Portland, always the little brother to Seattle.
Oregon’s first probable case of swine flu has been detected in a Multnomah county woman and another three specimens under review by the state public health lab could be counted as swine flu cases by the end of the day, officials said this morning.
The woman identified as a probable case was not hospitalized and is now recovering, public health officials said.
My only observation is that public health officials are now (correctly) looking intensely for the H1N1 influenza virus, meaning in theory there could have been some cases earlier that we didn’t know about.
It’s very anecdotal, but our family knows an otherwise healthy teenager who became mysteriously ill with flu-like symptoms and was hospitalized after traveling to the desert southwest over spring break, which ended April 5 or so. Happily, the teen recovered after spending a few days being re-hydrated, but it makes you wonder if this thing was already out there and we didn’t know it quite yet. As I said, it proves nothing, but as reporting increases we might want to keep in mind increases in cases will be partly because people are now looking for H1N1. Or so it seems.
Otherwise, feel free to panic if that’s your thing. Bad flu sucks, of course. Our family had it one Christmas about ten years ago, and it’s the only Christmas of which we have no photos, because we fell ill Christmas morning. We lived on a honey-baked ham until New Years Eve, it was sad. The real nasty flu makes you feel like you are constantly having a severe asthma attack. But we all lived.
Biden told his family to avoid planes and subways. As the veep, Biden has access to information that is not available to the general public.
What is the obama administration hiding from us.
ITS THE APOCALYPSE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE.
but in all seriousness, i am happy that we finally are experiencing our first global pandemic of the 21st century. there is too many people here on planet earth, just mother nature doing what shes gotta do. que sera sera.
1 Be afraid, Marvin….be really afraid….
First. it is too late to block the borders – we already have many cases of swine flu (probably over 500 although only about 150 are confirmed so far).
Second, this is not the usual flu. Anyone who thinks this is the same as the typical flu is DEAD WRONG!
The usual flu kills about 36,000 people and has a mortality rate of about 0.1%. The usual flu infects many people and usually is fatal only to those with a weakened immune system (the very young and the elderly).
The swine flu outbreak of 1918 (the “Spanish flu”) had a mortality rate of 2.5% and about 500 million people were infected and about 50-100 million people died (far more than died in WW1). The 1918-1919 flu epidemic killed many healthy young people (not just those with weak immune systems). The spanish flu may cause a so-called cytokine storm and destroy the respiratory system of people that generate too strong an immune response.
It is still unclear what the mortality rate is for this flu, but the initial Mexican estimates (probably too high) was 6.5%!!! This rate would be catrastrophic and is probably not accurate. But even a rate of 2.5% would cause the most deaths by an infectious agent since the plague.
Mexico is probably underestimating the number of infected people – but still, this could be the worst flu to ever spread if it becomes a pandemic (Level 6) and affects a broad portion of the population.
It is also not clear how infectious this strain of H1N1 is. The swine flu went around the world in a month in 1918 – before the extensive air travel we have today.
There are pictures of Seattle with all the people wearing surgical masks from 1919. this is nothing to make light of IF it is a very infectious virus and IF it has a high mortality rate.
There is no vaccine and there will not be one for a while. Tamiflu has some efficacy but there are not that many doses available. Plus, the virus could easily mutate and make the Tamiflu worthless.
No fear.
I understand the democrats routinely play the fear card.
Histry has shown us that whatever the democrats are so scared of never happens. Like the left-wingnut global cooling predictions of the 70’s that was non-debatable. Or the left-wingnut predictions of food shortages in the 80s. Or the aftermath of the nuclear war reagan was definitely going to start. Hell. left-wingnuts even predicted that bush would overturn roe vs wade. Question, did he even try to do what left-wing fearmongers insisted he would do?
And what about obama and that fake photo shoot of airforce one. Is obama going to prove his claim of transparency and release the names of the passengers in air force one that buzzed new york. The story is slowly getting leaked that obama contributors were given a ride at taxpayer expense. After all, neither air force 1 nor the statue of liberty has changed since the last photo. Instead of spending $300,000, not to mention the alleged carbon footprint, why not spend $1000 on photoshop and put together a new photograph.
Fucking pigs.
Why does Egypt have 300,000 pigs?
@5 Complete Moron Stamn: History has shown that republican cowards over-estimate the dangers in the world:
We were repeatedly told by the liar Reagan that the USSR was a threat…unitl we found out they were hopelessly behind us and had obsolete technology.
We were repeatedly reminded of 9/11 and told Sadaam was a threat. That was a complete lie.
We were told Sadaam was trying to get or building nukes. that was a lie/
We were told Sadaam has WMDs and was preparing to attack us – that was a lie.
We were told we needed to torture Al qaida to get crucial information – but that we tortured in a very careful and contrained way- that was a lie (6 waterboards a day for a month?).
Yes, the weak-kneed coward republicans led by bush screamed alerts, al qaida and 9/11 at us, upped the “orange” alert and babbled about the threats….but almost all of that bluster was based on lies and deception.
Oh, and only an idiot thinks that global warming is not happening. Can’t you read?
Yes, a few scientists thought there might be an ice age coming in the 60’s but more data has shown that to be wrong – and it was never a consensus. But of course the idiot Stamn is a well known scientist, so we should trust his opinion over the scientific consensus.
Thanks for demonstrating once again how incredibly stupid you science denying republicans are.
If it was a lie, why did so many democrats say it?
John edwards said it-
Hillary said it-
bill clinton said it in 1998-
bill clinton said it in 2003
An excerpt from the 1998iraq liberation act signed by president clinton-
From the guardian in 1999-
joe wilson 2003-
nancy pelosi 1998-
Nancy pelosi on meet the press 2002-
nancy pelosi 2002
harry reid 2002
john edwards 2002-
al gore 2002-
I could go on and on.
So correctnotright, why did all these democrats lie?