Free Republic

— President Barack Obama meets this weekend with leaders of Mexico and Canada at a time when drug-related violence, swine flu and the economic crisis are slipping across North America's borders like never before. Obama, along with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, are expected to work on trade and immigration, drug trafficking and security, and clean energy during their first summit Sunday and Monday in ....Guadalajara. "The bottom line is that what affects our bordering neighbors has the potential to affect us all, so we want to be certain that we have the tightest and...

No racism intended...fear for my grandchildren...but why is this happening? Is there a direct correlation? I do not find any further data on the subject. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30435064/ns/health-swine_flu Why do states with higher numbers of illegals have a higher death rate? I wonder why the map of the swine flu outbreak and the death rate is so utterly consistent. There must be a wide variation in the strength of the flu that makes the death rates so much higher in those states that have a greater proportion of Mexican immigrants...legal or not, but the states that seem to have a higher ratio...

Swine flu claims NorCal nurse, 2 new moms Associated Press - July 31, 2009 1:14 PM ET SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Health officials say a Sacramento-area cancer nurse's death is the first among California health care workers related to swine flu. Mercy San Juan Medical Center spokesman Bryan Gardner says officials at the Carmichael hospital do not know if 51-year-old Karen Ann Hays contracted the virus on the job. She died July 17. In the San Francisco Bay area, two new mothers died from the virus, also known as H1N1, shortly after giving birth. A 33-year-old Marin County woman was...

Weekly cases of the H1N1 virus have almost doubled in a week and Justin McCracken, chief executive of the Health Protection Agency, said the number of GP consultations about flu are in line with epidemic levels. "We are there or there abouts," he said. An epidemic is officially declared when the number of GP consultations recorded by the Royal College of GP exceeds 200 per 100,000 population. Last week the figure stood at 155 consultations per 100,000 population but another, larger, database which is more up to date has recorded 221.4 consultations per 100,000 population. Mr McCracken said taking the...

A/H1N1 pandemic spreads at unprecedented speed, says WHO 2009-07-17 06:10:40 GENEVA, July 16 (Xinhua) -- The A/H1N1 influenza pandemic has been spreading at an unprecedented speed, much faster than other pandemics in history, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. "In past pandemics, influenza viruses have needed more than six months to spread as widely as the new H1N1 virus has spread in less than six weeks," the UN agency said in a briefing posted on its website. The new flu virus has caused more than 94,500 laboratory-confirmed infections in more than 130 countries and regions, with more than...

An outbreak of swine flu occurred in Mexico this spring that eventually affected 4,910 Mexican citizens and resulted in 85 deaths. By the time it spread to the United States, the virus caused only mild cases of flu-like illness. Thanks to air travel and the failure of public health officials to control travel from Mexico, the virus spread worldwide. Despite predictions of massive numbers of deaths and the arrival of doomsday, the virus has remained a relatively mild disease, something we know happens each year with flu epidemics. Worldwide, there have only been 311 deaths out of 70,893 cases of...

US health officials estimate that at least one million Americans have been infected with swine flu since the H1N1 virus emerged nearly three months ago. The number is far higher than cases actually reported to the authorities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said many cases were mild, although 127 people had died. The CDC based its figures on surveys, rather than laboratory evidence, but the numbers suggest the death rate from swine flu is lower than thought. "We're saying that there have been at least a million cases of the new H1N1 virus so far this year...

The World Health Organization this morning formally declared that swine flu had reached the level of a full-blown pandemic, moving the viral outbreaks to phase 6 on the pandemic alert scale. WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan met with flu experts at 6 a.m. ET today in Geneva to discuss the spread of the novel virus, and since Wednesday the escalation to the highest level of pandemic alert had been widely anticipated. The move reflects the continued spread of the virus around the globe, despite quarantines, school closings and other measures designed to keep it in check. Swine flu is the...

Source: Reuters * Pattern different from seasonal flu * U.S. flu season running unusually long * Average flu victim is teenager (Updates throughout with news conferences) By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) - The new influenza strain circulating around most of the United States is putting a worrying number of young adults and children into the hospital and hitting more schools than usual, U.S. health officials said on Monday. The H1N1 swine flu virus killed a vice principal at a New York City school over the weekend and has spread to 48 states. While it...

May 18, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Swine Flu HotwashReviewing the course of the recent outbreak can help us fight the next one. By Tevi Troy After a significant event, government officials often undertake a formal review of how they reacted. These exercises, called hotwashes, produce “lessons learned” documents that governments use to prepare for the next event. With the swine-flu episode apparently receding, government and public-health officials are probably preparing such hotwashes right now, and there is plenty to be learned. A lot of things went right in the recent outbreak, but not everything, and it is worth taking a...

