Post "Insider" Stories, Witness Info & Strange Goings on Here

reply to post by whoshotJR


I don't know if its disinformation as much as misinformation, but yes, there are many different views about what is going on. The full spectrum of ideas is being conveyed and it is hard to sort through and figure out what is really happening.

reply to post by mikerussellus
Excellent post. I enjoyed the humor. Humor is a tremendous help in times of crisis.

If you are a biomed than give us some additional thoughts if you can, on what you think is going on.

Do you suspect this is man made or a natural viral mutation.

I live in the Chicago area and my understanding is there are a few schools that have closed.

April 30, 2009

FROM STNG WIRE REPORTS
The number of probable cases of swine flu has risen to at least 41 in Illinois on Thursday and with school children among the possible cases, several area schools will close through the weekend.

Sixteen suspected cases are in the city of Chicago, 11 are in surrounding areas of Cook County, two are in DuPage County, seven in Kane County, three in Lake County and one each in McHenry and Will counties, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which said the numbers reported reflect the count as of 6 p.m. Thursday.


SWINE FLU INFO• MAP: Global swine flu alerts
• CDC ALERTS: Swine flu updates
• TWITTER: Updates from @CDCemergency
• CPS: How to protect yourself

But Will County health officials said there are three suspected cases there, and Kane County officials are reporting eight cases. IDPH spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said Thursday that information on the number of cases of swine flu (H1N1) is changing quickly.

A "probable" case means lab testing done by the state has found a 99 percent certainty that a person has swine flu, Arnold said. All cases are sent to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for confirmation.

According to the CDC, 109 human casesof swine flu have been confirmed nationwide, with one of those resulting in death.

To help fight the virus, several state agencies and the Illinois National Guard are assisting with repackaging shipments of anti-viral medications and medical supplies delivered Wednesday and Thursday from the federal Strategic National Stockpile, the IDPH said. Chicago received its own portion of the stockpile in a separate shipment, but local health departments and hospitals throughout the state will soon be receiving the repackaged portions of Illinois' shipment, Arnold said.

Thursday afternoon several schools announced they will be closed on Friday as a preventative measure after probable cases of the swine flu were detected.

In Kane County, Batavia High School and Rotolo Middle School in Batavia, Marmion Academy and Bednarcik Junior High in Aurora, and Fox Chase Elementary and Thompson Junior High in Oswego will be closed until Monday. All after-school and weekend activities, practices and meetings are canceled, according to the schools’ Web sites.

A press release from the Kane County Health Dept. said the school closings will help interrupt influenza transmission and protect students, staff and the community. While this is not a prevention action taken for ordinary flu, it makes sense in the early stages of this new swine influenza period, the release said.

A release from Oswego Community Unit School District 308 said two of the district’s probable swine flu cases are under review by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and conclusive results are expected in a few days. Parents will be notified, likely Sunday evening, about the status of school for next week and updates will be posted to the district Web site.

In addition to the school closings, the Batavia Park District has canceled all programs and gatherings through Sunday for children in grades six through eight.

Two schools in southwest suburban Joliet -- Farragut Elementary and Sator Sanchez Elementary -- have announced they will be closed until Tuesday due to three probable cases of swine flu in the district, according to the district’s Web site.

Those cases were detected after an 11-year-old girl, an 8-year-old girl and a 7-year-old girl, all from Joliet, went to local hospitals. All three have been released and are recovering, according to a release from the Will County Health Dept.

In Chicago, Chicago Public Schools officials announced Thursday that Joyce Kilmer School in Rogers Park will remain closed until further notice. The school was closed Wednesday when a 12-year-old student was determined to be a probable case of swine flu, and officials noticed lower than normal attendance, according to a release.

CPS is monitoring attendance at all schools to determine whether more should close.

Dr. Damon Arnold, state public health director, called all the cases "relatively mild" and said only the 12-year-old girl was hospitalized.

In addition to that child, the Chicago victims are Michael Hairsine, a 20-year-old Loyola University student; a 25-year-old man from Lake View; a 35-year-old woman from Hegewisch, and a 36-year-old woman from Woodlawn.

"As anticipated, we are now seeing cases of swine flu both in the city and the suburbs," said Dr. Terry Mason, head of the Chicago Public Health Department. "And we expect these cases to rise in the days, weeks and months ahead.

www.suntimes.com...#

The people who have died were young, so possibly this would point to a natural mutation that older people might have an immunity to?

I work in one of only 2 hospitals in my county that take inpatient problems (there was a third but we bought it out and only have an ER and outpatient clinics/offices there now) and the other is a women's hospital with no ER or anything of that nature (mostly a pre/neonatal hospital).

As soon as there was news of two cases in this county and one in Albany, every hypochondriac flocked to the hospital. At one point on Tuesday we were almost triple our ER capacity. As far as I know, no one actually has it.

If their goal was hysteria, it's already started here. They sent out a hospital-wide email saying that all ER staff and any staff entering the ER for any reason needed to wear a surgical mask and wash their hands on the way out. The thing is, if there were cases in this county, the people would have come through this hospital at some point and none have to my knowledge (and I'm almost always here).

