New York Closes 6 More Schools Due To H1N1

(CBS/AP)  Six more public schools are shutting down as New York City continues combating the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu.

The closings announced Thursday follow dozens of others in recent weeks. City officials say the closed schools reported unusual numbers of students with flu-like illnesses.

The newly closed schools are: P.S. 83 and P.S. 182, which share a building in East Harlem; P.S. 503 and P.S. 506, which share a Brooklyn facility; and P.S. 155 in East Harlem. It includes P. 169, a school for disabled students.

The six schools will reopen Wednesday.

As many as four deaths have been linked to swine flu since the outbreak began in the city last month, though autopsies of two of the possible victims aren't yet complete. Authorities say most cases of the virus have been mild.

Separately Thursday, a U.S. health official said a swine flu vaccine could be available as early as October, but only if vaccine production and testing run smoothly this summer.

Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency began shipping virus samples to manufacturers in the past several days. The government will have to review the safety and effectiveness of what's produced, and decide if a vaccination campaign is warranted. October is about the time seasonal flu vaccine campaigns generally get rolling.

CDC officials reported more than 8,500 probable and confirmed cases in the U.S., including 12 deaths and more than 500 hospitalizations.

The latest deaths from the virus were reported in Mexico - where the outbreak is believed to have started - today.

Mexico reported six more deaths from swine flu, bringing the country's toll to 95.

The Health Department says that 4,974 people have been sickened nationwide. That number includes the 95 deaths.

Health officials say 34 percent of those who died were obese and diabetic.

Mexico says its epidemic has largely subsided, but the confirmed toll has been rising as scientists test a backlog of samples from patients.

[nolongersick]

I just found this video on You Tube that really shows how germs and viruses spread. It is so cool. Its meant for kids but I even learned a lot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56mq1t1BqfY

[craigh9]

It amazes me how overblown this has become by the media - which eventually forced the government to over react or face criticism that they didn't take it seriously.
Just because it has a catchy name it's a "HUGE" story because it killed dozens of people - but no one even blinks when the flu without a catchy name kills thousands year, after year , after year.
It's time for a reality check folks

[glaring_falsehoods]

Oh, I almost forgot.

Paraphrasing searingtruth now:

Nature, far from being benign, consists instead of innumerable, reiterative instances of
evolutionarily discarded junk DNA, which occasionally manages to develop into life forms capable of mimicking speech. This is not to be confused with intelligence, and, if one is not prudent, listening to such bloviations may even be fatally boring. (See: Limbaugh, Rush)

[glaring_falsehoods]

People of earth:

I am a pseudo intellectual, effete poseur, whose many affectations include an absolutely insatiably desire to appear smart. I do this in a prolix manner, using polysyllabic, obfuscatory language. This helps disguise the pedestrian source of my vast knowledge, which, of course, is wikipedia.

I am here, at this time, to educate the primarily mentally deficient people of this planet about the Swine Flu. Its symptoms include an irresistible urge to oink, snort, and roll around in mud ------- but, enough about my wife.

As to the origin of this flu, some of your virologists and researchers have already gone on record as suggesting it is an artificial construction, perhaps manufactured in a lab. Your DNA, or human genome, is particularly vulnerable to attack by such organisms, because its unique, polymeric chain of covalent chemical bonds is somewhat easily infiltrated and damaged.

Some of you, who enjoy conspiracy theories, have even suggested this virus may have its origins in some labyrinthine black ops program, whose objective is to deflect, fear-monger and distract you from the catastrophic dystopian nightmare you have created on your planet.

People of Earth: You are wrong:

Its just the flu, you silly. dolts. You're more likely to die falling off a step ladder.

[WayAround]

As if American public education weren 't bad enough, students are now given days off for contrived pandemics....

