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April 25th, 2009
11:21 AM ET
We want to hear from you!
The World Health Organization's director-general is calling the cases of swine flu "a serious situation" that "must be watched very closely." We agree. So we are changing things up a bit today. Instead of focusing on U.S. – International Relations today at 4, we'll bring in some experts to talk about the Swine Flu in more detail. But we want to hear from you too! What do you think? Do you have any questions or concerns about this flu strain? Let us know and your comments could make the air!
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Continuing my comments....I am an environmental engineer and have been to meetings in the health and emergency preparedness communities about pandemic flus. Had some flu for THREE weeks in March. Horrible experience!
My thoughts when we have these outbreaks:
1. Were the "bugs" manufactured by a government or private research entity or are they naturally occurring? This could impact whether or not the disease can be treated and how to treat it.
2. With a world travelling population, it will be incredibly difficult to contain a sick population. (SARS – In DC, we were lucky that an infected person from China went to a well-funded VA hospital that isolated him in the ER.)
3. Health Care -Uninsured people will not go to a doctor. They will go to the local pharmacist at a CVS or an ER if really sick. I have been uninsured and if you are sick, you wait until you are miserably sick, almost dying before seeking care. Health care is so unaffordable that it could exacerbate even a small flu problem. What large city can handle a major flu outbreak?!!!! Even though we have pharms stockpiled, Katrina response showed us how logistics execution can go REALLY, REALLY badly! Oh and there will be DISPARITIES in any disease response. The homeless may spread it unintentionally...The "haves" will get their meds one way or another!
I would like to know if the Swine Flu shot that we got in 1976 would innoculate us against the current strain of Swine Flu. Thank you.
is it safe to travel to TYijuana Mexico with this cases of swine flu ?
Swine flu is nothing to laugh at guys. it is a clear and looming threat to our nation.
The CDC states that this flu strain is unusual because swine flu does not normaly transmit from one human to another and also the multi-sourced genetic makeup of the virus. Has anyone considered this to be a possible bio-terrorist attack?
Local radio reporting two possible cases of swine flu in Montreal, any confirmation?
I have flu like symptoms which started yesterday. Should I be concerned? The Dr. who was on earlier said if you didn't feel the need to go to the hospital you probably don't need to go. When you have symptoms it's hard not to think maybe you should go to the hospital anyway. I will monitor how I feel and make a decision based on how I improve over the next day or so. Thanks for the information this hour it really helps.
My mother went to Mexico (she lives in Austin, Texas) last week for about 3 days and she just returned on Thursday of last week and for a few days she has felt ill with flu like symptoms: Runny nose, sneezing, fever, chills, muscle pain, etc...
I would like to know what the symptoms are and what to do to if you do have swine flu? Please help!
To CNN News Room
From: June Werner MSN
Re: BE A HAND WASHER!
Your experts recommend re Swine Flu that if you cough you should cover your mouth. True, but what about your hands. You should wash your hands thoroughly and often with soap—whether you cough or not. That should help everyone to reduce the cases of this Flu.
June Werner MSN (former School Nurse, Chairman Emerita Department of Nursing Evanston IL Hospital)
2880 Brushwood St. NE
Albuquerque NM 87122
505-828-1503 or until Monday 4/27, 575-638-5577
I have an IGg deficiency. Should I get vaccinated?
CDC needs to check out whether the Swine Flu cases in the US may be spreading due to 2 major Educators' conferences in the San Diego area in the last 10 days (AERA & NARST). Many teachers and researchers attended either or both of these functions since 4/12 at the San Diego Convention Center or the next weekend in Anaheim for NARST. Just a thought of how this flu could be showing up in schools around the country.
Is it my understanding that the Flu virus is constantly developing into a different strain, and if so, what makes the swine Flu different?
Why isn't anyone mentioning the 1976 swine flu vaccine fiasco? That could be why older people aren't being affected by these new cases of swine flu?
Re: torture memos: Interesting to see top TV journalists expressing trepidation at exposing the TRUTH. Way to go, democracy's watchdogs.
If you were immunized for the swine flu threat in the 1970's, are you in any way immune to this swine flu outbreak?
