A first swine flu casualty in US is a 23-month old Mexican toddler in Texas. Germany and Austria are the latest European countries hit by the disease. Egypt slaughtered its entire 300K – strong pig population in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease that has now learned to bypass the animal host. In Australia, health officials are given wide powers to contain the infected populace. Asian nations, still reeling from their frequent brushes with avian flu, greeted returning airport travelers with teams of medical workers and carts of disinfectants, eager to keep swine flu from infecting their continent. Gabon and Russia banned pork imports — inviting concern from the economists about protectionists interests using the epidemic as a way to achieve internal policy ends despite a severe damping effect on the global recession-stemming efforts, not to mention the assurances of the medical community that unlike mad cow disease, the swine flu is not at all related to consuming its eponymous meat.
I quarantine you, I don't want to go there!
And in Geneva, WHO flu chief Dr. Keiji Fukuda told reporters that there was no evidence the virus was slowing down, moving the agency closer to raising its pandemic alert to phase 5, indicating widespread human-to-human transmission. Altogether, there are 6 levels. Right now, we’re still poised on the precarious level 4 — really, a hop and a jump to a true pandemic, the kind some experts are likening to one that took the world by storm nearly a full century ago, in 1918.
Meanwhile, in the epicenter of the oubreak, Mexico City mayor is considering easing some restrictions that had thus far shut restaturant, schools, concert halls. There is some easing in the rate of infection, though it is not yet clear what has percepitated the flare up and which populations are the most vulnerable to the infection. So far, young healthy teens and adults are falling ill regardless of supposedly the natural imminity in that particular group.
That said, Janet Napolitano, the newly confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security with President Obama’s administration, is sounding confident on the chances of United States being able to escape the worst of the brunt. The spreading avian flu had been a wake-up call 3 years ago, and the fears of Katrina-like mishandling fresh on the minds of the Department, Secretary Napolitano says it is taking the possible pandemic very seriously and all measures are being taken to stockpile enough antiviral medications, as well as to set up alternate locations for treating the patients should the hospitals become overwhelmed. There is a guidebook created for just this purpose, and the Department is following it to a “T”.
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