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But underwriters are breaking down H1N1 applicants into three categories: those who currently have the flu, those who had a mild case and recovered, and those who were hospitalized. Those who have it now won't be considered for coverage until they get better, he says, while those who have recovered from a mild case have to wait two to three months. Those unlucky enough to be hospitalized may not qualify for life insurance for a full year.Marr's assessment is based on feedback from insurance industry underwriters. But when contacted by MoneySense, several insurance companies denied having such rules. One spokesperson...

The Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal report that Wall Street giants Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have been issued the swine flu vaccine for their "at risk" employees despite the fact that there are massive shortages of the vaccine nationwide. The rarity of the vaccine has made it a hot commodity, one in which movers, shakers, traders, and bailout recipients now have jumped to the front of the line when it comes to what President Obama declared to be a National Emergency in late October. Reaction to the news has been swift, fierce, and angry. Senator Chris Dodd of...

The boogeyman will get you!" parents sometimes tell misbehaving children. With about 40% of parents saying "no!" to vaccinating their kids for swine flu, apparently health officials think turnabout is fair play. And the media seem happy to help. You see it in such headlines as "CDC Shocker: Swine Flu Killing Young People at Record Rate!" And in lines of panicked parents queued outside vaccine clinics like fans trying to score tickets to a Paul McCartney concert. And in schools closing willy-nilly, which could cost the nation tens of billions, according to a recent Brookings Institute study. Which is so...

Health Officials in Ukraine say the death toll from a suspected swine flu outbreak has reached 144. Almost a million people are thought to be infected, mostly in the west of the country. ~ Over a hundred have died since the outbreak of the virus last week. But it's still unclear exactly what killed those Ukranians. Only some are confirmed as a result of AH1N1, the rest are blamed on respiratory diseases. Even so, talks over imposing a state of emergency in the country are surfacing from the highest levels. Should that happen, the upcoming presidential vote could be shifted...

<p>ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Suspected swine flu is sweeping a traditional Eskimo whaling village on a remote Alaska island — prompting an urgent medical mission to deliver help.</p> <p>"Diomede is probably the most isolated place in the United States right now," said David Head, a doctor involved in the effort. "We thought it would be better to go out there and just vaccinate people."</p>

> "That is one of the great advantages of the British health system," said Dr. Steve Field, president of the Royal College of General Physicians. "We have a list of all the names of patients who qualify to be vaccinated." >

Thousands of people filling the sidewalks and spilling onto Tully Road had arrived early Saturday morning to receive one of 5,500 doses of coveted swine flu vaccine. "There's no way there's enough," said George Reis, who was helping with crowd control. "They keep coming."

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who think they may have H1N1 flu need to stay away from work, avoid sneezing on their spouses and children and now, they have someone else to worry about infecting too -- their pets...

The government, which ordered 250 million doses, has recommended that the limited supply go first to high-risk groups: children and young people through age 24, people caring for infants under 6 months, pregnant women and health care workers.

Dallas County's first mass distribution of the swine flu vaccine Wednesday tested the patience of thousands of adults and children, who stood outdoors for hours to snag a scarce shot. SONYA N. HEBERT/DMN Rony Velazquez, 4, waited while his mother, Blanca Medrano (left), and his sister Diana Velazquez were screened before getting their H1N1 shots at the Dallas County Health and Human Services building on Wednesday.But in the end, there was a lot of praise for how well the county dispensed the vaccine. Despite chilly weather before dawn and intense sun by late morning, almost no one in the line...

New York City health officials scrambled to explain themselves Thursday following outraged media reports about bankers who got scarce H1N1 flu vaccines through their employers. Although there is a longstanding arrangement for employers to provide seasonal flu shots to workers, the city health department was bombarded with calls and television reports about Wall Street workers jumping the line ahead of pregnant women and children. "It's bad enough that Wall Street crashed our economy and is back to paying out platinum bonuses after taking trillions in taxpayer-funded bailouts and backstops," Service Employees International Union Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger said in a statement....

To the list of hundreds of schools, hospitals, and community health centers that have received limited allocations of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, you can now add some of New York's largest employers. In the past week or so 13 companies, including Citigroup (C) and Goldman Sachs (GS), have begun receiving small quantities of the vaccine, according to city health authorities.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that pigs in a commercial herd in Indiana have tested positive for swine flu, making it the first time the virus has been found in such hogs. The USDA said it discovered four tissue samples that tested positive for the virus using its swine surveillance program. The sample was collected in late October, and the USDA said the pigs as well as the people caring for the animals have recovered. Last month, tests confirmed that several show pigs at the Minnesota State Fair contracted swine flu, also known as the H1N1...