So I really contributed nothing to this thread, I just think it's strange we have been getting all these differing stories and nothing really fits together as a conspiracy or natural occurrence.

As a side note, we do not carry Relenza and VERY rarely stock Tamiflu. When we do, it's usually 10 tablets (enough for the 5 day treatment course) and that's by special physician order that we then have to order specially. Now that this whole thing has started and so many "confirmed cases" in this state, you'd think we would have at least a small supply. None. Anywhere. Where are the portions of the "stockpiles" going if not to the places with confirmed cases?

And totally off topic, there is a guy here on the day shift that is always drawing. He's actually very good and I don't understand why he works here when he has that kind of talent.

Anyway, I came in tonight to these hanging all over the pharmacy for the few among us that may need to go to the ER: [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8a16528c6cea.jpg[/atsimg] I dunno about you but coming in to that made me gigglewee, especially after last week.



[edit on 5/2/09 by Magnivea]

www.latimes.com...

This goes into detail about the Mexican deaths and death certs.

Here's what I don't get... according to a big study done last year that was all over the medical journals:

Seasonal influenza starts in east and southeast Asia and follows a highly predictable path to infect the rest of the world, researchers here said.

This is from the website: www.medpagetoday.com...

So why would it start in Mexico this time, of all places? Isn't it ironic that not more than 1 month ago "Mexico" was all over the news and this ATS board and associated with "powerful, uncontrolled drug cartel"? Could it be the governments' (plural) way of controlling the situation? Create mass panic and shut down the country?

Time will ultimately be the truth teller here. All hype will be erased in a matter of time. In the age of the internet, lies, and misinformation will only go so far.
I'm sure if the body count gets high enough, we will all know sooner or later. I also believe there is a lot of misinformation going on now on both sides. If things get truly bad, and people start dropping like flies, we will know it sooner or later.
If the level of infection is as low, and the results are not as deadly as they are made out to be in the US, it does seems like the government is throwing a lot of misdirection at it's citizens. perhaps to divert attention from the bad news, and more bad news coming out about the health of the banks????
A health emergency would allow the government to keep everybody contained without as much trouble as a bank emergency.
Common sense says something going on here, more than meets the eye.

reply to post by themamayada


The keyword here is seasonal. The H1N1 viruis is NOT the typical seasonal flu that follows the same vectors each year. Different bug coming from a different reservoir.

Also, regarding the speculation that this virus is an 'engineered' virus: It doesn't make sense. Influenza is a famously unstable virus. It changes easily and quickly. What margin is there in developing a virus that you know is going to change and over which you have no control and no ability to predict its behavior in the wild? Doesn't make sense. 'They' could have chosen several better viruses.

Well I am stuck in northern Utah until Monday where (if I want to leave) I will have to see a doc because I have a damned cold. It's just my normal spring thing, runny nose, cough and because of that I sound really bad on the phone, when talking with the home office they (because of all the news and hysteria) somehow jumped to the conclusion that I have the flu.

Can't get in until Monday unless it is an emergency. This is really starting to piss me off, I do NOT have a fever, nor do I have the flu.

What's next?

Anyone with a runny nose or cough gets quarantined?

reply to post by Eliza


These source come from my good friend nurse. I dont want reveal or risk that person's job. That all I can say.

My wife and sister are both RN's. My wife works in a hospital and is also a visiting Nurse (makes house calls). My sister is also a visiting nurse and also works for a physician.

We live about 15 minutes away from the high school were there were dozens of infected students. They all recovered or are recovering, most didn't even need hospitalization.

There are a couple of cases in my wife's hospital, but they're recovering. My sister told me last night that she has a patient (30 year old woman) who recently came back to the US from mexico and she was infected, had a 105 degree (Fahrenheit) fever. But she took Tamaiflu and is recovering.

We live right outside of Manhattan, the largest population of infections in the US, and we don't know anyone personally who has gotten sick.

It seems to be losing it's momentum. But the gov. was worried because scientists have known that a new virus was due to pop up, one that would be a pandemic, it's part of nature.

If it does stick around through the winter we'll have a vaccine and antiviral meds. The regular seasonal Flu will probably make more people sick than this Swine Flu will.

Originally posted by ofhumandescent

reply to post by mikerussellus

 

Excellent post. I enjoyed the humor. Humor is a tremendous help in times of crisis.

If you are a biomed than give us some additional thoughts if you can, on what you think is going on.

Do you suspect this is man made or a natural viral mutation.

I live in the Chicago area and my understanding is there are a few schools that have closed.

That's what I don't understand. Too many conflicting reports.
First, the posts here from Mexico appear to show that there is not the "death and destruction" going on despite what the MSM is telling us.
Second, "media hype" was an answer to a question I had posted here. But all this just for revenue dollars?
Third, my job actually has more of us flying all over CONUS to perform these inspections at an even greater rate. There's a conflict right there.
Fourth, why raise the level to 5 or possible 6? Is this to prevent a "Katrina" like incident just in case there is a great pandemic? I have a friend who is an epidemiologist in DC, he hasn't been tasked for anything specific and it's just business as usual in their section.

