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Only half of the people in the United States who most need immediate treatment for H1N1 swine flu are actually seeking it, even as the virus spreads at unprecedented speed, U.S. health officials said on Friday. The latest count shows 114 children have been killed by the virus in the United States since April, during a time when there is usually virtually no influenza, said U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Thomas Frieden. H1N1 is widespread, he said, and case counts continue to rise in most states. "One of the things that we have been surprised to...

Patients taking statin drugs were almost 50 percent less likely to die from flu, researchers reported on Thursday in a study providing more evidence the cholesterol-lowering drugs help the body cope with infection. The findings are compelling enough to justify doing controlled studies in which some patients are given the drugs deliberately and some are not, said Meredith Vandermeer of the Oregon Public Health Division, who helped lead the study. "Our preliminary study shows these cholesterol-lowering medications called statins are associated with a decrease in mortality," Vandermeer told a news conference at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

In August 2009, CBS News made a simple request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public documents, e-mails and other materials CDC used to communicate to states the decision to stop testing individual cases of Novel H1N1, or “swine flu.” When the public affairs folks at CDC refused to produce the documents and quit responding to my queries altogether, I filed a formal Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the materials. Members of the news media are entitled to expedited access, which I requested, since this was for a pending news report and on an issue of...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. --...

EARLIER this month, a study published in the journal Science answered a question that medical scientists had been asking since 2006, when they learned of a novel virus found in prostate tumors called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV: Was it a human infection? XMRV is a gammaretrovirus, one of a family of viruses long-studied in animals but not known to infect people. In animals, these retroviruses can cause horrendous neurological problems, immune deficiency, lymphoma and leukemia. The new study provided overwhelming evidence that XMRV is a human gammaretrovirus — the third human retrovirus (after H.I.V. and human lymphotropic...

Questions and Answers Regarding Estimating Deaths from Influenza in the United States How many people die from flu each year in the United States? The number of influenza-associated (i.e., flu-related) deaths varies from year to year because flu seasons often fluctuate in length and severity. CDC estimated that about 36,000 people died of flu-related causes each year, on average, during the 1990s in the United States. This figure includes people dying from complications of flu. This estimate came from a 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medication Association (JAMA), which looked at the 1990-91 through the 1998-99...

Brooklyn Mumps Outbreak Cases also reported in New Jersey Updated: Friday, 23 Oct 2009, 11:30 AM EDTPublished : Thursday, 22 Oct 2009, 4:55 PM EDT By Luke Funk MYFOXNY.COM - New York City's Health and Mental Hygiene Department is warning doctors about a mumps outbreak in Brooklyn.The cases started turning up in late August.The outbreak began among children from Borough Park who attended summer camp in Upstate New York.  Now, a similar outbreak is being reported in New JerseySo far, 57 confirmed or probable cases have been identified in New York. Cases of mumps have continued to occur in Borough...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. The...

In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there's an epidemic? Some public health officials privately disagreed with the decision to stop testing and counting, telling CBS News that continued tracking of this new and possibly changing virus was important because H1N1 has a different epidemiology, affects younger people more than seasonal flu and has been shown to have a higher...

For a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been forbidden by Congress from doing research on gun-control issues. Such piddling hurdles as federal law don't matter to the Obama administration. With a wave of a hand, the CDC has simply redefined gun-control research so the ban no longer applies. They're not researching guns; they're researching alcohol sales and their impact on gun violence, or researching how teens carrying guns affect the rates of non-gun injuries. "These particular grants do not address gun control; rather they deal with the surrounding web of circumstances," wrote National Institutes of Health...

As the H1N1 flu outbreak strikes the U.S. early and hard, health officials are pointing to a worrisome number of child deaths and warn that supplies of vaccine will remain scarce for at least the next couple of weeks. Delays in producing the vaccine mean 28 million to 30 million doses, at most, will be divided around the country by the end of the month, not the 40 million-plus doses that states had been expecting. The new count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention means anxiously awaited flu-shot clinics in some parts of the U.S. may have to...

"....She also said more children had died in the space of a few weeks than usually die in an entire influenza season. "There are now a total of 86 children under 18 who have died from the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus," Schuchat said. As of Wednesday 11.4 million doses of H1N1 vaccine were available and 8 million had been ordered by states for distribution."