Wall Street bankers once again are the target of populist outrage, this time over the news that Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and others are receiving limited doses of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine

Vets in the US state of Iowa said Wednesday that a household cat had tested positive for swine flu -- the first known case in the world of the new pandemic strain spreading to the feline population. The domestic shorthair, a 13-year-old castrated male, apparently caught A(H1N1) off its owners -- two of the three members of the family had previously contracted the deadly virus. "This is the first cat that we are aware of with the pandemic H1N1," said Brett Sponseller, an assistant professor of veterinarian microbiology who helped treat the pet at Iowa State University's College of Veterinary...

The Ukrainian government is coming under increasing criticism in the German media for imposing military rule on the country in response to a pandemic. The Ukraine yesterday said it would close all schools in the country for a week, and suspend basic rights such as the freedom of movement and assembly. In addition, some border crossings to Slovakia have been closed. The latest crackdown comes as the government said a planned election might not be held on schedule because of the pandemic. The President is expected to declare a state of emergency any day heralding the beginning of rule by...

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...

Long lines at public flu clinics -- initially intended to primarily serve the uninsured -- are now commonplace nationwide as doses of the vaccine remain scarce. Many clinics report seeing large numbers of people who have insurance but have been unable to get H1N1 vaccines from private doctors, who say they have either already run out or have yet to get any. The line at the Glendale clinic, the first to be held in that city since Los Angeles County received doses late last month, was the longest yet, county Department of Public Health officials said. And the stakes were...

Pregnant women are considered at high risk for suffering complications or death from the new H1N1 pandemic swine flu. So they’re near the top of the list for getting vaccinated. A new international study calculates that up to 400 out of every million pregnant women who receive such swine-flu shots will experience a miscarriage within 24 hours.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House says detainees at Guantanamo Bay are not receiving vaccinations against the swine flu vaccine. Robert Gibbs on Tuesday said concern that terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Cuba were receiving vaccines was misplaced. Gibbs says no vaccines are at the naval base and none are on the way

With flu vaccination season in full swing, research from the University of Rochester Medical Center cautions that use of many common pain killers – Advil, Tylenol, aspirin – at the time of injection may blunt the effect of the shot and have a negative effect on the immune system. Richard P. Phipps, Ph.D., professor of Environmental Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and of Pediatrics, has been studying this issue for years and recently presented his latest findings to an international conference on inflammatory diseases. (http://bioactivelipidsconf.wayne.edu/) “What we’ve been saying all along, and continue to stress, is that it’s probably not a...

Swine Flu Vaccine Strikes Children at School While you are at work; without your permission… by Jim Turner It seems Mr. Obama and his henchmen have finally crossed the line. While your children are at school and you are hard at work trying to get though this nightmarish economy, the Obama followers are using all their power to undermine your parental authority by injecting your children with the Swine Flu Vaccine without your permission. Injecting vaccine into children that have prior medical condition; an injection that ended up putting a child into the hospital. Yet, the school claims that this...

After a rough spring that saw as many as 20 to 40 percent of New Yorkers exposed to H1N1, subway riders have resorted to defending themselves with their fists. Violence struck on a southbound D train Monday morning after two women got into an argument over one's refusal to cover her mouth while coughing. It ended with her spitting on the other, a punch, and the second woman dragging the first to the floor of the car by her hair. Here's the play-by-play account, as witnessed firsthand by The Business Insider's Lawrence Delevingne: "No one got the conductor --...

According to an UNIAN correspondent, Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko said this delivering a speech in the Verkhovna Rada today. “As of November 2, 19 thousand 189 people fell ill with flu, 236 thousand 327 people fell ill with acute respiratory viral infection. In a whole (flu and acute respiratory viral infection) – 255 thousand 516 people fell ill. As of today 71 people died”, said Yu. Tymoshenko.

Evidence appears to suggest that Baxter International is responsible for a new deadly outbreak of viral pneumonia in Ukraine. In February of 2009 Bloomberg reported that Baxter “accidentally” send vaccine material containing both live Avian bird flu and seasonal influenza to multiple laboratories worldwide. A laboratory decided to test the vaccine on it’s ferrets, but the ferrets all unexpectedly died. It must be noted that Baxter has made a “mistake” like this before. Blood products produced by Baxter once containd HIV. Thousands of haemophiliacs died due to this, and many went on to infect their spouses. Later in the year,...

The shortage of swine-flu vaccine results not from drug- company greed or outsize demand but almost entirely from the government's decision to pander to unfounded and unscientific fear. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the US government set out to have the H1N1 vaccine produced largely in single-dose syringes -- a demand that has set back production considerably, because multidose vials are far easier to make. And the only reason to seek single-dose production was to please people needlessly worried about the preservative thimerasol, which is used to provide multiple doses of the vaccine. The fear -- utterly...

ELCA Resource Addresses 'Worship in Times of Public Health Concerns' CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The declaration of a national emergency has raised a number of questions across the United States about safely assembling for school and worship during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Worship and Liturgical Resources answered many of those questions in a resource titled "Worship in Times of Public Health Concerns." U.S. President Barack Obama signed an Oct. 24 proclamation that "the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in the United States constitutes a national emergency." The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services had...

School nurses mistakenly gave the swine flu vaccine to two students who didn't sign up for it - including a Brooklyn girl with epilepsy who wound up in the hospital. "I was outraged," Naomi Troy, 26, told the Daily News after her 6-year-old daughter, Nikiyah Torres-Pierre, had a possible allergic reaction to the shot. Officials at Public School 335 in Crown Heights called an ambulance to take Nikiyah to SUNY Downstate Medical Center when she fell ill following the arm jab. "My stomach was hurting, and I was itching," Nikiyah said after she was released from the hospital. The snafu...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Terrorism suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base will soon get swine flu vaccines, despite complaints that American civilians should have priority, a military spokesman said Sunday. Army Maj. James Crabtree, a spokesman for the U.S. jail facility in southeast Cuba, said the doses should start arriving this month, with guards and then inmates scheduled for inoculations. He acknowledged there may be an "emotional response" from critics who argue that terror suspects should not be allocated swine-flu medications while members of the U.S. public are still waiting due to a vaccine shortage. But he...

Officials admitted on Friday that a third student was mistakenly given the swine flu vaccine - an error the school nurses union blamed on the city. "Nurses are not getting the support they need," said Judith Arroyo, president of Local 436, District Council 37, adding that the union had warned of problems. "We don't like it when we're right, because usually when we're right someone does get hurt somewhere along the way." City officials countered that nurses have received "excellent support." "The department has been doing a tremendous job," said Dr. Jane Zucker, assistant commissioner of immunization. "Twenty-five hundred have...

Sir Elton John has been forced to cancel a string of concerts after contracting E.coli and an aggressive bout of influenza. The 62-year-old had already pulled out of a series of concerts in Dublin, London, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield citing ill-health. But gigs in the U.S. cities of Seattle, Washington and and Portland, Oregon were yesterday shelved after the singer was admitted to hospital. Yesterday, a spokesman for Sir Elton was keen to play down reports of his condition, saying: 'He is recovering from a case of serious influenza with minor complications. We are confident he will be back on...

Concern over the H1N1 swine flu has inundated the airwaves and the newspapers since active swine flu was first identified in Mexico in April. And though the panic has waned slightly in recent weeks because this variant of the flu is not living down to its deadly predictions (in fact, it’s not even as deadly as the seasonal flu), for many people, if not most people, perception trumps facts and statistics, and so there have been mass mobilizations to combat the contagion.  The campaign has included classes to convince people to avoid unnecessary contact with others; a huge expenditure to...

Death from the flu is often heartrending for those who have to watch: the victim, having been weakened from the flu virus, contracts pneumonia from bacteria or viruses that have taken hold in the lungs, and he or she struggles for every breath.  The victim’s breathing is often raspy, and it is abnormally fast, like the panting of a worn-out dog. As the victim’s body fights the lung infection, the lungs fill with pus and other fluids, cutting off the flow of oxygen and causing the victim to turn colors — from shades of gray to a bluish purple. The...

It's a global pandemic, says the World Health Organization. It's a national emergency, says Barack Obama. U.S. deaths have surpassed 1,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Nearly 5,000 have died worldwide, according to WHO. That sounds bad. But is it worth the hysteria? What is it about these deaths that have government health bureaucracies apoplectic? Is it time for a little context? What happens when we turn to the same sources to compare deaths due to swine flu with other leading causes of preventable deaths? Worldwide, nearly 3,000 people die from malaria every day. Worldwide, nearly 6,000 people...

THE emergence of the H1N1 swine flu has added urgency to what has become an annual ritual for millions of Americans: getting a flu shot. The good news is that scientists have developed a vaccine against the H1N1 virus. But it is taking much longer than expected to produce the hundreds of millions of doses the government had planned to distribute. And it is still too soon to know how effective the vaccine will be in preventing swine flu. In all likelihood, we’d have a better H1N1 vaccine — and more of it — if in our preparations we had...

Swine Flu Kills 19 Kids In A Week 114 children have died in U.S.; widespread in all but 2 states By ASSOCIATED PRESS ATLANTA (AP) | Swine flu has caused at least 19 more children's deaths - the largest one-week increase since the pandemic started in April, health officials said Friday. At least 114 children have died from swine flu complications since the spring, up from 95 reported a week earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, the government has decided to release the last of its stockpile of liquid Tamiflu for children because of reported...

I am just checking to see how the vaccines have been made available throughout the country. I have seen posts on the site saying that they are in short supply in some areas and other posters are saying there are no problems getting them. I would like it if you could tell us your state and what is the status of the vaccine availablilty in the area. I want to make sure that the vaccines have not been made a political football. That we havent yet turned into an African kleptocratcy.

HAVANA — Fidel Castro has found something to sneeze at in Washington's decision to ease visits by Cuban-Americans to his island: He says more Americans mean more swine flu. The 83-year-old ex-president wrote in state-controlled newspapers on Saturday that many of Cuba's early cases of the virus were visitors from the United States and he used the occasion to take a jab at the U.S. embargo. "We had the strange case where the United States on one hand authorized more trips for a large number of people carrying the virus, and on the other prohibited us from obtaining equipment and...

Fidel Castro has found something to sneeze at in Washington's decision to ease visits by Cuban-Americans to his island: He says more Americans mean more swine flu. The 83-year-old ex-president wrote in state-controlled newspapers on Saturday that many of Cuba's early cases of the virus were visitors from the United States and he used the occasion to take a jab at the U.S. embargo. "We had the strange case where the United States on one hand authorized more trips for a large number of people carrying the virus, and on the other prohibited us from obtaining equipment and medicine to...

How can the government pretend that it can manage, overhaul, streamline and reform the health care system in the United States when it can't even deliver enough flu shots to prevent a pandemic? We have seen the H1N1 virus coming for over a year. It is no surprise that much of America needs vaccination. It was no secret that the flu season was approaching. But, now that it is upon us, we find ourselves pathetically short of shots. One year ago, the government told us that we would have hundreds of millions of vaccinations available. Then, over the summer, the...

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...

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...

A quarrel between the U.S. government and swine flu vaccine makers reached the highest level on Friday, with President Barack Obama expressing frustration at the slow pace of production.

Revenge of the Pigs Fears for the Hajj Raised thelastcrusade.org. Pigs may get their revenge against Islam.They have been classified as filth (najasa) by shariah (Muslim) law.A Muslim must purify himself of anything made impure by contact with a pig.Swine are considered as vile and disgusting as “non-Muslims at war with Muslims, apostates from Islam, convicted married adulterers, and biting dogs.”Yet more Muslims are likely to die of swine flu this year than the adherrents of any other religion.The mass Islamic infection of the H1N1 virus is expected to occur during the five day hajj that will take place...

There has been a lot of confusion about what ingredients are in the H1N1 Vaccine. In order to distill the information to make it easier for you to make an informed choice, here is a brief synopsis of the information provided by the manufacturers in their package inserts...

I love a conspiracy theory, how about you? Although this one isn't necessarily new -- lots of folks have opined about the convenient coincidence of an escalating so-called pandemic mixed with an under-supply of vaccinations while the country debates healthcare reform -- it's all the more delicious when it comes from a rock star of some note. With that in mind, when singer, songwriter, and leader of the now defunct alternative band The Smashing Pumpkins suggests swine flu "is not a naturally occurring virus," and that "President Obama has declared a national emergency" when "there isn’t one," you have to...

The US government has issued a new report that recommends blocking access to popular websites during a pandemic outbreak in order to preserve internet bandwidth for investors, day traders and securities clearing house operations. The concern is that a pandemic would cause too many people to stay at home and download YouTube videos and porn, hogging all the internet bandwidth and blocking throughput for investment activities, thereby causing a stock market meltdown.This isn't an April Fool's joke. It's all based on a public report issued by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), available from their website at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d108.pdfIn this article, I'm...

Oct. 29, 2009 (Philadelphia) -- Once again, the popular cholesterol-lowering statin drugs have been shown to be good for more than the heart: They may also lower your odds of dying of the flu. In a large study of people hospitalized with seasonal influenza, those who were taking statins were about 50% less likely to die than those who weren't taking the drugs. "Our preliminary research suggests there may be a role for statins in influenza treatment," says Meredith VanderMeer, MPH, of the Oregon Public Health Division. The statin drugs include Crestor, Lescol, Lipitor, Mevacor, Pravachol, and Zocor. The findings...

RENO, Nev. -- A fight broke out Thursday at a Reno, Nev., clinic giving shots for swine flu when someone reportedly tried to cut in line. Washoe County Health District spokeswoman Judy Davis says she didn't have any details of the incident, but it involved people in high-risk groups waiting for a chance to get the shot. A witness told the Reno Gazette-Journal that a man took a swing at a woman, then jumped on her and they fell to the ground. They left after a security guard stepped in and broke up the fight. Davis says 1,200 vaccines were...

(NaturalNews) The US government has issued a new report that recommends blocking access to popular websites during a pandemic outbreak in order to preserve internet bandwidth for investors, day traders and securities clearing house operations. The concern is that a pandemic would cause too many people to stay at home and download YouTube videos and porn, hogging all the internet bandwidth and blocking throughput for investment activities, thereby causing a stock market meltdown. This isn't an April Fool's joke. It's all based on a public report issued by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), available from their website at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d108.pdf In...