(CNN) -- The presence of swine flu in Mexico and the United States is "a serious situation" that could develop into a pandemic, the World Health Organization's director-general said Saturday.

Women wear masks as a precaution against swine flu at a subway in Mexico City on Friday.





"This is an animal strain of the H1N1 virus and it has pandemic potential because it is infecting people," Dr. Margaret Chan said Saturday speaking to reporters by phone.



In Mexico, 68 people have died from swine flu, according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, and 1,000 have been infected.



http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/25...flu/index.html



Here's an addendum that's quite disturbing regarding governmental powers in Mexico:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090425/.../med_swine_flu



NEW: New Zealand quarantines 22 students, 3 teachers with swine flu symptoms

I've been following this and it's pretty scary stuff. Now they are testing 75 school children in Queens, New York who are suspected of having it. Hopefully it's a false alarm there but if not it has rather dire implications.

I agree. They haven't been able to find any common connection between the US cases and it's spread like a cold. bad news. when MExico cancels all public events for 10 days, it's pretty serious.

This sort of thing scares the crap out of me

I heard that most of them had been on a school trip to Mexico.

I hope this doesn't turn into something big.

Well, at least we have the pharmaceutical companies to help us out. Oh yeah...the ones that mixed live avian flu virus with seasonal flu virus and shipped it off for distribution to eastern Europe...

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canad...7/8560781.html

Is it even possible to make a mistake that big?



But I think no one should be surprised. We don't care about farming methods when only the animals suffer, but we're going to be forced to care when we start dying because of it. Between heavy use of antibiotics (because of the conditions the animals are kept in) and confinement/factory farming, this kind of thing is inevitable. If this doesn't turn into a pandemic, we always have other diseases of modern animal farming to look forward to, like bird flu and mad cow (not that those things couldn't happen before, but we've amped up their potential exponentially)...

More cases of swine flu reported; WHO warns of 'health emergency'

Well, we were all waiting for it... Here it is.

Here's the conspiracy theorist side: we better stock up on food as we're all going to be quarantined to our homes, consenting to mandatory health checks, living in fear of our neighbors, the guns at ready to protect our families. wait a minute: this would make a great sci fi movie!!

Wow... the shareholders of the company who makes Tamiflu are once again rubbing their hands!!! Big bonuses up ahead for some directors too, I imagine.



One day we'll obviously be up against a pandemic. It's inevitable. But I doubt it's this time.

If any of your meat eating friends are concerned about this be sure to remind them that this virus was caused by the desire to consume pigs as food. If it wasn't for their desire for bacon and sweet and sour pork we wouldn't be in this mess now.

+1

+2



Looks likely to have spread to New Zealand too:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...14UMeWnFkjQBaA



I really, really don't understand why they're not following up with the people who were on the same flight as these kids. It seems like basic common sense.

i think they are following up. Like with the kids from NY. they've followed up with other students and now about 100 show symptoms including relatives of these kids.

Hm. I think the article's been updated (or maybe I read it elsewhere at Yahoo!). There was a quote from some NZ health official saying "At this point..." they weren't following up with the passengers. I was flabbergasted.



Ah, it's in this version:

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20090426...u-1be00ca.html

Yes, the worrying thing is the symptoms are of a mild flu so would pass unnoticed by people even with the virus as 'just feeling bad'. The NYC kids were walking around for days last week before being admitted to hospital and could have infected 10s of thousands.



France, NZ, Spain, Canada, Israel, US, Mexico... Getting pretty scary now: Here's a googlemap with suspected outbreaks and confirmed: http://tinyurl.com/swinemap



But the WHO have met today and still only have it as a phase 3 and have not even recommended stopping flights to/from Mexico so they seem to be confident of the situation.

The band? why would they have anything to do with this?



seriously, that seems ridiculous. and cocky. i'm guessing tourism and the like is at stake in their recommendation. It'll be interesting when much poorer countries have to deal with this situation. Having much poorer health care and systems to check this, this might be tough it heads that direction.

The WHO are a collection of the worlds authorities on this sort of thing. If we doubt them then we are truly in deep trouble.



We need to be calm and listen to the experts as panic can be more dangerous than the flu itself.