New CDC Report: Abortion, Pregnancy Rates Drop to Historic Lows Washington, DC -- A new report released yesterday from the Centers for Disease Control shows the number of abortions, the abortion rate and the pregnancy rate all declining from the period 1990-2005. The abortion rate dropped to a historic low. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5569.html

I follow this map every year, it usually doesn't even start up until Novemeber, they started it early this year, and it's worse than I've ever seen it, the peak is usually Jan/Feb for flu ... See map HERE

Nasal spray vaccine for swine flu now shipping to some clinics; studies suggest it’s OK to get shots for seasonal flu and swine flu at same time H1N1 influenza, or swine flu, has now returned full bore to the United States after largely dissipating over the summer, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said during a news briefing October 9. Cases of H1N1 have been reported in 37 states, up from 27 states a week earlier, CDC physician and flu expert Anne Schuchat said at the briefing. A vaccine that protects against the H1N1 flu virus is now...

19 new swine flu deaths last week sends H1N1 child death toll through the roofSwine flu has taken the lives of 76 children in the United States including 19 in the past week, health officials said Friday, suggesting that the H1N1 virus could be unusually harmful for its youngest victims. The regular flu kills between 46 and 88 children a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. H1N1 deaths could dramatically outpace that number, experts said, if swine flu continues to spread at the rate it has so far. Children are especially susceptible to catching the virus...

Can the scientist who denied the cause of AIDS be trusted to cure cancer? --snip-- ...In the past three decades, Duesberg has been described as a genius, a martyr, and a genocidal lunatic—often by the same person, usually amid the fierce debates and international headlines that come with major scientific breakthroughs. In 1971, at the age of 33, he became the first scientist to identify a cancer-causing gene—a biological holy grail that secured his place among an elite group of the country's top researchers. Tenure at Berkeley and a coveted spot in the National Academy of Sciences followed. So did...

WASHINGTON (RNS) The White House and federal health officials have released guidelines recommending that worshippers take precautions against spreading germs to reduce the risk of contracting swine flu. Marilyn Meyers, a 67-year-old member of Washington National Cathedral, already had thought about the health risks involved in her church’s services. On Sunday (Oct. 4), as she has for the past several months, she rubbed sanitizer on her hands before getting in line for Holy Communion. “You shake hands, you touch the prayer books we all share, you break off a piece of the same bread—who knows what might be on...

The number of influenza cases remains elevated; the number of deaths reported remains below the epidemic threshold. All of two thousand one hundred twenty-six specimens tested by the WHO (World Health Organization) and NREVSS (National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System), were then sent to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) for reporting, tested positive.

2009 H1N1 Flu: Situation Update: The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) based on the 122 Cities Report was low and within the bounds of what is expected at this time of year.

(CHICAGO) (WLS) -- There was word Saturday that the death of a University of Chicago scientist may be linked to a bacteria that causes the plague. The University of Chicago says there doesn't appear to be any threat to the public, and no other illness related to the case has been reported. The modified strain of "y-pestis" has been approved by the Centers for Disease Control for routine laboratory studies, and it is not known to cause illness in healthy adults.

(AP) Health officials say the first doses of swine flu vaccine will be the nasal spray version. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that about 3.4 million doses of nasal spray vaccine will be available the first week of October. The government expects 195 million doses will be shipped out by the end of the year, most of them shots. The nasal spray is approved for ages 2 to 49. It's not recommended for some of the people at most risk from severe swine flu complications. That includes pregnant women, children younger than 2, and people with...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first roll-out of vaccines against the new swine flu virus will be 3.4 million doses of MedImmune's needle-free nose spray, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. The CDC's Dr Jay Butler said the vaccines would be distributed the first week of October. "Initially we anticipate that 3.4 million doses of vaccine will be available," Butler told a telephone briefing. "We estimate that the amount of vaccine that will be available will increase through October." He said eventually delivery would rise to about 20 million doses a week. The United States has...

From Fox: Though the United States has by far the highest level of health care spending per capita in the world, we have one of the lowest life expectancies among developed nations Everybody else skews their data. It's not a reflection on our system. Here: "Doctors told me it was against the rules to save my premature baby" Instead, doctors told her to treat the labour as a miscarriage, not a birth, and to expect her baby to be born with serious deformities or even to be still-born. The doctor didn't just come up with that out of thin air,...

All military personnel will be vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus, and the vaccine will be available to all military family members who want it, a Defense Department health affairs official said today. The H1N1 vaccination program will begin in early October, said Army Lt. Col. (Dr.) Wayne Hachey, director of preventive medicine for Defense Department health affairs. The vaccine, which has been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, will be mandatory for uniformed personnel, Hachey said. "What we want to do is target those people who are at highest risk for transmission," he said. Health-care workers, deploying troops,...

