked at IS 238 in Hollis for than 30 years. He was 55 and worked as a math teacher before becoming an Assistant Principal two years ago. Mayor Bloomberg called him a well liked and devoted educator and said his death is a loss for the city schools.

I-S 238 was closed on Thursday when the city reported that Weiner and four students had confirmed cases of H1N1 or swine flu virus. Wiener's wife has questioned whether the city should have acted sooner because her husband and dozens of students had fallen sick the week before.

A spokesman for Flushing Hospital Medical Center said complications besides the virus likely played a role in Wiener's death. By Friday the city had closed six schools and yesterday five more were shut in Queens, including a Catholic school, after high numbers of students were reporting flu like symptoms. The health department says it's closely tracking the virus, which appears to spread very quickly. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.

[rstar]

W.H.O. May Raise Alert Level as Swine Flu Cases Leap in Japan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/world/asia/19flu.html?ref=global-home
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: May 18, 2009

The number of swine flu cases in Japan soared over the weekend, raising the likelihood that the World Health Organization will soon have to raise its pandemic alert level to 6, the highest level.

On Sunday, the assistant principal of a school in Queens died after being hospitalized with swine flu. It was the sixth flu-related death in the United States and the first in New York State.

In Japan, authorities ordered more than 1,000 schools and kindergartens in and near the cities of Kobe and Osaka to shut down. There were no confirmed cases in Tokyo.

Until Friday, Japan thought it had contained the virus after finding four infected people who had visited North America and flown home. It quarantined them and 50 other passengers, began sending medical workers to meet each flight arriving from North America to take temperatures of those on board and told visitors they would need to have their temperatures recorded daily.

But on Saturday, the authorities confirmed that a 17-year-old student in Kobe who had not been overseas was infected; as of Monday afternoon, there were at least 125 recorded cases throughout Japan.

Kobe residents rushed to hospitals, where doctors in biohazard suits checked people for fever in tents set up in parking lots, Agence France-Presse reported. Transit workers and supermarket employees began wearing masks.

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso recorded a video message for broadcast on television calling for calm while urging people to wash their hands, gargle and wear face masks to help prevent the spread of the disease.

"Experts say that if you receive timely treatment, this new flu is not something to be afraid of," Mr. Aso said in the message, Reuters reported.

In Geneva, where health ministers from around the world began an annual meeting of the World Health Assembly on Monday, discussions on preparations for a possible flu pandemic topped the agenda. Health officials said they were monitoring the situation in Japan, but it was not yet clear whether they would raise the pandemic threat level.

In their opening sessions, the ministers agreed to shorten the event to a week from an original 10 days to allow health ministers to return home sooner. The organization’s director-general, Margaret Chan, and the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, will meet top pharmaceutical executives on Tuesday to discuss their ability to make vaccines to fight the strain.

Japan is well known in public health circles for being exceptionally nervous about flu; it has an aging population and a national obsession with cleanliness that makes even Switzerland look messy.

Masks are common on subways because it is considered rude to lack one if you are sneezing. Before the outbreak began last month, Japan used about 60 percent of the world’s stock of the antiviral drug Tamiflu.

If the World Health Organization finds sustained community transmission — that is, infections between people with no connections to travel from North America — it will presumably raise its pandemic alert level to 6, because Japan is outside the W.H.O. Americas region.

The alerts, by definition, measure a new virus’s spread, not its lethality. The lethality can vary from country to country, depending on viral mutations, how prepared each country is, what other diseases its population has, and other factors.

Turkey, India and Chile also reported their first swine flu cases over the weekend.

The patient in Turkey was an American heading to Iraq. India’s case was that of a 23-year-old who arrived in Hyderabad from New York. Chilean officials reported that two of its citizens — two women, 25 and 32 years old — were found to have the flu after returning from a trip to the Dominican Republic.

Late Sunday night, Hong Kong confirmed its third case of swine flu, a 23-year-old man from southern China who had been studying in the United States. He arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday evening on Cathay Pacific Flight 831 from New York.

A spokesman for the Hong Kong health department said the man developed a fever during the flight and was spotted by a thermal scanner at the airport when he left the plane. Authorities put him in an isolation ward at Princess Margaret Hospital and issued a call for other passengers on the flight to report for testing. As of Sunday night, the spokesman said, 22 passengers and a crew member had been quarantined at a camp in rural Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s first case of flu, on May 1, resulted in the quarantine of hundreds of travelers and hotel guests. The second case occurred last week.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong and Sharon Otterman from New York.

