Category Archives: Pandemic flu

Parents "not buying" H1N1 panic message

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Stay tuned for a more potent public warning from the government.

Stay tuned for a more potent public warning from your government.

This is huge and historic: the first attempted mass vaccination to be rejected by the masses.

Even parents planning to get their kids the seasonal flu vaccine will say no to the swine flu jab.

Germ-spreading schoolchildren are expected to be the focus of a massive U.S. vaccination campaign against the novel H1N1 flu.

But if their parents are hearing the rallying cry to have their kids vaccinated, they’re not buying it, says a new national survey.
In a poll of 1,678 U.S. parents conducted by the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, 40% said they would get their children immunized against the H1N1 virus — even as 54% indicated they would get their kids vaccinated against regular seasonal flu.

Among those who said they do not intend to have their kids vaccinated against H1N1, almost half — 46% — indicated they’re not worried about their children becoming ill with the pandemic virus. Twenty percent said they do not believe the H1N1 flu is a serious disease.

via Most parents won’t have kids get H1N1 flu shots, study finds — latimes.com.

CDC dumps $1.6 million into virtual worlds

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Photo: CC/Bryan Fenstermacher

In her head, she's already there. Photo: CC/Bryan Fenstermacher

[That's a lot of Lindens]

I can’t even ride a bicycle in Second Life without my avatar getting stuck in motion, before peddling madly into the ocean. (I know, clear my cache.)

But it is possible that less rickety virtual worlds will be useful places in which to coordinate a response to some calamity.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health are conducting a study to determine if collaborative virtual environments improve public health preparedness and response planning.

The study is funded by a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The project will use Second Life, a Web-based virtual world in which users move and interact in simulated 3-D spaces, to train public health workers in emergency preparedness.

via UIC evaluates ‘virtual world’ training for public health emergencies.

Operation: Crimson Sky II

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Bush administration to introduce a devastating livestock virus to the U.S. mainland

Plum Island, the US Department of Agriculture boasted in 1995, “was the only place in the United States where (foot-and-mouth disease) can be studied.”

The USDA called the 840-acre Plum Island, home to its disease research center, “Alcatraz for Animal Disease,” due to the 1.5 miles of choppy water between it and densely populated areas in two states.

Now Homeland Security, which took over Plum Island from the USDA post-9/11, wants to bring foot-and-mouth to the mainland.

The risk of an accidental release of the livestock illness–which would devastate the U.S. food supply–is substantial.

And US military forces are apparently unprepared to contain one, the AP reports (paraphrased by me):

Dangerous Animal Virus on US Mainland

“It was a mess,” said a Kansas senator, speaking of a 2002 contain exercise, Crimson Sky, in which the National Guard ran out of bullets.

Even so, the Kansas senator, Pat Roberts, wants the lab in his state. “It will mean jobs” and spur research and development, he says in the AP piece.

Homeland Security’s National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility will go to Kansas, or Georgia, or North Carolina, or Mississippi. That decision will come as early as next year.

Just designing the place will cost $45 million. It is expect to open in 2015.

[digg=http://digg.com/general_sciences/Operation_Crimson_Sky_II]

CDC: Widespread needle reuse at clinics

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(RediClinic is one of the “retail” healthcare clinics turning up in malls and pharmacies. Image: RediClinic website)

CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding tells the AP (excerpt, below) that a recent finding of unsafe practices at a Nevada healthcare clinic “could represent the tip of an iceberg.”

40,000 patients might have been exposed to HIV or hepatitis, due to needle reuse and other unsafe practices at the clinic.

The quickie clinic model, meanwhile, is catching on, for folks who want to get a look-see while waiting for a prescription, or one of the hundreds of vaccine jabs they will get in their lifetimes.

MinuteClinics, for example, are appearing at CVS pharmacy locations throughout the United States.

MinuteClinics is headed by the former CEO of Arby’s. — mb

The Associated Press: CDC Warns of Safety Problems at Clinics
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., met Monday with CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding, and on a media conference call after their meeting both strongly condemned practices at the clinic.

Health care accreditors “would consider this a patient safety error that falls into the category of a ‘never event,’ meaning this should never happen in contemporary health care organizations,” said Gerberding.

“This is the largest number of patients that have ever been contacted for a blood exposure in a health-care setting. But unfortunately we have seen other large-scale situations where similar practices have led to patient exposures,” Gerberding said.

New Vaccine against Deadliest Strain of Avian Flu

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Pandemic flu is inevitable, says this guy (below). CDC’s track record with the seasonal flu, which has already killed more than 20 U.S. children this year. The CDC has recreated the 1918 pandemic flu virus, however.

– mb


(Vaccine researcher Ted M. Ross, and a transmission electron micrograph of influenza virus particles, or virions. Images: UPMC and CDC)

New Vaccine against Deadliest Strain of Avian Flu Tested by University of Pittsburgh Scientists – UPMC, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Ted M. Ross, Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor, Center for Vaccine Research, University of Pittsburgh. “To stem the spread of a potential pandemic, we need stockpiles of vaccines available that can be readily adapted to enhance the immune system’s response to new strains.”

A future flu pandemic is inevitable because of the virus’s ability to continually reinvent itself and the lack of broad immunity in humans, according to Dr. Ross. Influenza pandemics have occurred three times throughout modern history with deadly consequences. The first, the Spanish Flu of 1918, caused more deaths than World War I.