As the Obama Creep Show continues, the president just gave a very strange address on TV. He stood there, warning of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, and asked people to cough into their sleeves. He warned that older people may become more ill than younger people. He said that people should be aware of their health. He urged people to get flu vaccine injections. He implied that we are on the brink of a disaster on the scale of the 1918 flu which killed 20,000,000 people. Then, after making everyone's hair stand up, he turned and walked away. With all...

What might life be like during the kind of major swine flu pandemic predicted by the White House to hit the U.S. this fall? A CDC report raises concern over Washington's potential response to H1N1. (ABC News Photo Illustration) The worst-case scenarios percolate on the edges of thought: bans on public gatherings, restricting the movement of afflicted individuals, and compelled vaccinations. Conspiracy theorists go farther, suggesting that the World Health Organization is behind a secret plan to inoculate Americans at gunpoint with immune-system depleting vaccines to depopulate the globe. The CDC's report, released Monday, may well create some level of...

Gee you go on vacation for a few days and weird things start happening. The New York Times reported that public health officials in the Center For Disease Congto (CDC) are considering promoting routine circumcision for all baby boys born in the United States to reduce the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. The topic is a delicate one that has already generated controversy, even though a formal draft of the proposed recommendations, due out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the end of the year, has yet to be released. Experts are also considering...

I believe that this was research that should not have been performed," says Richard Ebright, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Rutgers University. "If this virus was to be accidentally or intentionally released, it is virtually certain that there would be greater lethality than from seasonal influenza, and quite possible that the threat of pandemic that is in the news daily would become a reality."

ATLANTA (Reuters) - U.S. health authorities are turning to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in a bid to prepare people to be vaccinated against the pandemic H1N1 virus. But efforts to distribute accurate information about the dangers of swine flu and the importance of vaccination are hampered by the sheer complexity of the message that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aims to convey. For a start, the vaccine will not be ready for widespread distribution until mid-October, after the traditional flu season has begun. The U.S. government hopes to target around 50 percent of...

Up to 90,000 deaths from swine flu in the United States, mostly among children and young people? Up to 1.8 million people hospitalized, with 50 percent to 100 percent of intensive-care beds in some cities filled with swine-flu patients? Up to half the population infected by winter? On Monday, a White House advisory panel issued a report with these estimates, calling them "a plausible scenario" for a second wave of infections by the new H1N1 flu. The grim numbers by the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology received considerable play in the news media, including front-page coverage in...

WASHINGTON--Government health officials are urging people not to panic over estimates of 90,000 people dying from swine flu this fall. "Everything we've seen in the U.S. and everything we've seen around the world suggests we won't see that kind of number if the virus doesn't change," Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a C-SPAN interview taped Wednesday.

Could H1N1 swine flu kill 90,000 Americans this winter and hospitalize 1.8 million? Yes -- but not likely, CDC officials say. The numbers come from a report to the president from his science/technology advisory panel. The report suggests that in a "plausible scenario," swine flu would infect 40% of the U.S. population and overwhelm hospitals with 300,000 patients needing intensive care. "PCAST [President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology] emphasizes that this is a planning scenario, not a prediction," states the report, dated Aug. 7 but released only yesterday.How likely a scenario is it? Not very, says Anne Schuchat,...

In an effort to reduce the spread of HIV, public health officials are considering the promotion of “universal circumcision” for all baby boys born in the United States. The move comes after officials analyzed the results of several studies that show in African countries hit hard by HIV, men who were circumcised reduced their infection risk by half, the New York Times reported. However, those studies focused on heterosexual men who are at risk of getting HIV from infected female partners. The main issue in the U.S. is men who have sex with men. In 2008, the CDC estimated that...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, often the harbinger of bad news about e. coli outbreaks and swine flu, recently had some good news: The life expectancy of Americans is higher than ever, at almost 78. Discussions about life expectancy often involve how it has improved over time. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy for men in 1907 was 45.6 years; by 1957 it rose to 66.4; in 2007 it reached 75.5. Unlike the most recent increase in life expectancy (which was attributable largely to a decline in half of the leading causes of death...

Mathematical model suggests that US experts got their priorities wrong.Vaccinating very young children against swine flu should not be the top priority, a study suggests.Alamy The US policy for which groups should be the first to receive influenza vaccines is not the most effective strategy to limit the spread of swine flu, according to a paper published online today in Science1.Last month, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel recommended that young people aged from 6 months to 24 years old should be placed at the front of the queue for flu jabs. But a new...

