From north of the border:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2012/....

Mysterious deaths at Quebec seniors home
By Jean-Francois Racine and Stephanie Gendron, QMI Agency

RIVIERE-DU-LOUP, Que. — At least eleven elderly people have died since December at a seniors home east of Quebec City, most killed by a mysterious respiratory virus. Loved ones began to question staff at the St. Joseph home after a woman died on Dec. 22. Four other residents died in just six days, between Dec. 30 and Jan. 4. The son of one deceased says the death toll of 11 could be an underestimate. "There were others very recently," he said. "It's gone up to 19 deaths." Staff at the home imposed a quarantine and have banned lengthy visits. Four respiratory viruses, including flu-like influenza, have struck most of the residents and a health official says the outbreak has lasted longer than usual. "Currently, 85 of the 123 residents are affected," Brigitte Lavoie said. "Eleven died, but we can't say with certainty that this is directly related to the virus in all cases." Health officials speculate the culprit could be the human metapneumovirus, which can cause mild respiratory infections in healthy people. The symptoms can be more severe among the elderly and people with weak immune systems. "It's a big year for the virus," said Lavoie, adding some elderly people can catch the flu even if they've been vaccinated. "The older the person, the less effective the vaccine." Seniors homes in Quebec are required to report any outbreaks to infection control officials.

CJWorkman,

That would be a classic "opportunistic" infection, and happened quite a bit in 1918... if there's no more cases linked to this cluster, then this is probably what actually happened, either with MRSA or another bio-agent (a whole host of them can cause this)

AbnOrmal,

All the more reason to wash your hands frequently!!! BTW, good ol regular soap works fine, just make sure you're washing thoroughly, taking 1-2 minutes to get all parts of your hands washed.

AbnOrmal,

Next time you have the same problem, it might be reasonable to ask for a culture. It may have been overkill if you were having your only episode. Since you have been treated on multiple occasions and with various antibiotics, it is probably time to identify the enemy.

Also, try to protect yourself from mischief that can come from scratching yourself during sleep by keeping your fingernails short and wearing a long-sleeved pajama top to bed.

My Great Grandfather was infected with the 1918 Flu while he was in the service after fighting WWI. My grandmother said that it nearly killed him.

This is pretty sad news for the family but not extremely alarming as it was localized to one family.

Genetics are very likely to have had a big part in the severity and susceptibility to going down fast. This really sounds like what happened in the worst of the H1N1 cases in the last few years. Co-infection with Staph causes massive sepsis and organ failure while the lungs literally burn up into blackened tissue from the heat and inflamation.

If this spreads throughout other individuals and not genetically related victims I'll get more worried. Still sitting on plenty of food/water/tamiflu/relenza from the H1N1 breakout just in case.

Fortunately I haven't had any of those infections since 2009, which roughly corresponds to the time that I got a dog. It could be just random coincidence or it could be they managed to colonize my skin with some less harmful bacteria that crowded out the bad strain of staph.

Abnormal-I have been to beekeepers meeting tonight and I have to post this info just for you it might be of help. It is about UMF manuka honey from New Zealand. It has to be labeled UMF which is better than just manuka honey. I will post the link and just a bit about this very special honey being applied to wounds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/378786....

"In manuka honey, and its close relative which grows in Australia called jellybush, there's something else besides the hydrogen peroxide.

"And there's nothing like that ever been found anywhere else in the world."

That "something else" has proved very hard to pin down. Even now, after more than twenty years of research, Peter Molan admits he still has no idea exactly what it is.

But he has given it a name: unique manuka factor, or UMF.

And he has found a way to measure its antibacterial efficacy, by comparing UMF manuka honey with a standard antiseptic (carbolic, or phenol) in its ability to fight bacteria. The results are astonishing.

He said: "We know it has a very broad spectrum of action.

"It works on bacteria, fungi, protozoa. We haven't found anything it doesn't work on among infectious organisms."

Many people are colonized with MRSA and don't know it from what I heard. So, could that be what happened? If it is, we outta see healthcare folks drop like flies....we are the most colonized and most exposed.

I really don't want to "pollute" the thread, I'm *concerned* as everyone else...
If fact I went on & got My flu Shot TODAY, as Genesis said...

Quote:

Karl:Heh, if it's in the current season's shot, then yes, I'd go get it.

Putting Tin Foil Hat on....

Anyone remember this disturbing News,,,, that came out late last year.
That this news came out a few months back?
Tin Foil Hat off...

Sources to back up my thesis..

Scientists Brace for Media Storm Around Controversial Flu Studies

Credits to Martin Enserink on 23 November 2011

Quote:

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS—Locked up in the bowels of the medical faculty building here and accessible to only a handful of scientists lies a man-made flu virus that could change world history if it were ever set free.

