Swine flu

I know two people who got home on Monday having been to Mexico - I guess that we will be communicating by email & phone for a while.

One of then has a "cold", when she rang the doctor for advice the doctor did not know what to advise - so far no polythene tent placed over their house yet (See ET for detailed description)

I work for a large global company and we had emails today and a Flu info website. Some face to face meetings canceled, workers in Mexico are now working from home and if you've been in an infected area you have to work from home for 7 days before returning to the office.

quote:

Originally posted by Nobbyright:
I have to say I'm more than a little surprised that they haven't suspended flights to Mexico yet.

There is probably no need for a ban. Demand for outgoing trips must have fallen away and no airline will fly substantially-empty aircraft out and entirely-empty aircraft back, while hazarding their aircrew, in a time of recession. They also wouldn't risk their aircraft being quarantined out there.

Fraser

quote:

Originally posted by Nobbyright:
They've suspended flights back from Mexico to the U.K., I'm led to believe. Aparrently there is quite a few thousand Brits stranded in Mexico who the airline and holiday companies are refusing to bring back.

That's just a tabloid story though.

Nobby

No, as yet no airlines have suspended flights back to the UK.
I'm BA crew & flying back to LHR on friday. So yes, at present, I am stuck in Mexico city!
The charter airlines are still flying, but the package deal companies are not selling holidays any longer.
El Matt.

I just tried getting through on the NHS Swine Flu help line


but all I got was a load of crackling..

When I got back from Sydney I saw a dozen people in the airport with blue masks. But not around town for the last few days.

Masks are annoying, I've been in several situations having to use them and you can't understand people as well without seeing their mouths move. I guess I'll have to hole up here and just chat with friends online.

I heard (on The News Quiz) last week, that it is almost as bad as 'man flu'.

Spread of swine flu

Drag the cursor to the left and then expand the case numbers by dragging to the right - a little bit frightening - Talk about exponential growth..!

Scary - good job this strain seems to be getting weaker as it spreads.

I wonder how many cases of the (much worse) normal flu there have been in the same period.

quote:

Originally posted by Chillkram:
I wonder how many cases of the (much worse) normal flu there have been in the same period.

That is not relevant. The point about siwne flu is that it is a new variant with the potential for pandemic spread. This is not the same as 'normal flu'.

Bruce

Bruce,

Sorry if I'm being an ignoramus here but in what way does swine flu seem to be more likely to spread than normal flu? I was under the impression that the worst risk came from 'airborne' viruses and I had always assumed that to mean viruses capable of transmission in someone's breath, sneezing, coughing over you and presumably attached to moisture droplets in their breath.

I always thought normal flu spread this way and swine flu didn't seem any different so I'm obviously missing something.

Just keen to hear an 'expert' opinion on this.

Thanks,

Jonathan

"What is the difference between seasonal influenza, avian influenza, swine influenza and an influenza pandemic?

Influenza viruses are commonly circulating in the human and animal environment. Different strains can cause illness in humans, bird and pigs.
Seasonal influenza is caused by influenza viruses that are adapted to spread in humans (human influenza). Humans have some natural immunity to the strains that are in common circulation, and this immunity can be boosted by immunisation with a seasonal influenza vaccine.
Avian influenza is caused by influenza viruses adapted for infection in birds. Similarly, swine influenza is caused by influenza viruses adapted for infection in pigs.
These illnesses all elicit the same respiratory symptoms in their hosts. Sometimes, humans and animals can pass strains of influenza back and forth to one another, such as when humans become ill with avian or swine influenza, usually from direct contact with animals who are ill.
Mixing of human and animal influenza viruses can lead to the development of changed viruses with the ability to cause infection and spread in the human population. There may be little or no immunity in the human population to these new viruses.

'An influenza pandemic is defined as a new or novel influenza virus that spreads easily between humans. When new influenza viruses are introduced into the environment, humans don’t have any natural immunity to protect against them. Therefore, there is a risk that that new influenza viruses could develop into a pandemic if the virus passes easily from human to human."

The above is a copied section from the HPA website. The key thing about swine flu is that is is a new virus which appears to have 'jumped' from the animal host to the human population. It then spreads person to person by the droplet method you mention; coughing, sneezing etc.