Eleven cases of flu does not a pandemic make. I fear the media is, once again, in an attempt to inform the public, sensationalizing the issue. This constant drum beat is what will ultimately create panic. Sure the facts are important to know, but then could we move on to other topics?
There are many questions: Is this outbreak of "swine flu" a biological attack against the United States tested first in Mexico? Is this being intentionally downplayed by World Governments including the United States due to the obvious political ramifications for responding to the outbreak expediently (closing the borders) and finally was there an apparent opening to this case rooted in the lax restrictions on research labs and government laboratories that work on 'pandemic diseases' that took place in either Mexico or the U.S.?
With all your on-air mentions of Twitter, I'm going to start calling you by a new name - Twe-NN. Let me know when you're over this fad, please, and I'll probably start watching you guys again.
ok lets get serious here its time to close our boarders its time to stop all air flights in and out of our country its time to quarintine all the people with the symptoms whether or not they got better they could still be carriers this flu could have a more deadly later effect being dorment after the initial symptoms the government officials arnt treating this threat with enough respect.
Just a thought about the severity of the cases reported in the USA so far.
Assuming those who have recently traveled to Mexico are in a state of good general health with better nutrition, this virus has not been seen in more fragile populations in the USA yet: chronically ill, elderly, infant.
Glad to see that isolation of the ill is the part of the program since there is no possibility of a vaccine at this point.
Would someone please instruct the public an the following ways to cut down on the spread of the influenza; COVER your mouth when sneezing and coughing,then wash hands and dispose of the tissue in the garbage. NOONE has given these instructions, not even the administration representatives.
Avoid all Mexican-Latino restaurants and restaurants that employ such!!! Secure the border!!!! This slow moving information to the public is because of so many mexican illegals are in our faces - and that the public certainly would panic knowing that they are surrounded by these carriers-who is taking care of your kids-who is cooking your food and who is working in all of our fast food restaurants-– this is a reality show not racist!!!!
FYI CNN – 2 confirmed cases of swine flu in provinces of British Columbia and 4 in Nova Scotia, Canada. I am not clear if it is the same strain but they appear to have a Mexico connection
see
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090426/swine_flu_090426/20090426?hub=TopStories
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/04/26/mexico-swine-flu.html
Hello!
I live in McAlester, OK. Our spring break was in mid-March and since early April we have experienced an unusual number of cases of respiratory illnesses in our schools. The elementary school kids were pretty sick with many out. I am a college student and also noticed the strange outbreak. Living in an area with many immigrants coming from Mexico, Swine Flu is obviously now a concern. What has prompted the testing of some many people now when Mexico's outbreak started in March? Couldn't many cases in the US have gone unnoticed?
My husband and I were sick with Influenza-A (Spanish Flu if I remember correctly) 3 years ago when we were in college in Michigan. Since Swine Flu is in the Influenza-A family, what is the chance that we would contract Swine Flu if it were to spread here?
I think this would be a good time to promote the Fist Bump to help reduce the spread of germs. Here is a site: http://nationalfistbumpday.org/blog/
Thomas.
If the government is declaring this a health emergency, what do they plan to do about it besides jibber jabber? If this out break started in Mexico, then wouldn't be smart to close the borders and check Illegals coming in to the border cities? If the government is going to do nothing but give the American people propaganda, then they are wasting everyone's time and unfortunately, the media doesn't always get the facts, do they?
I saw only a portion of a news headline about auditing of taro money. There is an article in the 'Payson Roundup" about how simulus money plus county, plus private individuals is being spent. The article is in the April 17 paper. I will try to paste it here. Maybe you can find out why we are bringing in laborers from El Salvador when Arizona is one of the highest unemlpoyment states in the USA. I thought the stimulus money was to help the unemployed in the USA.
Pete Aleshire/Roundup
Crews started work on a 300-foot-wide, 9-mile-long fuel break this week.
A skirmish line of orange-helmeted, chain saw wielders this week attacked the overgrown forest threatening to engulf Christopher Creek, the most fire-menaced community in Rim Country.
This month the contract crews will clear a 9-mile-long strip of trees and brush about one football field wide to create a firebreak around some 300 homes and cabins in the Christopher Creek area, using both local contributions and federal stimulus money.