[rstar]

don't get complacent nitwit! lol

Worst Of Flu May Not Be Over: WHO Official
http://www.cnbc.com/id/30764464
Topics:Swine Flu
Sectors:Health Care Equipment and Services | Health Care | Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology
Companies:Baxter International | Sanofi-Aventis SA | GlaxoSmithKline plc | Novartis AG
By: CNBC.com | 15 May 2009 | 11:01 AM ET
Text Size

The World Health Organisation warned on Friday against a false sense of security from waning and apparently mild outbreaks of H1N1 flu, saying the worst may not be over.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said there remained "great uncertainty" about the new strain that continues to spread and could pose particular threats in Southeast Asia.

But she could not say whether or when the United Nations agency might raise its pandemic alert to the highest level from the current 5 on a scale of 6.

The trigger would be if sustained spread was confirmed in communities outside of North America.

"Actually, I am asking myself that question every day," Chan said in response to a question from Argentina's delegation. "We are meeting at a time of crisis that could have global implications," she warned the intergovernmental meeting on pandemic influenza preparedness at WHO's Geneva headquarters.

"This is a virus so evasive that it can quietly and stealthily move into your country without you even realising it." The two-day meeting is tackling the sensitive issue of virus sharing in exchange for access to vaccines derived from them.

At the height of fears about bird flu, Indonesia had refused to share H5N1 virus samples without guarantees the vaccines would be provided to poorer countries at an affordable price.

The negotiations, begun in November 2007, have taken on fresh urgency with the emergence of the H1N1 virus.

If negotiators reach a draft agreement, it would be brought to the WHO's annual assembly of health ministers, who meet in Geneva next week, for possible adoption.

GlaxoSmithKline [ Loading... () ] , Sanofi-Aventis [ Loading... () ] , Novartis [ Loading... () ] , Baxter International [BAX 49.95 -0.69 (-1.36%) ] and other drug makers are awaiting WHO guidance about whether to start mass-producing vaccines to fight H1N1, which may force them to cut production of seasonal flu shots.

Glaxo said on Friday it had received orders from several governments, including Britain, France, Belgium and Finland, looking to stockpile a pandemic vaccine against the new virus.

Chan said she would make a recommendation soon about the appropriate balance between making the two types of injections.

"We are moving on two tracks to ensure some security for seasonal vaccine and at the same time kick-starting early scientific work for pandemic vaccine," she told the session.

Sharing Samples

The WHO chief commended countries with H1N1 infections for their "timely sharing of samples for risk assessment and making seed vaccine," saying the starting point for larger production of injections could be ready by the end of this month.

Participants are seeking to reach agreement on standards for transparency, trust, and sovereignty related to sample sharing.

According to the latest WHO count, some 7,520 people in 34 countries have been infected with the strain that is a genetic mixture of swine, bird and human viruses.

Belgium was the latest addition to that official tally. Mexico has officially recorded 60 deaths from the virus that has also killed three people in the United States, one person in Canada and one in Costa Rica.

RELATED LINKS

Current DateTime: 08:05:20 15 May 2009
LinksList Documentid: 30764598

* DialAFlight Announce Bookings Upsurge After Swine Scare
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Most patients infected with the flu, which spreads like seasonal flu through sneezes, coughs and air droplets, have experienced mild symptoms and some appear to be asymptomatic.

But Chan stressed that important risks remain. "It is important that countries where cases are imported do not fall into a false sense of security.

So make sure cases returning from travel do not spread in your community." She said the WHO is closely watching parts of Southeast Asia that saw large outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu -- a virus that can be deadly when it passes from birds to humans, but has not spread easily between people to date.

A mixture of H5N1 and H1N1 viruses could have a big impact, she said, while stressing: "I am not saying it will happen."
© 2009 CNBC.com

[Crazy Money]

Has swine flu killed us all yet? just wondering if I am still alive or not... TIA

[rstar]

Swine Flu Is as Severe as Pandemic Virus in 1957, Study Shows
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYOW.Fe5O3Zc&refer=home
By John Lauerman

May 12 (Bloomberg) -- The swine flu strain that has sickened people in 30 countries rivals the severity of the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic that killed 2 million people, scientists said.

About four of 1,000 people infected with the new H1N1 strain in Mexico by late April died, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Science that was led by Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College London. Seasonal flu epidemics cause 250,000 to 500,000 deaths each year, the World Health Organization has said.

Scientists are trying to determine whether swine flu will mutate and become more deadly as it spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and back. The virus is more contagious than seasonal flu, the Geneva-based WHO said yesterday. A “moderate” pandemic like the 1957 Asian flu could kill 14.2 million people and shave 2 percent from the global economy in the first year, the World Bank said in October.