The key difference is that we have a degree of circulating population immunity to 'normal' flu. It may be the case that an infected individual with normal flu who coughs and splutters over his friends at a party only triggers active infection in just a few of them. During a seasonal flu outbreak we rarely see a situation in which more than 0.5% of the population have the illness. This is different with a pandemic flu, the novel virus means that a much higher proportion of people exposed will develop the illness, and of course they then go on to spread it further.

The modelling is around something like 25-30% of the population affected at the peak of an pandemic. Note that pandemic flu is not by definition more dangerous or serious, however if the numbers infected are vast than even an illness with just a few percent mortality will cause comensurately high numbers of deaths. The 'perfect storm' would be a pandemic strain with high morbidity and mortality rates. This happenned with Spanish Flu.

From March 1918 to June 1920 the world sufferred an H1N1 pandemic now known as Spanish Flu. Here are some numbers from Wikipedia, many are broad estimates but you'll get the idea of the scale we are talking about;

500 million globally infected (1/3rd of the world population at that time).

10-20% of those infected died, in other words 3-6% of the world population, or 50-100 million deaths.

99% of deaths were in indivuduals under 65 years of age, 50% were between 20 and 40 years of age (unlike normal seasonal flu that tends to infect the very young, very old and the weak and frail).

Chilling stiff eh? Now we have no idea if this new H1N1 strain will behave the same, either in terms of infectivity or death rates. Interestingly the Spanish Flu outbreak had two phases, on over the summer with relatively slow spread and fewer deaths then a second phase of much more lethal charcter. We also have no idea if modern treatments or public health measures would reduce the impact of a similar scenario but the best guess is that, frankly, they are unlikely to make a really big difference.

A new global pandemic flu is therefore potentially quite appalling, and planning for something even close to the Spanish Flu scenario has to be taken seriously. I know we get cynical about media health scare stories but this one really could be a a biggy. There is no place for cynicism or complacency. If it all quietly peters out you can take a very big sigh of relief indeed. That is until the next candidate virus appears....

Bruce

Nowhere is safe - not even Skipton!

quote:

Originally posted by Svetty:
Nowhere is safe - not even Skipton!

We might be alright. Good Yorkshire folk consider the idea of of travelling beyond the county border as foolhardy (and pointless). It might not spread to here!

Bruce

Bruce,

Many many thanks for that rather chilling post.

It's all much clearer now. I must admit I had wondered about Winter being a much worse risk than in normal years.

Brg,

Jonathan

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
We also have no idea if modern treatments or public health measures would reduce the impact of a similar scenario but the best guess is that, frankly, they are unlikely to make a really big difference.

No way... this is EXACTLY why it wont be another Spanish flu. We wash our hands these days.

-p

99% of flus in humans come from pigs. It's the only animal that can harbour a human and animal flu at the same time where it is a perfect host for it to mutate. In Asia they are able to run free to spread it about and are regarded as sacred regardless.

Sweet & sour pork anyone?

We wash our hands these days.


Not a universal behavour even now

Ordinary influenza causes 250,000 to 500,000 deaths each year - the first death today from a man with Swine Flu was becuase of Underlying Health Issues - i.e. he was a sickly individual and the flu was just the final nail in his coffin....

Personally I think the main issue is that people are going to flood the health system and cause KAOS...and it's going to cost a lot of money !!

quote:

Originally posted by PureHifi:
.... flood the health system and cause KAOS.

Send for Agent 86.

Well spotted, nice to see another Get Smart fan.... ;-)

quote:

We also have no idea if modern treatments or public health measures would reduce the impact of a similar scenario but the best guess is that, frankly, they are unlikely to make a really big difference.

Baxter International Inc. (BAX) said Friday that it has launched full-scale production of a commercial vaccine for the A/H1N1 flu virus and that it could have it ready for use as early as July.

-By Jon Kamp, Dow Jones Newswires

Good, bad or ugly BBC News.

quote:

The city council's health scrutiny committee was told officials want to move to "mitigating" the outbreak.

A confirmed case at my wifes school.