WHO says up to 2B people might get swine flu

Source: Associated Press

GENEVA – Up to 2 billion people could be infected by swine flu if the current outbreak turns into a pandemic lasting two years, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda said the historical record of flu pandemics indicates one-third of the world's population gets infected in such outbreaks. Independent experts agreed that the estimate was possible.

In Mexico, the hardest hit country so far, high schools and universities opened for the first time in two weeks as the government's top health official insisted the epidemic is on the decline. All students were checked for swine flu symptoms and some were sent home.

"If we do move into a pandemic, then our expectation is that we will see a large number of people infected worldwide," Fukuda said. "If you look at past pandemics, it would be a reasonable estimate to say perhaps a third of the world's population would get infected with this virus."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090507/ap_on_re_eu/med_swine_flu

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So they figure that one in three may become infected with this flu.

I'll go ahead and admit that I for one am a bit scared. I received a frightening statement from a physician in Texas about the conditions from one of the lists I subscribe to last night. Said physician claims that 40-50% of exposed people will develop this. YIKES is all I can say ...

It certainly couldn't be any more than that.

... to take the burden from those who survive (i.e., those who die last).

NOT ONE SCIENTIST is saying anything even close to it. Its people like you that are doing the harm with your misinformation and PARANOIA

... 6.8 billion people *WILL* DIE! plus *ALL* the pigs & birds!

There again, if you happen to know the first immortal human, pig or bird,
I'd be delighted to see it!
;-)

that it may mean the end of humanity as we know it, or something to that effect? Me thinks the man has a tendency to exagerate.

but it is possible I have missed some of his statements.

if ocean levels rise two hundred feet in three years.

There, it's easy.

FEAR! FEAR! FEAR!

Now give me money (probably to cover for a legitimately possible contingency, but I need to make up numbers to get it).

Up to everyone may die... if a large asteroid strikes the earth.

FEAR! FEAR! FEAR!

Now give me money...

Perhaps even less. And it's fairly likely that those who get the weak version now may have some immunity to a potentially deadly mutant version later.

Personally, I'd like to get this bug right now. Better to have partial immunity when and if a bad version makes the rounds, than to have no immunity at all........

The major antigenic determinates shift yearly (actually, on a continuum - it is just that it yearly spreads though the human population of the planet), these are the determinants which are THOUGHT to convey different degrees of lethality and infectivity. However, given that, even though the 1918 strain has been recovered and sequenced, it is not clear WHY it is so lethal - and it remains so, killing virtually all of the rodents in which it was injected (sorry if there are animal righters here who think we should be using school children - since we are the species that will benefit).

"Partial Immunity" likely does not usefully exist to this virus - thus the need for yearly vaccines. It would help tremendously if the egg-based growing technology could ("could" as in by regulation) be abandoned for cell-culture (as the polio virus is). My understanding is that such is the case in some European countries.

To highlight the problem of egg-based vaccine production, not only is it slow, but "In the case of an avian flu pandemic, egg-producing flocks could decline, jeopardizing vaccine production capabilities." http://pandemicflu.gov/vaccine/vproductioncells.html - Dead Chickens don't lay eggs.

Still, it is likely safest to get an annual flu shot (I do), even though those most at risk - because of age - generate the least effective antibody response. But, if the strain that wins out and spreads is not one of those used in developing the vaccine, it is virtually worthless. Every year about this time, the vaccine makers and the government place their bets as to what will show up in the fall.

My understanding is that this version of H1N1 will not be in next fall's vaccine (which I think is already being made). If "We, the People" start dying in great clumps, a separate vaccine - using the same production lines (thus requiring dumping of the planned vaccine production?) - will be rushed into production. Doubtless just a bit too late.

Oh, and the anti-virals don't work very well either.

This time around, it really does not matter as this is not proving to be an unduly lethal strain.

I too am concerned, but trying to keep it in context.

:rofl:

But then again, since you believe no one died of H5N1 (I'm sure the people in asia would LOVE to hear that) we can count on you for an anti-science tin foil hat idiotic comments.

Exactly how does fear, especially the irrational type of fear we see with the prediction of a pandemic help anything? Remember, in a regular flu season in this country 36000 people die from the flu or its complications. How is the swine flu matching up with that number so far?

they don't think at this point its going to have a high mortality rate, although it has a high rate of infection. Considering though that the pandemic of 1918 started this way and ended up with THREE waves of flu (spring-winter-spring) they have a good reason to keep a watch on it, idiotic bloggers with no knowledge of epidemiology aside (not you, but many here on DU)

"I'll go ahead and admit that I for one am a bit scared."