“While substantial uncertainty remains, clinical severity appears less than that seen in 1918 but comparable with that seen in 1957,” the Science study authors wrote.

Flu pandemics occur when a strain of the disease to which few people have immunity evolves and begins spreading. Pandemics usually occur two to three times a century, scientists have said. A worldwide outbreak as severe as the 1918 Spanish flu might cause 180 million to 260 million deaths, the World Bank said, citing a 2005 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The last pandemic hit in 1968, and health officials have been anticipating another since the H5N1 strain began spreading widely in birds in 2003.

World Spread

Swine flu has been confirmed in 4,694 people, according to the WHO, the health agency of the United Nations. Sixty-one people have died, including 56 in Mexico, three in the U.S., and one each in Canada and Costa Rica, health officials said. The U.S. confirmed 2,618 cases in 44 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Each person infected with swine flu in Mexico in April gave it to 1.4 more people on average, the study said. While that’s in the lower range of transmission speed for a pandemic virus, it’s quicker than most seasonal flus, the authors said.

An estimated 23,000 people in Mexico were infected by late April, the researchers said. That number was based on case reports and assumptions about the speed of spread, and may have been as high as 32,000 and as low as 6,000, according to the study.

More Contagious

In seasonal flu, each person who comes in contact with someone who’s sick has a 5 percent to 15 percent probability of illness, according to a statement on the WHO’s Web site. In swine flu, the probability increases to 22 percent to 33 percent, WHO said.

Swine flu has been “overwhelmingly mild outside Mexico,” the WHO statement said. The reason for that variation “is still not fully understood,” it said.

Swine flu is making more young people seriously ill, compared with seasonal flu, and “is of particular concern” because it’s causing more significant medical effects in people with other health conditions, the WHO said.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at [e-mail].
Last Updated: May 11, 2009 20:32 EDT

[Crazy Money]

Swine flu is nothing more than a bad cold oh wait, the swine flu doom has been moved till next fall... we will all die then... weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[gym gravity]

a new round of swine flu news coming up. what new contracts might have been forged? HEB in japan? NVAX with vlp in hand? Will doses of anything experimental be called up? Medimmune and medarex too.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Vical-To-Vaccinate-Navy-Flu-indie-15168177.html?.v=1

[gym gravity]

novavax has goods:

Seasonal vaccine trial opened today, last time it took them 2 days to announce the trail was done and data would be available to the date. 9/16 to 9/18

http://www.novavax.com/download/releases/Enr%20Phs2%20May%2009%20FO.pdf

expect a pr or specific comments about the trial being done in the conference call this friday.

http://www.novavax.com/download/releases/Earnings%20call%20info%20PR%20May%2009.pdf

[gym gravity]

nvax is also a gap closure trade as it closed the gap yesterday.

[shermann7]

Research Indicates Eco-Safe Ozone Disinfection Would Inactivate Type A, H1N1 Virus

On Tuesday May 5, 2009, 6:00 am EDT
Buzz up! Print LOS ANGELES, CA--(MARKET WIRE)--May 5, 2009 -- Eco-Safe Systems USA, Inc. (Other OTC:ESFS.PK - News) deems it significant to emphasize research published in July 2008.

A study completed by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, Brigham Young University, and Utah Valley State College was published by the Journal of Virological Methods which documented the inactivation of a Type A, H1N1 virus by ozone disinfection. The virus responsible for the current outbreaks of Swine Flu is classified as a Type A, H1N1 virus.

Michael Elliot, President of Eco-Safe, said, "Public health concerns for the spread of viral illness in schools, restaurants, and other venues are of prime consideration by Eco-Safe. Proper disinfection of food, utensils, and food service workers' hands has become an absolute necessity in light of the current public health emergency of Swine Flu. Ozone disinfection is the strongest, fastest, safest, and a completely green method for reliable disinfection of known pathogens."

Larry LaVerne, Eco-Safe Director of Marketing, added, "Several Eco-Safe clients who process seafood have given us anecdotal reports of reduced employee illness after installing Eco-Safe Ozone Disinfection in their businesses, with one distributor reporting 60% fewer employee sick days. When you reduce the load on the immune system, the infection rate goes down."

About Eco-Safe Systems:

Eco-Safe Systems, based in Los Angeles, is the manufacturer of patent pending water treatment and water reclamation systems. Our technologies produce ozonated water for food disinfection and water purification at significantly less maintenance cost and greater energy savings than our competitors in a completely green and organic manner. Please visit us at www.ecosafeusa.com for more information.