The virus is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that has been genetically altered and is now easily transmissible between ferrets, the animals that most closely mimic the human response to flu. Scientists believe it's likely that the pathogen, if it emerged in nature or were released, would trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with many millions of deaths.

In a 17th floor office in the same building, virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center calmly explains why his team created what he says is "probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make"—and why he wants to publish a paper describing how they did it. Fouchier is also bracing for a media storm. After he talked to ScienceInsider yesterday, he had an appointment with an institutional press officer to chart a communication strategy.


Fouchier's paper is one of two studies that have triggered an intense debate about the limits of scientific freedom and that could portend changes in the way U.S. researchers handle so-called dual-use research: studies that have a potential public health benefit but could also be useful for nefarious purposes like biowarfare or bioterrorism.

The other study—also on H5N1, and with comparable results—was done by a team led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Tokyo, several scientists told ScienceInsider. (Kawaoka did not respond to interview requests.) Both studies have been submitted for publication, and both are currently under review by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which on a few previous occasions has been asked by scientists or journals to review papers that caused worries.

NSABB chair Paul Keim, a microbial geneticist, says he cannot discuss specific studies but confirms that the board has "worked very hard and very intensely for several weeks on studies about H5N1 transmissibility in mammals." The group plans to issue a public statement soon, says Keim, and is likely to issue additional recommendations about this type of research. "We'll have a lot to say," he says.

"I can't think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one," adds Keim, who has worked on anthrax for many years. "I don't think anthrax is scary at all compared to this."

Some scientists say that's reason enough not to do such research. The virus could escape from the lab, or bioterrorists or rogue nations could use the published results to fashion a bioweapon with the potential for mass destruction, they say. "This work should never have been done," says Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who has a strong interest in biosecurity issues.

The research by the Kawaoka and Fouchier teams set out to answer a question that has long puzzled scientists: Does H5N1, which rarely causes human disease, have the potential to trigger a pandemic? The virus has decimated poultry flocks on three continents but has caused fewer than 600 known cases of flu in humans since it emerged in Asia in 1997, although those rare human cases are often fatal. Because the virus spreads very inefficiently between humans it has been unable to set off a chain reaction and circle the globe.

Some scientists think the virus is probably unable to trigger a pandemic, because adapting to a human host would likely make it unable to reproduce. Some also believe the virus would need to reshuffle its genes with a human strain, a process called reassortment, that some believe is most likely to occur in pigs, which host both human and avian strains. Based on past experience, some scientists have also argued that flu pandemics can only be caused by H1, H2, and H3 viruses, which have been replaced by each other in the human population every so many decades—but not by H5.

Fouchier says his study shows all of that to be wrong.

Although he declined to discuss details of the research because the paper is still under review, Fouchier confirmed the details given in news stories in New Scientist and Scientific American about a September meeting in Malta where he first presented the study. Those stories describe how Fouchier initially tried to make the virus more transmissible by making specific changes to its genome, using a process called reverse genetics; when that failed, he passed the virus from one ferret to another multiple times, a low-tech and time-honored method of making a pathogen adapt to a new host.

After 10 generations, the virus had become "airborne": Healthy ferrets became infected simply by being housed in a cage next to a sick one. The airborne strain had five mutations in two genes, each of which have already been found in nature, Fouchier says; just never all at once in the same strain.

Ferrets aren't humans, but in studies to date, any influenza strain that has been able to pass among ferrets has also been transmissible among humans, and vice versa, says Fouchier: "That could be different this time, but I wouldn't bet any money on it."

The specter of an H5N1 pandemic keeps flu scientists up at night because of the virus's power to kill. Of the known cases so far, more than half were fatal. The real case-fatality rate is probably lower because an unknown number of milder cases are never diagnosed and reported, but scientists agree that the virus is vicious. Based on Fouchier's talk in Malta, New Scientist reported that the strain created by the Rotterdam team is just as lethal to ferrets as the original one.

"These studies are very important," says biodefense and flu expert Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. The researchers "have the full support of the influenza community," Osterholm says, because there are potential benefits for public health. For instance, the results show that those downplaying the risks of an H5N1 pandemic should think again, he says.

read the rest here @ link---> http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinside....
******************************************************


Grudgingly, Virologists Agree to Redact Details in Sensitive Flu Papers

Credits to Martin Enserink on 20 December 2011

Two groups of scientists who carried out highly controversial studies with the avian influenza virus H5N1 have reluctantly agreed to strike certain details from manuscripts describing their work after having been asked to do so by a U.S. biosecurity council. The as-yet unpublished papers, which are under review at Nature and Science, will be changed to minimize the risks that they could be misused by would-be bioterrorists.

