Sunday, April 26, 2009

Obama's Mexico Visit And The Swine Flu?

I thought commenter Samenokami was trying an odd attempt at humor when he left this in the comments section, but it is a real story, from Bloomberg:

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared an emergency in his country’s swine flu outbreak, giving him powers to order quarantines and suspend public events.

Authorities have canceled school at all levels in Mexico City and the state of Mexico until further notice, and the government has shut most public and government activities in the area. The emergency decree, published today in the state gazette, gives the president authority to take more action.

“The federal government under my charge will not hesitate a moment to take all, all the measures necessary to respond with efficiency and opportunity to this respiratory epidemic,” Calderon said today during a speech to inaugurate a hospital in the southern state of Oaxaca.

At least 20 deaths in Mexico from the disease are confirmed, Health Minister Jose Cordova said yesterday. The strain is a variant of H1N1 swine influenza that has also sickened at least eight people in California and Texas. As many as 68 deaths may be attributed to the virus in Mexico, and about 1,000 people in the Mexico City area are showing symptoms of the illness, Cordoba said.

Obama’s Visit

The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn’t confirm if Solis had swine flu or not.



Samenokami questions:

A muslim/drug-lord/russian attempt to 'off' the Prez?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

A few months ago an epidemiologist said that the best way to avoid a worldwide flu pandemic was for everyone to wash their hands five or six times a day.

I bet the pres. and his whole family does that.

Ro

Anonymous said...

Guys, this is so much bigger than trying to off one guy:

http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs/emergencyall-patriots-must?xgs=1

This is in the MSM (links at site). This is not tinfoil-hat moonbattery.

I am getting very scared now.

Always On Watch said...

According to the linke from Jdamn13:

On April 22, CNN reported that viruses from the U.S. Army Bioweapons Lab at Fort Detrick, MD had gone missing. What type of viruses? Flu!

Later that same day the trouble in Mexico had grown. 1,000 flu cases had been reported in Mexico City and 60 people had already died.
In one day?

revereridesagain said...

We wish, if only for the poetic justice.

Sick jokes aside, how serious this is should become apparent over the next few days. This flu is a subtype of the H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 pandemic. That virus was successfully reconstructed by the CDC in 2005 but the report states that any future pandemic would have to be not the 1918 but a subtype to which there was no pre-existing immunity in the population. This seems to fit that. I haven't yet found a description of the symptoms in the fatal cases beyond "pneumonia". It is not "flu symptoms" -- cough/fever/nausea etc -- that kill but the hemorrhagic pneumonia that swamps the lungs. Mexico is reporting a fairly high death rate, but none so far from the outbreaks in the US and NZ. 1918's flu wound up infecting 1/3 of the world with a case death rate of reported as 2.5% and they're reporting Mexico's as 6%, so if that starts turning up elsewhere we've got problems.

The rich-plotting-to-kill-off-the-poor conspiracy plot is a bit tin-foil hat. (The virus doesn't discriminate as to economic status or by ethnicity as far as I know. If it is like the 1918, however, it will hit healthy people 20-40ish worst.) But the fact that viruses have gone missing and this thing seems to have come out of nowhere is alarming.

midnight rider said...

I will get slaughtered for this but here goes.

Obama's visit and the flu outbreak are a disquieting coincindence. Little else.

Ft Detrick missing samples: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.detrick10feb10,0,4635918.story

as for the CNN storyu on it it's here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042202005.html and not quite the harbinger painted.

The lack of ammunition to fight them is because so many CICLIANS have been buying it. He states .223 ammo in short supply because being bought by them military. Well, not exactly. I was at a gun store yesterday that had .223 readily available. The reason it's so popular and in short supply is because not only is it the ammo for the M16 military rifle but the very same ammo used in the hugely popular (though not with me) AR-15 -- tha main focus of the automatic weapons ban everyone is concerned about. More AR-15's sold, more of their ammo, too.

The Hmong killing 6 hunters in Wisconsin is from 2004. 5 years ago, before "the bankers" realzied they needed a way to kill off the defaulters to collect the insurance. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-29-hunters-shot_x.htm

Man could use a little work on his math as well. If we take the mortality rate of 20,000,000 for the post WW I flu and say it represents 2.5 % then that would put the world population in 1920(ish) at 800,000,000. The population of the earth was jsut under 2 billion in 1920. If we use his high figure of 100,000,000 deaths representing a 2.5 % mortality rate that would put the population of the earth at 4 billison in 1920, more than double actual.