The foregoing contains forward-looking information within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties. The actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements even if experience or future changes make it clear that any projected results (expressed or implied) will not be realized.

[gym gravity]

this is about seasonal flu. the important thing is novavax's platform has provided immunogenic vaccines in 7 different flu strains and that they have already started making an exact vlp for the "mexican" H1N1 strain.

""The initiation of this study of the 2008-2009 VLP vaccine highlights our ability to create and manufacture VLPs against multiple influenza strains. Including this study, we now have created and evaluated the safety and immunogenicity of VLPs against seven different strains of influenza in clinical trials. This experience has been of great value as we continue our efforts to create a VLP vaccine against the recently emerged 2009 H1N1 influenza virus"."

[gym gravity]

this out at 9:30


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Novavax-Announces-Enrollment-prnews-15132708.html?.v=1

[gym gravity]

pre market in nvax was more active than usual. gap pretty much closed yesterday. novavax is the specialist. check this old presentation for the H5N1 vlp and remember the pre-clinical study with H1N1 vlp:

http://www.novavax.com/download/File/pandemic_for_web.pdf
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/NOVAVAX-Announces-Publication-prnews-14918226.html?.v=1

[hacksaw]

Swine flu-HIV could devastate human race


Reaction: Will swine flu sweep back this fall? WASHINGTON, May 4 (UPI) -- The global swine flu threat is receding, but it could return in a far more deadly form in the fall.

The warning was given Monday by Dr. Margaret Chan, head of the 193-nation World Health Organization, in an interview with the Financial Times of London.

Chan warned that the swine flu virus known as H1N1 that caused the Mexico City-centered outbreak could return in the fall as a far more dangerous mutation.

After last week's warnings, school closings across the United States and the near shuttering of Mexico City, the current outbreak seems to have peaked. The WHO said Monday there were 985 confirmed cases of H1N1 spread over 20 countries. There have been 25 confirmed deaths.

As of Monday there were 286 reported cases of swine flu in 36 U.S. states. Both U.S. and Mexican authorities expressed confidence that the spread of the disease was slowing down.

The World Health Organization said the higher number of reports of cases from Mexico -- 590 -- comes from testing of previously gathered samples.

The four strands of the swine flu virus come from pigs, humans and birds. Experts believe that the virus mutated into its current form in the bodies of pigs. Health authorities are particularly worried that the capability to mutate already exhibited by the virus could eventually let it combine with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.

That could cause a lethally dangerous global health problem on a comparable scale to the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic that eventually infected more than 500 million people -- more than one-quarter of the human race -- and killed 10 percent of them. That death toll of 50 million was more than five times the total fatalities of World War I. The epidemic killed more Americans than died in World War I and World II combined.

Canadian health officials said Sunday they have confirmed that the H1N1 swine flu virus had, in at least one case, leaped back into a herd of 200 pigs. That raised the possibility it could mutate again in pigs and move back into the human population.

Chan told the Financial Times that, given the potential scale of the possible threat, the World Health Organization did not overreact to the swine flu threat. While the number of new cases hasn't grown as fast as expected, Chan said the disease could return in a few months in a much more lethal strain. She also said she would rather be over-prepared than have to answer questions about why the World Health Organization didn't take sufficient action.

The reaction of the U.S. government headed by President Barack Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was measured, restrained and less tough than that of the 27-nation European Union or of nations like China in closing cross-border traffic or imposing comprehensive screening.

The Chinese government was horrified at the possibility that swine flu could spread among its 1.3 billion people, almost 20 percent of the human race. Its emergency measures, however, have infuriated the Mexican government and led to a major diplomatic row between the two nations.

Mexican travelers were quarantined in hotels, and the Mexican ambassador to China was not allowed to meet with one group he tried to visit. The anger of the Mexican government at the Chinese measures, however, has obscured the real possibility that the global impact of swine flu has been limited precisely because of the swift measures that were taken globally to contain it.

The global swine flu crisis recalls the so-called millennium bug, which was supposed to crash computers around the world as the machines' internal clocks turned over Jan. 1, 2000. That didn't happen, but some experts said that was because the precautions taken helped prevent the problem. Some said there wasn't a problem to begin with. The whole controversy revolved around a negative proposition that couldn't be proved.

Skeptics are already arguing that the global fever over swine flu should fall into the same category. However, human history is filled with little-known but horrifying examples of global pandemics from diseases like Spanish flu, cholera, syphilis or bubonic plague that swept the world, killing hundreds of millions of people, destroying civilizations and reshaping the demographic patterns of the planet.