Countries are already beginning to ban specific imports from Mexico and the USA in a panic reaction to this. If this snowballs then this added to the economic downturn will again be far worse than the flu.

well, sure. I'm just hoping WHO aren't making a decision partly based on concerns what their recommendation would do to Mexico's economy.

The reality is we are still at phase 3. Even in phase 4 border closings woudn't necessarily be required. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian.../en/index.html



The experts know that a full blown major pandemic would have serious global economic consequences that would dwarf the consequences of simply ruining Mexicos economy for a couple of quarters.

The WHO is the World Health Organization.



I'm really worried. My boyfriend's Dad is in Mexico city right now. He was supposed to come home today, and now he might not be able to. Or they'll let him, but he'll go straight into quarantine. Or they'll let him, he won't go into quarantine, and he might actually have it.



The cruel irony is that he (my boyfriend's whole family, actually) is vegetarian. Compassionate people have to pay for the crap brought down on our heads by omnivores. If he gets sick... I have no idea what I'm going to do.

on the news in canada i'm hearing that its really not a huge panic type deal at the moment- that they've been preparing for this since the last time they had swine flu. its not some new thing- they had outbreaks in 1918, 1968, etc. they've got antivirals stockpiled, we've got easy access drugs to bring down fevers, we have basic hygeine here (clean water, etc) and know how to wash our hands and not cough all over each other- and we know how flu works- its not an automatic killer, and its not a new unknown like SARS was. i'm really not panicing. stress is bad for the immune system.

I'm not panicking, but I am worried. I think it's only human to worry, when someone you love is down there right now. And I'm in Canada right now... so yeah.

Was talking to my mom last night (she works as a nurse in a hospital in Canada) and she said any patients coming in with flu symptoms are to be isolated immediately and anyone treating them is to take appropriate precautions (ie use the masks, etc that they would use for something like SARS). It's good to know that they're taking things seriously, but it scares me.

panicking only makes things worse. but, it's good to talk about it. helps allay fears. this strain is different than earlier strains though in that it's affecting healthy young people. That's worrisome. Also the fact that it can mutate to survie.But, what happens happens.

It sounds like from reading that the stockpiled antivirals won't work on this strain. not that they're not already working hard to find one that will work.

Your points are good about our systems. But like i stated earlier, i really hope this doesn't spread to 3rd world and developing countries. that could be very bad news indeed. at least it'll teach us to be more hygienic, right?

thats comon sense stuff- good that they're doing it. they'd do the same thing for a measles or chickenpox or different flu strain outbreak if so many people weren't vaccinated already. we don't really want anything spreading around that incapacitiates people and has risks attached. i get why you're scared, i'd probably be scared too if i was high risk, and in a high risk location right now.








i think talking can help, but i think a lot of scaremongering goes on too, and that doesnt help one bit - with too much media hysteria some people start doing stupid things like rioting over toilet paper, or shooting their neighbours cos they so much as sniffled near them.



if you read up on the 1918 flu pandemic (which was known as 'spanish flu') that took out a huge amount of young adults. and all viruses mutate. viruses have been around since before people- they do their rounds, wipe out a few people (or a whole whack of them) then disapear again for a bit, and lay low, before coming back later. its just how it goes.



this is just the latest in a long line of things that'll scare everyone for a few weeks or months, but probably not affect most of us immensely, then we'll all forget about it, relax again, and then in a year or two it'll be on to freaking out about the next one.



this may or may not help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

Jen,





Thank you. I would be concerned too if I had loved ones down in Mexico, but honestly, I don't feel we have the need to worry right now.



I will certainly be sharing with everyone expressing concern over this that is bacon's fault.

Interesting take on the crisis in today's Independent newspaper



http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...s-1674766.html



Whilst the deaths already are very sad it does question whether we are just being worked into a fearful frenzy whilst Big Pharma collects the excess profits and gives more power to their lobbying for continued animal torture. It may well turn out to be a pandemic, but I sincerely hope it does not, if there are not thousands of infections by the end of the week then I very much doubt it will.



*note to mods, feel free to move this to the news section if you feel it appropriate, but this seems to be the most active swine flu thread*

Interesting take.



But lets also not forget that 'bad news sells newspapers' (and generates advertisment revenue for TV news programs) and its in the media's self interest to whip this up into as big of a fuss as they can.

Roche's shares went up by 4% already.