SUNDOG
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Mexico Suspects Swine Flu Virus Originated in U.S.
Mexico Suspects Swine Flu Virus Originated in U.S.
And this pretty much confirms it.Turn on your sound and Click Below
http://www.blip.tv/file/2056686?filename=DonHumphrey-APointT...
By Gerardo Tena
MEXICO CITY – One year after Mexico alerted the world about the outbreak of the
swine flu epidemic, the country's health secretary says he suspects that the
disease originated in the United States.
In an interview with Efe, Jose Angel Cordova, at the helm of dealing with the
April 2009 outbreak of what was later identified as the AH1N1 virus,
acknowledges that "it is very difficult" to know where it started.
He added, however, that public health officials suspect the bug "came from the
United States and that it was returning Mexican emigrants or tourists who
brought the virus" into the country.
"Isolated cases occurred there," but no one paid them much attention, he said,
recalling that among the first cases were two children hospitalized in
California for being infected with the unknown virus, which the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control later described as an "atypical flu virus."
At the same time in Mexico there were other cases of a flu described as
atypical, because it occurred in March and April after the December-February flu
season was over.
On April 23, 2009, a Canadian laboratory told Mexico that this was an unknown
virus of animal origin with pandemic potential, and that it was the same as had
been identified in the kids in California.
Within hours of the notification, President Felipe Calderon and his Cabinet
decided to warn Mexicans of the presence of this new virus and about the
necessary precautions to be taken.
Those measures eventually came to including closing schools nationwide and
virtually shutting down Mexico City – home to some 20 million people – for five
days.
Some found the measures exaggerated, but Cordova said that the right decisions
were taken, given that health professionals initially feared the AH1N1 outbreak
could have been the start of a long-expected global flu pandemic with a high
mortality rate.
"That night and many more I couldn't sleep. There were at least 15 very
difficult days when we didn't know how (the virus) would develop because the
number of cases was increasing. We had to send health convoys all over the place
to meet the demand for doctor visits, do testing and get some idea of what we
were dealing with," he said.
The secretary shattered the myth that young Edgar Hernandez, who survived the
disease and whom doctors called "Little Boy Zero," was the first to be infected
with the virus.
Before Edgar, to whom a statue was erected in his town in the Gulf coast state
of Veracruz, there were other cases, even in Mexico, Cordova said.
"There are many articles showing that there were limited outbreaks in the United
States of a virus, a flu, that originated with swine, starting in 1997 and then
in 2003," but it wasn't communicable, he said.
"Many people were dying (of swine flu) in the United States but no one knew.
People in the U.S. Health Department have told me there have been 11,000 (swine
flu) deaths and the United States doesn't have 10 times more people than Mexico.
The 11,000 deaths didn't happen from one day to the next, people were dying and
maybe (the authorities) didn't know what they were dying of or they didn't say,"
he said.
With a certain pride, he said that Mexico announced the number of victims
"clearly and opportunely," the country knew how to deal with the contingency
without having the health-care system collapse, and taught the world how to stop
this pandemic.
On the positive side of the outbreak, he said that it wasn't such a lethal virus
and that it served to "tune up" Mexico's health-care system with the
installation of laboratories and reserves of medicines to meet the possible
arrival of other, more virulent flu viruses.
In Mexico, where to date there have been 1,032 deaths and 72,233 confirmed cases
of AH1N1 virus, there is "a marked trend toward fewer cases" at the same time
that there has been a 60 percent increase in vaccinations.
By May, 30 million Mexicans will have been vaccinated, while another 20 or 30
million have in some way had contact with the virus.
When half of the 107 million Mexicans have had contact with AH1N1 and generated
antibodies, "it will be very difficult for the virus to continue being
transmitted." EFE
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BajaBruno
Super Nomad
Posts: 1035
Registered: 9-6-2006
Location: Back in CA
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It is certainly possible that the virus originated elsewhere, but there are few better incubators for a pathogen than the crowded streets and houses
of Mexico City.
Christopher Bruno, Elk Grove, CA.
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