[sportsnut50]

People should take this seriously, they are not. These virues can be the most distructive thing on this planet, in one tea spoon of ocean water there can be found as many as 60 different kinds of viruses, they make up everything in our world. They are not stupid, but can think in the scence of the word and make disisions to stay alive by picking its hosts it lives in, like microcomputers. When a scientists like this person speaks of the posibility of mutating its not bunk, this person has 45yrs in this field and is very good at what he does, understands the risk, and how viruese word better than anyone alive today. When you go in the hospital for a operation you trust the doctor to do it right and keep you alive, this man is the same way, he is the best in the field, in fact doctors all over the world call on him for his advise. I personaly think this Pig virus will mutate to stay alive and be stronger and gome out as a killer of hundreads of millions of people on this planet, the time frame is not clear yet, and will create devastation on this planet like no one has seen since 1918, and the black plague. Its accually the way the planet works, the planet has unleashed its smallest killers before and it will do it again, and i belive this is that time. The people in the past had no warring or didn,t understand what was going on, this time thanks to modern medican there is a warring. If the human race looks the other way it will parrish, with no faul but its own.

[searingtruth]

Fellow citizens,

We are being attacked by a uniquely constructed virus that our immune system does not recognize, and therefore has no defense against. It also appears that it will be difficult to produce a reliable vaccine to defend against it because the antibody receptors (the place that our body chooses to recognize it), changes often, like HIV (AIDS). Our immune system is our bodies defense against all disease, and if it can't recognize an illness then it can't attack it.

The virus we face, H1N1, sometimes called the swine flu, is a previously unknown combination of swine (pig), Avian (bird), and human virus that has thus far produced only mild symptoms in humans. Our immune system doesn't recognize it because it has pig and bird components that throw off our immune defenses, which are designed to detect only virus and bacteria with human components. In effect, bird and pig components in a virus act as an "umbrella" that keeps our bodies from seeing them.

But while easy to catch because we have no defense against it, the reason this virus has only caused mild illness so far is because the "payload" (the toxins it produces) are much the same as any other seasonal flu. And so long as it doesn't change we will be fine.

But a virus is inherently unstable, and can mutate (change) incalculable times dependent upon its structure and environment, in only a few days. Changing their payloads lethality like a slot machine, but in this case, one in which we hope will never hit a jackpot.

You see, virus are not actual life as we normally know it, but instead exist outside of living cells as usually single, and sometimes double, strands of something called "RNA".

And RNA is a very interesting and critical substance. Because in normal cells, DNA is transcribed (think of it as translated) to RNA, and RNA is synthesized (actually made) into proteins (the actual product of the cell), often to replicate the cell itself. Things can be more complicated than this, and there can be multiple levels of RNA decoding, but this is the basic mechanism for protein production and cell reproduction. But no matter what steps involved in a cells normal transcription and synthesis processes, it is heavily protected by many levels of "error correction".

This changes when a virus infects a cell. When a virus infects a cell it inserts its RNA into the cells DNA, causing it to produce more copies of the virus itself. However, the insertion of relatively small strands of RNA into complicated strands of DNA almost always lead to "side effects", which make it difficult for the virus to replicate without error. And some virus don't even use a host cells DNA for reproduction, some replicate by RNA alone, which leads to even more replication error.

And these errors are what we know as mutations, which can lead to a virus changing to become completely benign, or globally lethal, or something in between. This is how a virus such as H1N1, which produced relatively mild illness in one flu season, can become globally lethal in another. As did the Spanish flu virus.

But there is even one more caveat of concern here. The H1N1 virus likes to gather RNA from other cells or virus, which only compounds the probability of so many varied mutations that a lethal one is at least minimally probable.

Therefore we must be vigilant and prepared. The warnings of many, including myself, to implement social distancing were not headed, so the spread of H1N1 continues unabated and has now spread into territories where H5N1 (the avian flu with a 60% mortality rate) is widespread, which offers both virus an excellent opportunity to combine and experiment with mutations until they become lethally airborne, inconsequential, or die out completely.

We can hope the latter two are true, but we must be prepared should the virus mutate into a lethally airborne contagion.
ST


"Nature, far from a benign cycle of life, is instead an endless cycle of death. Demanding not only the suffering and lives of the guilty, but also the innocent. Let us strive for improvement."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave