A couple of H1N1 related stories I thought best to share.
The CDC is currently estimating "several hundred thousand" Americans could die, as 40% of the US population would be exposed to the virus, 'without a successful vaccine campaign'.
Swine flu could hit up to 40 percent in USNear the end, this ominous sounding sentence: "The World Health Organization says as many as 2 billion people could become infected in the next two years - nearly a third of the world population. The estimates look at potential impacts in a two-year period because past flu pandemics have occurred in waves over more than one year."
Sounds like fear mongering? A story in a bio-medicine rag has a very different tale to tell. The US Government is quietly freaking out over this:
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Flu? One company is diligently preparing for the worst case scenario with promising results. - BioMedReports.com"…Off the record, in a deep conversation in a dark bar, a government scientist researching pandemic flu would say that they’re scared to death because they see just how intelligent this virus is…"
The story, mainly about a new bio-med company working on a polymorphic anti-viral, has some rather humbling words ion it.
"As we look forward, as this virus continues to circle the globe, as it interfaces in humans and more importantly in pigs, there is a significant chance that it will evolve and could soon have greater morbidity effects and far worse mortality effects on the global population, comparable to what happened in 1918 – which also involved an H1N1 virus. With the last recirculating H1N1 being in 1957, the global population’s level of natural immunity may be assumed to be low."
"One of the fascinating things that the media and most everyone else pays no attention to is that early on, very early on, the CDC knew that there were problems growing this strain of virus used for the conventional vaccine approach now being ramped up for swine flu,” says my informant. “ The low yields and long time to production should not be news to anyone in the know. The current vaccine manufacturers have come out and said, ‘hey we’re getting low yields and its taking us a long time to produce that low-yielding vaccine,’ but insiders have known this since last April.
“This gets back to just how smart a virus we’re dealing with. To boil it down to simplistic almost cartoonish terms, this thing has figured out how to survive the environmental conditions in which influenza viruses have never survived, namely heat and humidity.
“It is contrary to all of influenza history to see a virus surviving the way this one is. It knows enough that vaccines- ever since we started creating vaccines- are produced in eggs and it’s genetic code knows enough not to allow a vaccine to be produced in eggs quickly. This is not by chance that we’ve got this problem. This all gets back to a virus that has been around for hundreds of years and through hundreds of years of experience has morphed itself into something that is wary of being trapped or deceived.
“It has figured out a way to continue its propagation almost unimpeded and that would suggest that off the record, in a deep conversation in a dark bar, a government scientist researching pandemic flu would say that they’re scared to death because they see just how intelligent this virus is, they see what it’s done already and they know its potential. It’s ability to have done what it’s already done suggests a genetic intelligence- a genetic code internal to the virus- that will allow it to adapt in ways in which we have not seen influenza adapt before."
Peace and Love