But the stricken details may still be made available to influenza scientists who have a legitimate interest in knowing them under a new system the journals and U.S. government officials have been actively debating for some time.

The two papers have both been reviewed at length by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSSAB), and both have been the subject of intense global media attention the past 2 months. They have also triggered debates among scientists, security experts, and officials within various branches of the U.S. government.

The studies show how certain mutations in H5N1's genome can make the virus more easily transmissible among ferrets, flu scientists' preferred animal model—and thus, also more dangerous to humans. An H5N1 strain that transmits well between people could trigger an influenza pandemic with potentially millions of casualties, scientists fear.

This morning, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a statement saying that NSABB has recommended to the authors and the journals that the manuscripts "not include the methodological and other details that could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm."


The team that wrote the H5N1 paper under review at Science has grudgingly agreed to do so, says one of its members, virologist Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The group received the recommendations in writing on 1 December and sent Science a revised paper more than a week ago—although they completely disagree with NSABB's verdict. "This is unprecedented," says Osterhaus, who believes public health is best served by making the information widely available. Science has sent the revised version back to NSABB for another round of review, Osterhaus says.

Virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the lead author of the paper under review at Nature, has also agreed to go along—says Terry Devitt, a spokesperson for the university—reluctantly, because he, too, feels the full results should be published. Devitt says Kawaoka is working with editors at Nature to produce a new manuscript. NSABB's recommendations to Kawaoka were quite general and did not say specifically what to redact, says Devitt, making it hard to decide what goes out. "We are doing our best to be as responsible as we can be," he says.

In this morning's statement, HHS also said that the government recognizes that the details from the studies may be important in the surveillance for pandemic strains and for the development of drugs and vaccines. That's why the U.S. government is setting up a system that will allow bona fide researchers to access the redacted information, the statement says—but it offered no details on what that system would look like, who would be in charge, how scientists would qualify for access, or how they would use it.

Science Editor-in-Chief Bruce Alberts suggested in a statement today that Science will go along with the redactions only after the U.S. government comes up with a "written, transparent plan" for access to the sensitive details. "Science editors will be evaluating how best to proceed," Alberts wrote, adding that "[o]ur response will be heavily dependent upon the further steps taken by the U.S. government."

Ginger Pinholster, a spokesperson for Science, says that Alberts has discussed the proposed system with officials at NSABB, the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and others for several weeks, and that he is "very optimistic" that a plan can be agreed on "in a couple of weeks." At that point, Science will publish the Rotterdam team's paper, she says.

Nature, too, is involved in discussions on how to make redacted data accessible, the journal's editor, Philip Campbell, said in a statement issued today. Campbell, too, called NSABB's recommendations "unprecedented."

NSABB also recommended that both manuscripts be revised to explain the potential public health benefits of the studies and the safety and security measures at the labs. Osterhaus says the Rotterdam team has done so in a separate editorial, in which it also explains its "genuflection" to NSABB's demands. Publication of the editorial is "a condition from our side" for publishing the paper in Science, says Osterhaus. "We have a responsibility to explain to the scientific community why we yielded to the NSABB." He hopes the arguments will win over critics, and that the full results can be published eventually.

Redacting the papers is a better solution than publishing the entire manuscripts, says Thomas Inglesby, director of Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania and an outspoken critic of the H5N1 work. In an editorial for the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, published online last week with smallpox eradication veteran Donald Henderson, Inglesby wrote that the Science study, which is by lead author Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC, should not have been conducted in the first place. Now that it has been done, "the information will ultimately probably get out one way or another," says Inglesby. "But hopefully by that time we'll have better countermeasures," such as vaccines. "If this information gets out later, that's better."

H5N1 is primarily a bird virus; humans can become infected but they rarely pass the illness on. The Science paper, some details of which Fouchier presented at a September meeting in Malta, shows how a combination of genetic mutations to the H5N1 genome make the virus easily transmissible between ferrets. That very likely means that the virus will transmit between humans as well, Fouchier told ScienceInsider last month, adding that the lab strain is "probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make."

Kawaoka's study differs from Fouchier's in several respects, says Devitt, who adds that he cannot discuss details because the study has not been published.

Osterhaus is surprised that the issue appears to have raised far more debate than the 2005 publication in Science about the resurrection of the H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. "I don't know why this is getting so much more attention," he says. "We could have had the fundamental debate back then."
Credits link----> http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinside....
*************************************************

>snip<News of two separate research projects that altered the bird-flu virus so it could potentially spread between humans has some experts asking: Should this research have been done at all?

Other scientists, however, are defending the projects as important progress in understanding how the virus, called H5N1, could adapt to cause a devastating pandemic.

