Posted on 11/04/2009 6:50:31 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
Swine flu has hit an isolated tribe of Indians in the Amazon jungle, with seven dying in the last two weeks, Survival International said on Wednesday.
A further 1,000 members of the Yanomami tribe in Venezuela are believed to have caught the flu, the indigenous peoples rights group said.
It is feared the flu could sweep through the area and kill many more Yanomami as the Indians have little resistance to introduced diseases.
About 32,000 Yanomami live in the Venezuela-Brazil border region and form the largest relatively isolated tribe in the Amazon.
Survival director Stephen Corry said the situation was critical and the Venezuelan and Brazilian governments must act immediately to halt the epidemic and improve health care for the Yanomami.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
ping
I think I figured out why its called H1N1. Its the same strain as the one from the 1918 pandemic which was the first flu virus identified. It has shown up off and on over the interim in both humans and pigs in a mild form. I guess that they are afraid that it has mutated and is once again like the one from that era. I just finished reading The Great Influenza Epidemic by John M. Barry. Even the epilogue predates the current “crisis” so not anything on it per se. The scariest part of the book was what Wilson did to free speech leading up to the US entry into WWI.
along with Prince Philip Consort who wishes there were less people on the earth
how come they didn’t get the shot??? i mean come on here....this tribe should have had priority when the vaccine was handed out, they are indigenous aren’t they??? the next thing you know you will have reports of the Kalasha (about 3,000 pop.) living in the Hindu Kush keeling over
this ain’t right
...my mother was born in 1908...she remembered the flu pandemic...it killed 8 members of our family’s church...and it was terrifying for children because it struck without warning...much like my own childhood terror of polio.
thanks , for the ping :)
An effort to recreate the 1918 flu strain (a subtype of avian strain H1N1) was a collaboration among the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City; the effort resulted in the announcement (on October 5, 2005) that the group had successfully determined the virus's genetic sequence, using historic tissue samples recovered by pathologist Johan Hultin from a female flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost and samples preserved from American soldiers. [59]
On January 18, 2007, Kobasa et al. reported that monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) infected with the recreated strain exhibited classic symptoms of the 1918 pandemic and died from a cytokine storm [60] —an overreaction of the immune system. This may explain why the 1918 flu had its surprising effect on younger, healthier people, as a person with a stronger immune system would potentially have a stronger overreaction. [61]
On September 16, 2008, the body of Yorkshireman Sir Mark Sykes was exhumed to study the RNA of the Spanish flu virus in efforts to understand the genetic structure of modern H5N1 bird flu. Sykes had been buried in 1919 in a lead coffin which scientists hope will have helped preserve the virus. [62]
In December 2008, research by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin linked the presence of three specific genes (termed PA, PB1, and PB2) and a nucleoprotein derived from 1918 flu samples to the ability of the flu virus to invade the lungs and cause pneumonia. The combination triggered similar symptoms in animal testing. [63]
The original date of appearance of this virus is not clear. An estimated date for its appearance in mammalian hosts has been put at the period 1882-1913. [64] This ancestor virus diverged about 1913-1915 into two clades which gave rise to the classical swine and human H1N1 influenza lineages. The last common ancestor of human strains dates to between February 1917 and April 1918. Because pigs are more readily infected with avian influenza viruses than are humans, it is likely that they were the original recipient of the virus. This in turn suggests that the virus was introduced into humans sometime between 1913 and 1918.
So they dig up the people that died from h1n1 and now we have an outbreak.... just saying
My friend who is 99 years and 6 months young just laughs at this retarded scam.
She remembers well being holed up in the bedroom with 7 of her siblings and she thinks the current scare is really so much bunk.
In her view, they didn’t have vaccinations then and she said just wash your hands A Lot during the winter, keep your hands off your face and cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing.
Always wash after using the bathroom and especially before eating.
I would go on but I see another important topic to post to.
She suggested I watch the news for more information.
Because it's really called Mexican Swine Flu, and that was considered impolitic. Apparently, a high-up Mexican person complained to high-up people here, and the next day or so, all news outlets began to refer to it as H1N1. But we all know the real 411.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.