The real danger from a pandemic is if "wolf" is cried too often and people do not believe it when there really is a wolf. As for myself I know that I have been exposed to a virus that is a cousin of this new swine flu in the 1950s and the 1970s. I also know that older people in the 1918 pandemic likely survived because they had earlier been exposed to a similar virus and so the pandemic flu killed the young and healthy who had never had any exposure at all. Make people afraid and they will tend to panic and not to react in a rational matter that would best help the situation.

I give up worrying about it at this point...

whew! :D

I read that wrong every time I look at it. :rofl:

NOTHING is being said about lethality. Yeah, its possible that many people will get infected. Alot may not even notice it.
Its not the WHO doing the fear mongering here. Its people who DON'T FUCKING READ WHAT THE SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING.
I just had a very interesting lecture on influenza and I can say I note there are people on this thread who mock H5N1 all the time even though its turning out to be one of the most LETHAL influenzas percentage wise this century.
BTW if anyone pays any fucking attention then they would know that the WHO also thinks its gonna be less dangerous than normally seasonal influenza A. Short Story--its LIKELY that H1N1 will infect more people than most seasonal flus but less people will die of it.
NOWHERE IN THE STATEMENTS DOES IT SAY WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE!
:banghead:
The stupid is more infectious than the flu....

I believe the science doesn't support this claim at all.

That doesn't mean people are going to get very sick though. Flu epidemics actually happen all the time..2004-5 being considered one such year. Somebody obviously asked him about a worst case scenario and he answered. Note he does not say how likely this will happen.

:spank: :hide:

"25 countries have officially reported 2500 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection" http://www.who.int/en/

It is just not COMMON in those 25 countries.

The current distribution does meet the classic definition of a pandemic, as all that "pandemic" means is an epidemic that is geographically widespread.

"Epidemic" itself is somewhat more problematic to define, however, given the ease of transmission and infectivity rate it is probably safe to term the currently spreading outbreak (an even less precise term) of H1N1 flu to be epidemic. Clearly, tens of thousands (at least) people are going to be infected; however, it does not - save in Mexico - seem to be an unusually lethal influenza variant.

:sarcasm:

sorry! :rofl:

The low lethality is the new flu meme, but it's the potentially higher infection rates that is cause for concern. (I assumed the average 0.6% fatality rate, though AH1N1 is currently ~2.0%.)

Which is why the 'measles shot' is essential to halting the spread of measles (and measles does leave death and disability behind).

As humans are the ONLY known host for the current measles virus (it may have evolved from canine distemper virus, or bovine rinderpest, or from a common viral ancestor of these) the measles virus could, like small-pox be eradicated from the world. Sadly the fears of politicians have preserved small-pox, and, certainly, at some point it will escape back into the wild.

Oh, and while you are worrying about (yes what COULD, what MIGHT be a MAJOR KILLER) you might stop to think that infectious diarrheal diseases (most of which are nearly 100% preventable as well as nearly 100% curable) kill millions of children every year. Diarrhea is the second (#1 is pneumonia - again, mostly treatable) most common cause for death in kids less than 5 (killing just under two million per year).

So, remind me now, how many people have died from this swine-human flu? And please recall that 30,000 people a year die from "regular" flu each year in the USA.

The last time I looked, it would cost about 25 cents per kid to treat those dying from diarrhea. What has been the cost so far of "fighting" the swine flu - larger by many factors of ten.

You might stop to think too, what happens WHEN yellow-fever returns to the USA. No Joe, there ain't no treatment (but there is a 70% effective vaccine)

The point is, there are a lot of things to be worrying about right now. But, so far, swine-flu is not one of them.

If you want to sit up nights about what-maby-could-gosh-that-would-be-horrible-if-it-happens, you might speculate on what happens if H2N1 (or is it N3 - don't recall off the top of my head) Bird Flu (with a much higher current mortality rate than swine flu) evolves (God, I love using that word so correctly) in the common host: Humans.

Right now bird flu infects birds (and humans), and is only rarely (if then) transmitted human to human. Swine flu does the same (only with pigs and us, with human to human transmission being more common). One could easily end up with a Bird-Swine-Human flu with horizontal human transmission having the mortality of current strains of bird flu.

Truly, this would be a nightmare, and it is possible.

The basic problem, as I see it, is that there are just too many of us (which is why I do not have kids) living too close together.

This current H1N1 is not "The Andromeda Strain", switch off your TV (I did decades ago) your brain will thank you.

Peace.