Swine Flu in Japan May Trigger Pandemic In U.S., 8 New York City Schools Closed as H1N1 Swine Flu Spreads Across Nation By Daniel J. DeNoon WebMD Health News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD May 18, 2009 -- H1N1 swine flu appears to be spreading in Japan, pushing the world to the brink of an official flu pandemic. Japan's cases of H1N1 spiked today with 104 new lab-confirmed cases, raising that nation's swine-flu case count from 25 to 129. Ten schools in the Kobe City area reported 78 of the new cases. If the new cases do indeed represent "community-level...

Enlarge ImageGoing viral. A look at how air travel helped H1N1 spread. Credit: Christophe Fraser et al, Science The first quick and dirty analysis of Mexico's swine flu outbreak suggests that the H1N1 virus is about as dangerous as the virus behind a 1957 pandemic that killed 2 million people worldwide. But it's not nearly as lethal as the bug that caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The world first became aware of this latest outbreak of swine flu in late April. Researchers recognized that the new virus was also causing disease in Mexico. As of today, there have...

The assistant principal of a Queens school who had been hospitalized with swine flu died on Sunday evening. It was the first death in New York State from the outbreak and came as city officials announced that five more Queens schools had been closed. The assistant principal, Mitchell Wiener, had been “overwhelmed” by the illness despite treatment with an experimental drug, according to Ole Pedersen, a spokesman for Flushing Hospital Medical Center, where Mr. Wiener had been a patient since last Wednesday. Mr. Pedersen said that Mr. Wiener, the assistant principal of Intermediate School 238 in Hollis, one of the...

"The mayor said the assistant principal, Mitch Wiener, may have had pre-existing health problems—but on Friday, Wiener's son Adam said his father had only suffered previously from gout, which he said was unrelated to his current condition. He said his 55-year-old father is now suffering from pneumonia, kidney failure, dehydration and a lung infection. "I don't know where people got that," Adam Wiener, 23, said Friday morning as he prepared to return to the hospital where the family was keeping vigil. "The only pre-existing condition he has is gout, which is unrelated to complications he's experienced now." Click on link...

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Texas health officials have confirmed the first death of a United States resident with swine flu. Few details have been released, but officials say the flu victim was a woman who lived in Cameron County, along the U.S.-Mexico border, and had other, chronic health problems. The Texas Department of State Health Services said Tuesday that she died earlier this week.

This week, concerns about swine flu have dominated the media and many government officials. While the American people should be made aware of infectious diseases and common sense preventative measures, much of the hysterical reaction from government only serves to remind us how detrimental to your health it can be when government plays doctor. As a physician, I have yet to see any evidence that justifies the current level of alarm. Influenza typically kills around 36,000 people every year in this country and hospitalizes a couple hundred thousand. So far there are only a handful of confirmed deaths attributable to...

The World Health Organization is likely to raise its alert for the H1N1 swine flu outbreak to the highest level and declare a pandemic, its director indicated in an interview published on Monday. "Level six does not mean, in any way, that we are facing the end of the world. It is important to make this clear because (otherwise) when we announce level six it will cause an unnecessary panic," Reuters reported WHO Director General Margaret Chan told Spanish newspaper El Pais. "Flu viruses are very unpredictable, very deceptive... We should not be overconfident. One must not give H1N1 the...

In a stunning New York Times headline today comes the antidote of reality.... Outbreak in Mexico May Be Smaller Than Feared oh noooooo... say it ain't so?! What, no mass death headed our way? What will Kathleen Sebelius do now after her "expect many more deaths" prediction... "twitter" her thumbs? Why just last week, here's a breathless Anderson Cooper on CNN Over "1000" people in Mexico back on April 24th, and "68" people have died..... A day later, the New York Times chimes in: Mexican officials, scrambling to control a swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 61...

4 May 2009 -- As of 06:00 GMT, 4 May 2009, 20 countries have officially reported 985 cases of influenza A (H1N1) infection. Mexico has reported 590 laboratory confirmed human cases of infection, including 25 deaths. The higher number of cases from Mexico reflects ongoing testing of previously collected specimens. The United States has reported 226 laboratory confirmed human cases, including one death. The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths - Austria (1), Canada (85), China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1), Costa Rica (1), Colombia (1), Denmark (1), El Salvador (2), France (2), Germany (8),...

Published: May 3 2009 14:08 | Last updated: May 3 2009 17:42 The head of the World Health Organisation hit back at critics who have accused it of over-reaction to the swine flu crisis, warning it may return “with a vengeance” in the months ahead. In her first extensive media interview since alerting the world to a potential flu pandemic nine days ago, Margaret Chan, the agency’s director-general, told the Financial Times that the end of the flu season in the northern hemisphere meant an initial outbreak could be milder but then a second wave more lethal, as happened in...