"I wouldn't do it," said W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. "I think it is one thing to study the pathology of an organism to try to understand ways in which you can reduce the risk to humankind or animals by doing basic research. … This isn't the case [here]; this virus doesn't transmit readily to humans."

Others argue that the two projects addressed questions crucial to averting a global tragedy: Could H5N1 mutate into a form that could spread between humans? And, if so, how?
>snip<
Credits--- link---> http://www.livescience.com/17623-deadly-....




Question is, Take off tin-foil hat; or Put it back on?

Thanks for the perspective Penguin :)

The problem is that they didn't "bioengineer" the virus per-se -- they just put in place the conditions where the virus could on its own reassort itself.

This means that eventually that same outcome would almost-certainly naturally occur.

this is not good. if the virus has mutated into a more dangerous strain i have no confidence in any government doing the right thing straight away. the Mexico flu spread to New Zealand so quickly because government inaction. luckily it was not as hostile as first reported. keep a close watch on this.

I really hate it when movies like contagion come out at the same time there's some new breakout of an unknown disease. My paranoia always cranks up an extra notch.

Not because the movie or the dramatization scares me, but the thought that it's been made and released to PREPARE YOU for something they know is already coming.

*Shudder*

Asimov wrote..

I really hate it when movies like contagion come out at the same time there's some new breakout of an unknown disease. My paranoia always cranks up an extra notch.

Not because the movie or the dramatization scares me, but the thought that it's been made and released to PREPARE YOU for something they know is already coming.

Kinda like the proliferation of zombie movies and TV shows in recent years. Mentally replace the zombies with FSA footsoliders after the FS runs out and watch them again...

Geschrei: Yup.

Personal anecdote: It's probably nothing, but both my mom and I have been sick (me for months, seems to come and go) with some resp illness. Low-grade, but I am suddenly very tired pulling one empty, wheeled trashcan up driveway (which is a slight grade). Both had flu shots. Mom assumes the worst. It is very mild for both of us, but both just feel very worn out doing normal activities. For me, whatever it is, I have consciously changed my level of activities last week or so. Have known several people who have been sick with pneumonia etc last few months. Has been very noticeable here.

I have had walking pneumonia in the past month, and so have several acquaintances. One person after taking their antibiotics, had a relapse and is sick again/still.

An older article from U.S. News...

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012....

CDC Warns That New Swine Flu Strain Has 'Pandemic Potential'

By Jason Koebler
February 21, 2012

A paper published Tuesday by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control suggests a new swine flu virus has the potential to cause an outbreak.

The A(H3N2)v swine flu strain that has infected at least 18 Americans since Sept. 2010 has shown the potential for human-to-human transmission. According to the paper, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the H3N2 strains "resemble viruses with pandemic potential." Terrence Tumpey, one of the authors of the study, says the current seasonal flu vaccine won't protect against this swine flu strain, although he says the CDC is working on creating a vaccine for swine flu variants such as the one he studied.

more at the link...

Scrood wrote..

Terrence Tumpey, one of the authors of the study, says the current seasonal flu vaccine won't protect against this swine flu strain, although he says the CDC is working on creating a vaccine for swine flu variants such as the one he studied.

I went to a local Walgreens Wednesday night and asked the pharmacist which strains their vaccine included. She said that it included both the seasonal flu and H3N2v swine flu.

This is odd because news stories from January talk about them just getting started with the process of making a vaccine.

Then there's this:

http://www.flu.gov/types/h3n2v/index.htm....

Quote:

The seasonal flu vaccine is your best protection against the flu this season. The seasonal flu vaccine may provide some protection against H3N2v for adults but not for children. You should also follow everyday steps to keep yourself healthy this flu season. In addition, avoid close contact with animals, especially with pigs, that look or act sick. If you must come in contact with sick animals, you should take appropriate precautions such as wearing gloves.

No explanation is given as to why this is the case.

"CDC Warns That New Swine Flu Strain Has 'Pandemic Potential'"


I have been following this for awhile probably close to a year or more. Originally everybody that tested positive for this had swine exposure. Lately, not so much.

It can only be detected if they specifically test for it. Most tests show it as a seasonal H3n2.

Most of the cases recently that have been confirmed as this new strain have no contact with each other. So logic would tell you this strain is probably fairly widespread by now.

M-O-O-N

that spells non-specific antigen shifting bug
they won't be able to tell it from common flu
until it's too late
99.9 kill ratio
Blue Base/Baxter Pharmaceuticals 10-9

Monsters Coming,...Bring out your dead

Billy_ray_v

Well that sounds kinda worrisome.

Could you elaborate a little more...for us dummies?

M-O-O-N
that spells The Stand

I thought "The Stand" spells "The Stand"

wtf?

If you need it spelled out for you, there's always urban dictionary... That's M-O-O-N
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.ph....