“Right now, this is the most endangered place” in Rim Country, said Fire Manager Don Nunley, with the Payson Ranger District in the Tonto National Forest.
“That’s why we took the stimulus money and are doing as much as we are — they need it,” he said.
Residents contributed $85,000 and Gila County kicked in $50,000. Stimulus money will pay for the rest of the roughly $900,000 project.
Relieved residents cheered the sound of the chain saws, after a two-year delay in starting the work on the firebreak.
The Promontory Fire underscored the area’s grave peril several years ago when it roared down off the Rim and nearly engulfed the town before winds shifted.
This week, about a dozen men with chain saws led the counterattack in the war on wildfire, dropping most trees fewer than 12 inches in diameter and cutting off most of the brush at ground level. In the next few weeks, they’ll thin about 330 acres.
Coming along behind the cutters, a crew of about 20 men heaped the branches and trunks into huge piles, which the Forest Service will burn this winter after the wood dries out.
The crews work for a California contractor that has thinned thousands of acres in Rim Country in the past four years. Almost all of the workers come up from El Salvador each spring and live in Payson as they labor through the summer and into the fall on thinning projects.
After crews clear the first 300-foot-wide firebreak, they’ll go back and make a little less drastic cut on another 660 acres along that same battle line. In that next zone, they’ll take any trees less than 9 inches in diameter and most of the brush.
The result will provide a buffer zone some 600 feet wide where the branches of trees no longer interlock, providing a space where fire crews can make a stand to protect homes and businesses in the event of a wildfire. The crews will leave at least one tree every 25 feet, unless they encounter clusters of trees larger than 12 inches in diameter.
“The fuel break is that last resort when a fire’s coming into town,” said Nunley.
The crews will eliminate the majority of the thick vegetation in the 1,000-acre fuel break. For instance, a stump count on 25-foot radius patch of ground after the cutters finished included two trees still standing and 30 small stumps, mostly juniper and ponderosa pine saplings.
But the 1,000-acre firebreak is just the leading edge of a plan to cut and burn a total of 20,000 acres as quickly as possible.
The full project will include about 5,000 acres hand-thinned and perhaps 5,000 acres thinned in the course of a planned timber sale. In addition, crews will burn about 10,000 acres, mostly scrub brush south of Christopher Creek, said Nunley.
The long-delayed Christopher Creek project nearly completes the years-long effort to create thousands of acres of firebreaks around Rim communities, mostly Payson, Pine and Strawberry.
Nunley said forest managers have started work on the studies necessary for a thinning project in the next year or two to protect Tonto Village, the last major Rim settlement without a firebreak of some kind.
He said the Christopher Creek project proved especially complicated, due to the stream, steep side canyons and the presence of endangered and threatened species — like spotted owls and goshawks.
Both goshawks and spotted owls rely on thick forests to nest and forage. If the forest becomes too open, they can’t find suitable nest sites and lose out to other, less agile competitors — like red-tailed hawks and great horned owls.
Both species nest in the area around Christopher Creek. So the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came up with a plan to leave 600-acre patches of thicker forest around half a dozen spotted owl areas and two goshawk areas.
In those areas, crews may thin the brush on the forest floor, but leave most of the trees.
Not only will that benefit the owls and goshawks, but other species as well. Biologists note that a patchwork of tree densities, meadows, grass, tree-shaded streams and steep canyons contribute to a healthy ecosystem, with the greatest diversity of wildlife.
“It was a complicated process, just a lot of issues to consider,” said Nunley.
May be we should start the audit here.
Please tell me why America takes it so lightly regarding the welfare of our children. America has more favor for animals than children. WHY? Do we have our nose so much up our (you know what) that we feel this is acceptable? I say fire those who work for child protection agencies ( evidently they are just getting paid and not doing their job ) CHANGE OUR LAWS!!! Please change our laws, so that anyone rightly convicted of abusing a child in any manner shall be put to death. This will send a message to those whom harm children in any manner. We have so many sex offenders caught and we know without a shadow of doubt they are guilty. Once we know they are truly guilty, death on the spot. America needs to show our children we love them and will protect them. America has alot and I mean alot of children missing or in harm's way. And we call this: The Land of the Free. Right... What free to harm our innocent children? Wake up America, wake up.