Swine Flu Back Again?
EmailThe U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is heightening its surveillance of a specific subtype of swine flu, according to a report from the agency. The report says that state public health labs across the country should notify the CDC immediately if they suspect someone is infected with the virus.
The CDC reports that since August, 12 people have been infected with the virus, called H3N2, in five states: Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Of the total, 11 were children, three were hospitalized and all have fully recovered.
The report said officials have observed two different scenarios of transmission: workers getting the virus from pigs and humans catching it from one another, which was the cause of two of the newest cases at a West Virginia day care.
“Nonhuman influenza virus infections rarely result in human-to-human transmission, but the implications of sustained ongoing transmission between humans is potentially severe,” the report said.
Swine flu swept the globe beginning in 2009, when the H1N1 subtype of the virus was first detected in the United States. An estimated 43 million to 89 million Americans caught swine flu during the pandemic, and 8,870 to 18,300 people died from it, according to the CDC.
The government launched a major initiative to get the public vaccinated, giving $1.6 billion to pharmaceutical companies and vaccine makers to ensure there was enough vaccine to go around. But vaccine supplies exceeded demand as public interest dwindled.
The World Health Organization officially declared an end to the H1N1 pandemic in August 2010.
The flu vaccine available this year includes the H3N2 virus, along with the H1N1 virus. Officials are again encouraging people to get vaccinated. The CDC recommends that anyone age 6 months and older be vaccinated for the flu.
“We should remember that [seasonal] flu causes 36,000 deaths on average each year,” Dr. William Schaffner, professor and chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., told ABC News. “It remains a serious illness.”
ABC News’ Courtney Hutchison and Lauren Cox contributed to this report.
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BULLHOCKEY!. Just big Pharma trying to scare the public into paying for vaccinations they don’t need. The public has gotten wise to their tactics. The vaccines are more dangerous and kill more people than the flu does. And now they want to kill our babies before they turn a year old.
Posted by: edf55 | December 24, 2011 December 24, 2011, 3:56 pm
I’ll take my chances and get the vaccine if I feel it’s warranted where I live in Oklahoma. There’s too many germs and viruses floating around just waiting for a susceptible host. Everywhere you go you touch doorknobs, use public pens to sign credit card purchases, use grocery carts and public restrooms, handle serving spoons at buffets dozens have already handled, people don’t cover their mouth when coughing/sneezing, etc. Usually the people harmed by the vaccine were either already sick with the flu or had other health issues. I always wash my hands thoroughly upon returning home.
Posted by: Debbie | December 24, 2011 December 24, 2011, 10:48 pm
Viruses kill no one, opportunistic bacteria do.
Keep your homes clean of molds, and wash everything in the sanitation cycle of the dishwasher. Use soft-scrub with bleach to clean the bathroom with (wear gloves and use nothing else soft-scrub only and rinse thoroughly) Stay in warm areas, viruses unlike bacteria like cold. Stay inside if you are sick and stay warm. Eat plenty of chicken soup with chili pepper and lots of garlic and pepper. Take ibuprofen for inflammation. Wash your hands a lot, brush your teeth a lot and use Dentipicks a lot. Carry alcohol gel with you and use to wash your steering wheel in the car. Above all avoid people who are sick. A cough can get one infected fast.
If it turns to bronchitis and you can’t stop coughing, get to the doctor and demand an antibiotic and pain mediators. Coughing like that is bad and if left unchecked can lead to asthma or worse.
Posted by: Angelgroove | December 25, 2011 December 25, 2011, 2:33 pm
There is a factual error in this article. The novel H3N2 virus that is being reported here (the 12 new cases) is not the same as the seasonal H3N2 virus, which is included in this year’s seasonal vaccine. It’s possible there could be some cross-immunity, but no reason to assume so.
Despite the same general name, they are quite different viruses. The novel H3N2 apparently is a swine/avian virus with genes from H1N1 2009. It is a new virus that has not circulated in humans before. Imagine the classification H3N2 as being similar to police describing a suspect as “white male, 35 yrs, 5-8, 160-170 lbs, goatee” — it’s only somewhat specific.
There would need to be another vaccine in the event that the novel H3N2 virus becomes an epidemic.
Posted by: hector | December 26, 2011 December 26, 2011, 2:37 am
Wow, that’s a lot of lies in this article, including the 36,000 dying from the flu each year. If the writer had bothered to do research and had pulled the CDC breakdown of deaths and causes for each year, he or she would have found that that 36,000 number is a combination of flu deaths AND pneumonia deaths. He or she would also have found that about 34,000 of those deaths are pneumonia, with flu deaths being extremely rare. If he or she had further researched, he or she would also have found that of those that have been categorized as flu deaths, the diagnosis was based on symptoms rather than actual blood tests. Actual blood tests only show a few dozen deaths a year that are because of the flu. Even the big flu scare from last year turns out to have been hyped up and the CDC is currently being sued for inflating death numbers and essentially selling product (flu vaccines) for the pharmaceutical industry. In other words, the CDC sold out to the pharmaceutical companies last year. Please, author, do your research before you post such ridiculous lies.
Posted by: Laura Runkle | December 26, 2011 December 26, 2011, 9:15 am
Every time an article like this is written all of the anti- vaccine crazies come out of the woodwork writing all sorts of statements such as ” viruses kill no one” and “actual blood tests show only a few dozen deaths per year”(when this is diagnosed by nasal swab). The fact is that vaccines of all types have saves millions of lives over the years but most people that wage war on them are too young to remember the horrors of the pre vaccine era or often don’t even know what the iron lung units were. They have all benefitted from the rest of society being vaccinated and I guarantee you if we stopped all vaccinations it would not be long before everyone would be begging for them. too bad some of the old timers like president Roosevelt weren’t here to tell you why they were in a wheelchair.
Posted by: Dlh170 | December 26, 2011 December 26, 2011, 11:41 am
Yuk! I had Swine Flu (confirmed by lab results) and it was horrible. I’ve never been that sick before in my life! One thing I know for sure is people can be nasty, gross and lack good hygeine practices. Folks sneeze and cough into the air, and they don’t wash their hands enough. Cootie (yeah I said it) sharing, nasty, so and so’s LOL!
Posted by: Thoughtyouknew | December 27, 2011 December 27, 2011, 1:59 pm