In a modern world of unprecedented population scale and social mobility, Chan's caution therefore appears completely justified. The alternative is to risk a biological disaster that could eventually prove more devastating than a thermonuclear war.

[Crazy Money]

"Level 6 is about Geography, not severity" in case they upgrade it and flutards get excited again, lolzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[stormy weather]

Over 30,000 people die of the reg flu every year.. and this is set to only kill a very few..
The FEAR is WAY overrated!! Those that are already compromised health wise are the most suseptible...

[rstar]

Sizing Up the Swine Flu
MONDAY, MAY 4, 2009
By JIM MCTAGUE
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB124121864203378903.html
SOME TOP MEDICAL EXPERTS CLAIM THE swine-flu virus has a 50-50 shot at becoming the deadliest bug to hit the planet since 1918-'19, when some 50 million people perished, at least a half-million of them in the U.S.

If the new virus proves as relentless a killer, it would knock our already-enervated economy flat on its back. Stores, hotels, schools, churches and other gathering places would be shuttered, and hospitals would be overwhelmed.

Worries about the flu already are weighing on the stock market. And Vice President Joe Biden didn't help matters by suggesting people avoid flying, eliciting howls of protest from trade groups.

I heard about the 1918-style economic threats from a panel of leading epidemiologists at the Milken Institute Global Conference last week at the Beverly Hills Hilton. The scientists added that, owing to climate change and population growth, viral threats like this one could become routine.

The panel's members were Larry Brilliant, who chairs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Biosurveillance Subcommittee; Scott Layne, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA's School of Public Health; and Seth Berkley, president and chief executive of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, New York City. They were speaking Tuesday morning, well in advance of news later in the day about the outbreak in New York City.
Barron's Jim McTague speaks with Bill Marcus of Newedge Group about the outlook for commodities at the 2009 Milken Institute Global Conference.

Brilliant -- who is credited for his work in a World Health Organization smallpox-eradication program in Asia -- underscored the severity of the outlook when he said: "I don't think it is stupid to wear a mask. It is polite in a respiratory epidemic to do so."

Away from the conference, some money managers were taking precautions of their own. New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors said it took some profits from a recent run-up in emerging-market stocks, and built a cash reserve in its international portfolios.

UCLA's Layne points out that, like the 1918 virus, the swine flu, with a similar genetic lineage, emerged at the tail end of the flu season. As in 1918, there initially has been a blip of fatal cases. But in 1918, mutations of the original strain resulted in a subsequent surge of deaths. All told, the pandemic lasted 18 months and caused more deaths than World War I.

One big advantage we have today: The world's monitoring systems are better, and there have been advances in the speed at which scientists can understand the nature of the virus and produce vaccines. Already, the government has stockpiles of Tamiflu and Relenza, flu-fighting drugs that seem to reduce the severity of the current strain. Still, the government's defensive strategies are something of a patchwork quilt. The U.S. currently relies on more than 300 disease-surveillance systems, which Brilliant says is silly. His biosurveillance panel will soon formally suggest that the federal government create a locus to analyze all disease issues of any consequence and then allot resources intelligently.

President Obama is urging Congress to approve $1.5 billion, as part of a pending war-spending bill, to help with the cost of battling the health threat.

Money to prepare for pandemics was in the first draft of Obama's stimulus bill, which he signed on Feb. 17 -- but the $900 million was cut during the legislative process, said Layne. The public-health infrastructure often is the first place where Congress goes to cut costs, he said. "We have to do better," Layne says. "This is not a drill. This is the real deal."

E-mail: [e-mail]

[Crazy Money]

Still have a week or 2 of fear mongering, then again in the fall it seems, snore... stores here in Tampa are all sold out of masks and hand sanitizer, LMFAO!! what is wrong with people? zzz

[morley480]

Seems an opportunity for fast-track testing for companies like NNVC.

[hacksaw]

Sun, May. 03, 2009. Flu developments

Texas

Only a fraction of the nearly 2,500 nasal swabs sent to the state health department lab have been tested. The Austin lab had tested 181 of the 2,492 nasal swabs received from counties around the state by Friday. The lab’s single testing machine was overwhelmed Wednesday.

Authorities in Lubbock have begun assigning priorities for samples to be checked.
Updated: May 2, 2009 07:24 PM CDT

NUECES COUNTY - The Health Department says there are 326 suspected cases in Nueces County Texas, but at this point, no confirmed cases.

Those 326 suspected cases are up from 270 this morning.

There are three probable swine flu cases and all West Oso ISD schools are now closed until further notice.

So is Miller High School.