Can you name a Federal Government program, or department that isn’t either broke, going broke, or isn’t constantly asking for more money? I can’t. He even said that FedEx and UPS are doing better than the government run U.S. Postal Service And yet somehow, he can assure us that this one will be different. This one will work. It seems like whenever the government steps in, and tries to do something, it messes it up. They can't even figure out how emails went out to those who didn't want to be on their list. (But, they tried. They blamed someone...

The image of cows as placid, gentle creatures is a city slicker’s fantasy, judging from an article published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports that about 20 people a year are killed by cows in the United States. In some cases, the cows actually attack humans—ramming them, knocking them down, goring them, trampling them and kicking them in the head—resulting in fatal injuries to the head and chest. Mother cows, like other animals, can be fiercely protective of their young, and dairy bulls, the report notes, are “especially possessive of their herd and occasionally...

...Freiden said he was not endorsing the tax as a member of the administration but was "just presenting the science," according to Ambinder..... .... The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a three-cent tax would generate $24 billion over the next four years, and proponents of the tax argued before the committee that it would lower consumption of sugary drinks and improve Americans' overall health. ...

Hundreds of thousands of Americans could die over the next two years if the vaccine and other control measures for the new H1N1 influenza are not effective, and, at the pandemic's peak, as much as 40% of the workforce could be affected, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is admittedly a worst-case scenario that the federal agency says it doesn't expect to occur. But the broad range of potential deaths highlights the unpredictability of flu viruses in general and this swine flu virus in particular because it hasn't behaved the way researchers have...

All U.S. children aged 6 months to 18 years should get a seasonal influenza vaccine every year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. The CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat said the agency was strengthening recommendations for children to get the vaccination against seasonal influenza, especially with fears that the new H1N1 virus will be added to the already expected burden of seasonal flu.

Climate Change: The EPA has prepared a finding for review that global warming is a public health threat, the first step toward regulating the American economy down to your lawn mower.We are often told how the pursuit of alternative energy will help save the earth from climate change and create lots of green jobs. Advocates rarely use the phrase "global warming" any more because the earth is in fact no longer warming, and hasn't for a decade due to a decline in solar activity and other natural factors. They prefer the phrase "climate change" because it can cover a multitude...

Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body. In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991...

By June 19, 2009, all 50 states in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have reported novel H1N1 infection. While nationwide U.S. influenza surveillance systems indicate that overall influenza activity is decreasing in the country at this time, novel H1N1 outbreaks are ongoing in parts of the U.S., in some cases with intense activity.

The purpose of this document is to describe planning scenarios for state and local governments to target high-priority populations for vaccination in order to reduce the health and societal impact of the novel H1N1 influenza virus. Background Data from U.S. and international sources suggests that it is appropriate to plan for a vaccination program to reduce the health and societal impacts of the novel H1N1 influenza virus. In order to increase the probability of success of such a program, planning scenarios should be provided to state and local health authorities promptly. Planning scenarios can facilitate readiness to implement specific plans...

U.S. health officials are stepping up testing of swine flu cases for Tamiflu resistance, now that an American has come down with a resistant strain. A California teenager was diagnosed with swine flu last month after arriving in Hong Kong on June 11, and has since recovered. The 16-year-old is a San Francisco resident and likely was infected in the United States, health officials said Tuesday. Her illness was mild, but noteworthy. She's just the third person in the world to be diagnosed with a strain resistant to Tamiflu, the primary pharmaceutical weapon against the new virus. The other two...

Posted on Tue, Aug. 05, 2003 Macon mayor defends trip to Africa Ellis says Ghana could process city's parking tickets By Mike Donila Telegraph Staff Writer Macon Mayor Jack Ellis on Monday defended his plans to visit Africa, saying that his mission, in part, is to encourage Ghanian officials to import more goods from Middle Georgia. Ellis also said that during his weeklong trip he will lay the groundwork to possibly enable Macon's Ghanian sister city of Elmina to process local parking tickets. "Ghana is very important to the city, the state - even the region where we live. They...

The percentage of Americans who don't have private health insurance has hit its lowest mark in 50 years, according to two new government reports. About 65 percent of non-elderly Americans had private insurance in 2008, down from 67 percent the year before, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC is now estimating that the H1N1 virus will be a category 2. Case fatality ratio of 0.1 percent to less than 0.5 percent. Between 90,000 and 450,000 deaths in the US. Illness rate between 20 and 40 percent. Similar to 1957