As for the present outbreak causing 180 millison deaths yes, that is 6 % of those that get it. So where does the other "5 times that in the rest of the world" come from?

Dr Eric Pianka "advocated the need to exterminate 90% of the population through the airborne ebola virus" -- maybe, maybe not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Pianka#Controversy

I did a search for FEMA's million burial vaults and I find varying numbers from half a million to 1.5 million, and all on what you & I would call "conspiracy" sites.

Most of the other stuff is kinda questionable too, but, above all, though it is a swine flu it is treatable wityh most normal flu medications.

We said it when the story first came out last week, how long until the conspiracy theories start popping up? It's easy to call conspiracy after it starts and grab some facts, maybe ,assage them a bit and then string them together loosely and say See! See!

As far as on the East and West only, not in middle America, well, it' still very early into this thing so we don't know yet. And all it takes to get it from L.A. to NYC is a couple travelers or vacationers who had been to Mexico getting there, then bringing it home via plane, non-stop from Los Angeles to New York. Infecting many in the plane with it's poor ventilation and those they meet when they got home.

And I actually thought the CDC was jumping the gun declaring a swine flu emergency already. What I see is a gov't agency warning for years there will be another pandemic and then jumping on the first outbreak that comes along as being one maybe. And the conspiracy nuts follow. How come things like flu and ebola never happen naturally anymore?

midnight rider said...

Quick note -- CICLIANS = Civilians (no, don't know how I managed that one)

revereridesagain said...

In September 1918 my grandfather was stationed at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, when the influenza hit there. The hospital started filling up with healthy young soldiers turning blue from cyanosis and dying by the hundreds. The officers came into the barracks and told everyone to get off the base before they got sick. My grandfather rode out on a train that had coffins piled up behind in the freight cars.

That's my default image of a pandemic in the making.

So far all we have is people coming down with a treatable flu and the only fatalities in Mexico City, forgodsake. Glad to know the CDC is on the job. Call me if something truly alarming happens.

midnight rider said...

RRA -- Right!

SamenoKami said...

MNRider- I did a search for FEMA's million burial vaults and I find varying numbers from half a million to 1.5 million, and all on what you & I would call "conspiracy" sites.

>It may be a conspiracy/nut idea but they do exist. A couple of times a month I ride by a site of burial vaults in Madison, Ga. right down from Wal-Mart, next to the water tank and the concrete plant. They've been there for years, small trees growing around them. Must be 2+ acres. I tho't they were those plastic septic tank drains when I first saw them.

Jack Reylan said...

Save trees by stopping Obama from printing more money! Bam Bam has Tiny Tim tiptoeing through the securities and Wilma through the dimplomats! Blame professulas whose posh pensions graze on stumbent loan interest from vacuous degrees in basket weaving commie nutty organizing. Turn grant grubbing blatherers into fuel, especially perverts like mayor crotch who gas for obsama zbin biden. Your islamosympathic gutterswabbing clothing and pierced privates spread diesease. If you weren't such baby killing, vermin snuggling perverts you wouldn't be driving up our health costs, then collecting disability for your commie nutty organizing dementia. Your passive aggressive labor unions grab our guns, cars (congestion pricing), balls (SONDA), wallets, and homes but we will grab your throats and dang you from trailer bone tolls. Apply Sarbanes Oxley to non-profits! Repeal the seventeenth amendment before any VAT. All the homeless are drugged out hippies. Second Amendment is the ONLY Homeland Security. Wait until we waste all your stumbent subprimes, so you need to sell your affectation glutton art and work instead of diverting tuition and Y2K scams to soviet freezeniks! Deport for multiple visits to same country. If you controlled your own pension neither your boss nor the government could abuse it. Lynch soviet wealth fund abetting aghadhimmic peakies when oil plummets! Parasites complain about salaries but pig out with benefits. Global warming is a grant grubbing extortion racket. Urban sprawl annoys terrorists. Hazards and pollution stem mostly from mandates. Aqua volte! This land wasn't build by bullocraps.