I'M SICK AND TIRED
I'm sick and tired of alarmist statements that shake societies which are then told by the same people, "Don't be alarmed!" I'm sick and tired of unproven claims and manipulated numbers that close schools, cost billions of dollars to tax-payers and fatten the money belts of pharmaceutical companies, that burden GPs who haven't enough time to deal with that they know is wrong with people and that feed the egos of those who want to make a name for themselves by saving us from another PANDEMIC!!!!!!
What follows is a piece from Jenny Thompson of the HSI group. I don't by any means swallow all that this group puts out but this I think is worth reading.
These are tough days for pigs, and hogs, and especially...swine.
"PLEASE don't call it swine flu!"
That request comes from the Davis family – HSI members who happen to be hog farmers. The Davis e-mail continues: "It has cut our income from our hogs down to way below profit. The flu has nothing to do with hogs."
And the very same day, I received this e-mail from Belden Farms: "I am from a swine farm here in Kansas, in the US. The swine flu has really devastated our industry, just because of the name. Could you possibly use the initials for the flu, instead of swine flu? My grandchildren (teenagers) work in our swine facility. If there were any chance of them catching the flu from the pigs, they would not be working out there."
So for Belden Farms and the Davis family, I'll be glad to start calling this flu by its true name: H1N1. Not very catchy, but then neither is this strain of flu.
About three months ago, World Health Organization (WHO) officials agreed to drop their use of the word "swine" and only refer to the flu as H1N1. Their reasoning: No swine, pigs, or hogs in any country in the world have been diagnosed with the illness. H1N1 does have elements of swine flu, but it also has elements of human and avian strains.
Bottom line: You can't pick up H1N1 from bacon, ham, pork chops, etc.
Hard to get
As noted above, H1N1 is not very catchy. Literally.
When Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers in the US, recently compared characteristics of H1N1 to other flu strains, they found that this new variety of H1N1 is not effective in binding to human receptors.
H1N1 has also been found to transmit poorly between ferrets. This is significant because flu viruses happen to affect ferrets in ways similar to humans. When ferrets were separated, airborne respiratory droplets were not effective in spreading H1N1. But the virus spread more easily when ferrets were in close contact. And this has been the case so far with H1N1 in humans: high risk of transmission in a close family unit, low risk of transmission in public places.
But while H1N1 is hard to get, an H1N1 vaccine should be pretty easy to come by a couple of months from now.
According to the Associated Press, the US government is planning to purchase millions of H1N1 vaccines, which will be distributed free to states. And it appears that public schools will provide the launch pad. Never mind that safety and side effects are still a big question mark. Never mind that the seasonal flu vaccine is known to be less effective among younger children.
Never mind ANY of that. Children will probably get the first big wave of H1N1 shots. But today, parents are more aware than ever that new vaccines often produce surprising adverse side effects – some of them quite dangerous. So it's going to be very interesting to see if large numbers of parents opt out of the H1N1 vaccine offer.
The states just might end up holding a huge surplus of a vaccine that may or may not actually prevent a flu that's hard to get in the first place.
"PLEASE don't call it swine flu!"
That request comes from the Davis family – HSI members who happen to be hog farmers. The Davis e-mail continues: "It has cut our income from our hogs down to way below profit. The flu has nothing to do with hogs."
And the very same day, I received this e-mail from Belden Farms: "I am from a swine farm here in Kansas, in the US. The swine flu has really devastated our industry, just because of the name. Could you possibly use the initials for the flu, instead of swine flu? My grandchildren (teenagers) work in our swine facility. If there were any chance of them catching the flu from the pigs, they would not be working out there."
So for Belden Farms and the Davis family, I'll be glad to start calling this flu by its true name: H1N1. Not very catchy, but then neither is this strain of flu.
About three months ago, World Health Organization (WHO) officials agreed to drop their use of the word "swine" and only refer to the flu as H1N1. Their reasoning: No swine, pigs, or hogs in any country in the world have been diagnosed with the illness. H1N1 does have elements of swine flu, but it also has elements of human and avian strains.
Bottom line: You can't pick up H1N1 from bacon, ham, pork chops, etc.
Hard to get
As noted above, H1N1 is not very catchy. Literally.
When Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers in the US, recently compared characteristics of H1N1 to other flu strains, they found that this new variety of H1N1 is not effective in binding to human receptors.
H1N1 has also been found to transmit poorly between ferrets. This is significant because flu viruses happen to affect ferrets in ways similar to humans. When ferrets were separated, airborne respiratory droplets were not effective in spreading H1N1. But the virus spread more easily when ferrets were in close contact. And this has been the case so far with H1N1 in humans: high risk of transmission in a close family unit, low risk of transmission in public places.
But while H1N1 is hard to get, an H1N1 vaccine should be pretty easy to come by a couple of months from now.
According to the Associated Press, the US government is planning to purchase millions of H1N1 vaccines, which will be distributed free to states. And it appears that public schools will provide the launch pad. Never mind that safety and side effects are still a big question mark. Never mind that the seasonal flu vaccine is known to be less effective among younger children.
Never mind ANY of that. Children will probably get the first big wave of H1N1 shots. But today, parents are more aware than ever that new vaccines often produce surprising adverse side effects – some of them quite dangerous. So it's going to be very interesting to see if large numbers of parents opt out of the H1N1 vaccine offer.
The states just might end up holding a huge surplus of a vaccine that may or may not actually prevent a flu that's hard to get in the first place.
About 115 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine are produced each year. Compare that to the 600 million doses of H1N1 flu vaccine the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) is reportedly considering and you have an idea of the enormous payday H1N1 is going to be for vaccine manufacturers.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.
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