Swine Flu & H5N1:

I warned any number of persons about this coming paradigm shift in our country:

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

And here, way back in 2005.

Update: US swine flu cases now total 8 - CDC

From an official source the likes of which you won't have common access:

Today: According to the World Health Organisation on April, 24 2009:

The United States Government has reported seven confirmed human cases of Swine Influenza A/H1N1 in the USA (five in California and two in Texas) and nine suspect cases. All seven confirmed cases had mild Influenza-Like Illness (ILI), with only one requiring brief hospitalization. No deaths have been reported. All seven U.S. victims recovered from a strain of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses in a way that researchers have not seen before. The virus was first detected in two children in southern California -- a 10-year-old boy in San Diego County and a 9-year-old girl in neighboring Imperial County.

The CDC described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen in people or pigs before. The virus seems to contain human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia. Mixes of bird, pig and human virus have been seen before, but such an intercontinental combination with more than one pig virus in the mix is highly unusual.

Testing indicates some common antiviral medications seem to work against the virus. The CDC believes the new strain can spread human-to-human, which is unusual for a swine flu virus. The CDC is checking people who have been in contact with the seven confirmed U.S. cases, who all became ill between late March and mid-April.

The U.S. cases are a growing medical mystery because it's unclear how they caught the virus. The CDC said none of the seven people were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other.

The Government of Mexico has reported three separate events.

In the Federal District of Mexico, surveillance began picking up cases of ILI starting 18 March.

The number of cases has risen steadily through April and as of 23 April there are now more than 854 cases of pneumonia from the capital. Of those, 59 have died.

The Mexican government closed the schools across the Mexico City area and kept 6.1 million students home from day care centers, high schools, colleges and universities.

In San Luis Potosi, in central Mexico, 24 cases of ILI, with three deaths, have been reported.

And from Mexicali, near the border with the United States, four cases of ILI, with no deaths, have been reported.

Of the Mexican cases, 18 have been laboratory confirmed in Canada as Swine Influenza A/H1N1, while 12 of those are genetically identical to the Swine Influenza A/H1N1 viruses from California.

The majority of these cases have occurred in otherwise healthy young adults. Influenza normally affects the very young and the very old, but these age groups have not been heavily affected in Mexico.

16 of the deaths have been confirmed to have been caused by the new strain, through testing at government laboratories. Samples from 44 other people who died were still being tested.

The Mexican health department put the total number of people sickened at around 943 nationwide. Samples also were sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to determine whether it's the same virus infecting seven people in Texas and California. As of now, tests show the flu is a "new, different strain ... that originally came from pigs.

"Because there are human cases associated with an animal influenza virus, and because of the geographical spread of multiple community outbreaks, plus the somewhat unusual age groups affected, these events are of high concern according to the WHO."

The Swine Influenza A/H1N1 viruses characterized in this outbreak have not been previously detected in pigs or humans. The viruses so far characterized have been sensitive to oseltamivir, but resistant to both amantadine and rimantadine.

The World Health Organization has been in constant contact with the health authorities in the United States, Mexico and Canada in order to better understand the risk which these ILI events pose. WHO (and PAHO) is sending missions of experts to Mexico to work with health authorities there. It is helping its Member States to increase field epidemiology activities, laboratory diagnosis and clinical management. Moreover, WHO's partners in the Global Alert and Response Network have been alerted and are ready to assist as requested by the Member States.

WHO acknowledges the United States and Mexico for their proactive reporting and their collaboration with WHO and will continue to work with Member States to further characterize the outbreak.

You read it here FIRST on Bloviating Zeppelin.

PLUS:

H5N1 May Have Made The Transition From Animal To Human:

A strain of bird flu infecting children in Egypt could be a sign of person-to-person transmission, the World Health Organization said. Of 11 infections in the past few weeks, almost all were in children under age 3. Experts said that could mean adults are acting as carriers without falling ill, giving the virus a chance to mutate.

"I hope to hell they are wrong," said bird flu expert Dr Robert Webster of St Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee.

Earlier strains of bird blu in Asia killed most victims so quickly that the virus didn't have time to mutate into a contagious strain.

Let's just do the math here:

Leftists, Liberals, Socialists, the Religious Left want to squeeze you into populist blocks where the footprint is small and the vertical rise is incredulous. The more people they can squeeze into a given acre the happier they are.

And the faster you, in any derisive or negative scenario, die, directly due to immediacy of contact.

Perhaps that's what they, ideally, want?

BZ