• Swine Flu is officially over,
    94 replies, posted
[url]http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-health/20100810/UN.MED.WHO.Swine.Flu/[/url] [quote]WHO says swine flu pandemic is over By FRANK JORDANS, AP GENEVA — The World Health Organization declared the swine flu pandemic officially over Tuesday, months after many national authorities started canceling vaccine orders and shutting down telephone hot lines as the disease ebbed from the headlines. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the organization's emergency committee of top flu experts advised her that the pandemic had "largely run its course" and the world is no longer in phase six — the highest influenza alert level. "I fully agree with the committee's advice," Chan told reporters in a telephone briefing from her native Hong Kong. The virus has now entered the "post-pandemic" phase, meaning disease activity around the world has returned to levels usually seen for seasonal influenza, she said. But Chan cautioned against complacency, saying that even though hospitalizations and deaths have dropped sharply, countries should still keep a watchful eye for unusual patterns of infection and mutations that might render existing vaccines and antiviral drugs ineffective. "It is likely that the virus will continue to cause serious disease in younger age groups," she said, urging high-risk groups such as pregnant women to continue seeking vaccination. Unusually, swine flu hits young adults harder than the over-65s, who are believed to have some immunity to the A(H1N1) strain. At least 18,449 people have died worldwide since the outbreak began in April 2009. WHO, which received at least $170 million from member states to deal with the pandemic, said last week that the true death toll is likely to be higher. But the organization's flu chief, Keiji Fukuda, said a final number won't be known for some months. Still, lab-confirmed deaths globally increased by only about 300 in the past two months and many countries have long since closed the chapter on swine flu. Governments in Europe and North America started dumping vaccines earlier this year after finding their stocks were full of unused and expiring supplies. The United States stopped classifying swine flu as a public health emergency in June, while health authorities in Britain shut down their pandemic flu hot line in February and later canceled vaccine a third of vaccine orders as it became clear the pandemic strain would be less dangerous than feared. Worst-case scenarios had predicted up to 65,000 deaths in Britain. In the end there were 457 confirmed deaths from swine flu. In Germany, authorities are meeting later this week to discuss who is going to pick up the bill for the 34 million doses of vaccines that were ordered and mostly not used. A report by the French Senate published last month criticized WHO's handling of the pandemic, in particularly what it described as an "overestimation" of the risk and insufficient transparency about links between WHO experts and the pharmaceutical industry. In January, polls showed 70 percent of French population thought the government overestimated the danger of the virus H1N1 and ordered too many doses of vaccine. The government had purchased 94 millions doses of vaccine, but canceled half of the initial order at the start of the year. WHO chief Chan insisted that declaring swine flu a pandemic had been the right decision, based on the internationally agreed rules that existed at the time. "We have been aided by pure good luck," she said, adding that if the virus had mutated then the death rate could have been much higher. In some countries as many as two in five people are now immune to swine flu, she said. But Chan acknowledged that changes may be made to the way WHO defines pandemics. "We need to review the phases, including the severity," she said. Prof. Angus Nicoll, flu program coordinator at the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, said the decision to declare the pandemic over was consistent with the Stockholm-based body's recent findings. While flu activity in the northern hemisphere is seasonally low, monitoring in southern hemisphere countries shows that few people are falling seriously ill from swine flu, said Nicoll. Local spikes in flu deaths, such as seen recently in India, are likely due to better surveillance, he said. Nevertheless, health officials around the world should prepare for a new type of seasonal flu to appear in the near future that will combine elements of the pandemic A(H1N1) strain, and older A(H3N2) strain and several lesser strains, said Nicoll. "It looks sort of middle of the road at the moment," he said. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said even though swine flu turned out milder than expected, officials have gained valuable insights into how to deal with a pandemic flu outbreak. "The most important lesson learned from this experience is the critical need for new influenza manufacturing processes," said HHS spokesman Bill Hall. Chan, in her exchange with journalists, also raised the specter of deadlier flu pandemics in future. "Lurking in the background we still have H5N1," she said, a reference to the bird flu strain that has infected 503 people over seven years, killing 299. ____ Associated Press writers Daphne Rousseau in Paris, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and AP medical writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.[/quote] Whoo! Goodbye bacon flu!
I was dying to hear this news
lOOKS LIKE ANOTHER ILLUMINATI PLAN HAS BEEN FOILED HA
Swine what?
Looks like I survived another ''epidemic''. Go me.
It was over in 2009.
sweet, No more people with the "Mexico City look". (H.P. Lovecraft will know what I'm talking about.)
I wonder what's next... Pigeon Flu?
Ahh the over exaggerated Swine flu. [editline]08:04PM[/editline] [QUOTE=CabooseRvB;23966992]I wonder what's next... Pigeon Flu?[/QUOTE] Cock flu.
God Bless America for that
[QUOTE=CabooseRvB;23966992]I wonder what's next... Pigeon Flu?[/QUOTE] Aids epidemic. Oh wait...
People said that this disease would get eradicated "when pigs fly". And now, swine flu.* *RIP: this joke since it is no longer applicable due to the death of swine flu
[QUOTE=tomatmann;23967041]God Bless America for that[/QUOTE] swine flu wasnt only in america you know
Well, that was that epidemy...
Has anyone ever noticed that it just so happened to be the year of the pig?
Oh look the world did not end because of the Swine flu, what a surprise!
Next will be airborne Ebola
I completely forgot this ever happened.
[QUOTE=breadlord;23967118]Has anyone ever noticed that it just so happened to be the year of the pig?[/QUOTE] That was 2007 you dunce 2009 was year of the Ox
[QUOTE=DrBreen;23967480]Next will be airborne Ebola[/QUOTE] We'd be absolutely fucked
lol swine flu
What if something similiar to the black death happened again? :ohdear:
Whooohooo...gives a shit?
[QUOTE=starpluck;23966916]It was over in 2009.[/QUOTE] No, the media stopped caring in 2009
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;23967681]No, the media stopped caring in 2009[/QUOTE] No, everyone stopped caring in 2009
I didn't even take the vaccine.
Before someone who thinks he's clever says "LOL MEDIA HYPE BLOWN OUT OF PROPORTION" or something like that, let me just give an explanation of why swine flu was a big deal. (of course, the symptoms / killer potency of swine flu was overhyped) As we have no immunity to it, it can spread very easily and exponentially. It may be identical or less potent when it comes to damaging the carrier as normal flu, but it spreads better. The danger with swine flu was its ability to spread. Even if it a carrier was 10x less likely to die than with normal flu, if 30x the number of people have swine flu, it will kill more people. The fact that people laugh at swine flu now is partly down to precautionary measures taken. For example, people who got flu-like symptoms were asked to stay indoors and not go to the doctors or anything.
Just like bird flu, people freaked out for about 2 months, and then forgot about it.
Didn't even know it was still around, haven't heard about it since it was first talked about. Same with bird flu - heard about how it is completely serious and everything and then didn't hear about it again.
The swine flu was exactly the regular flu. The government just hoaxed it all to get rid of all their leftover excess regular flu vaccines, since they produced way more than were actually used.
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