It's frustrating. Usually when you have a few pieces of a puzzle, you can put a few together to get an idea of the picture. In this case it looks like pieces from several puzzles.

I suppose it was not posted here on ATS yet:

maps.google.com...,-109.335937&spn=101.871352,255.58 5938&z=2

it is a quite accurate map with the cases and its status.
hope it will be helpfull.

greetings to all

Originally posted by czacza1
I suppose it was not posted here on ATS yet:

maps.google.com...,-109.335937&spn=101.871352,255.58 5938&z=2

it is a quite accurate map with the cases and its status.
hope it will be helpfull.

greetings to all

sorry it was moved to :

flutracker.rhizalabs.com...

because of the big increase of the updates

Most of my family work in the medical field, and I am having a hard time buying some of these more exaggerated stories. First, I highly doubt that anyone is covering anything up, as "Falsification of a Medical Report" is quite a serious issue, which carries both license and civil penalties for doing so. I can tell you for a fact that no one, I know, would risk their license to cover-up something simply because they were told to. If they came to me and asked me to do this, my response would be; “Now wait a second, you guys put the rules in place that expose me to a lawsuit if I make a charting mistake, and now you want me to intentionally do that to cover your arse? Guess what... No! Wha'cha gonna do about it, take my license, take me to court for refusing to break the law? ”

With this said, however, I can see where they might not test everyone for this strain of flu, as they are using triage type procedures ATM. Meaning that they do not want to overwhelm the testing facilities unless they are pretty certain that is what they are dealing with in each particular case. They might only test people who appear to be in a certain condition, or meet certain criteria. As another poster stated, when something like this happens, everyone with a child who sneezes, comes running, wanting them tested for this, and it would overwhelm the testing facilities with negative tests, further slowing their ability to spot actual positives.

Anyhow, I talked with one family member, who is currently at a large Florida Hospital, this morning, and there is nothing going on there. This person is in a department where they would know if there was anything noteworthy, or any infected people. As a matter of fact they are running at low census ATM, and sending employees home early. I work next door to the main facility for the next city over, and it looked to be about the same story there when I left this morning. I think that a lot of the normal mundane traffic that use the ER's as walk-in-clinics are staying away for fear of being exposed to something, which is a good thing.

Now, another relative of mine works for a big pharmaceutical company, and they shut down for over an hour the other day, to hear a video lecture from the VP of their company about how serious this situation is, and how fast and far they fear it's going to spread. That is the only verifiable, somewhat more sobering news I have heard on this topic so far.

Beyond that, I would expect this to be a cold that a lot of folks are going to catch, more so then normal flue season, and it will have a higher then normal mortality rate, but the majority of folks will get over it the same as they do the normal flu. I would not expect Martial Law, nor anything along the lines of the movie “Outbreak”, as some posters are claiming. Take it serious, take precautions, but drop the fear mongering, as scaring folks is not helpful in anyway, and can actually bog down the system for those who do need it.

Originally posted by jtma508
reply to post by themamayada

 

The keyword here is seasonal. The H1N1 viruis is NOT the typical seasonal flu that follows the same vectors each year. Different bug coming from a different reservoir.

Agreed, the article mentions "seasonal" viruses. But... even this century's non-typical viruses such as Avian flu, SARS, etc. all started in Asia. My point was more that "viruses usually start in Asia" these days regardless of uniqueness and/or seasonality and then make their way this way. This whole Mexico ground zero just doesn't seem right.

Hmmm? But if it was sooo dangerous this "flue" not sure what it is really?
How come that the WHO take back it`s own traveling restriction now then? and say it is safe to travel to infected countries?

Something fishy is going on here! i`m not sure if i believe that it is so dangerous anymore...

[edit on 2-5-2009 by Kukulcangod]

updates are now at
flutracker.rhizalabs.com...

another good link where you can keep an eye on the severity of this event
www.idemc.org...

[edit on 2-5-2009 by theflashor]

Originally posted by theflashor
updates are now at
flutracker.rhizalabs.com...

another good link where you can keep an eye on the severity of this event
www.idemc.org...

[edit on 2-5-2009 by theflashor]

If these are in fact 100% accurate, shouldn't we be in a Level 6 pandemic?

Level 6 being a third country in a different area of the world with confirmed cases?

Unless I missed something, but those links are showing confirmed cases from... all over the world.

So the swine flu has just became the pig sneeze?

I see this thread has gotten busy since I started it. Could I politely request less arguing over what info is true or not and more focus on posting actual stories, testimony etc else people coming to the thread are going to have reams of posts to wade through before finding any actual "stories". Some of the other threads might be a better option if you want to discuss the virus and all its various implications and other associated topics

Clouds in the Sky, an established & respected member of ATS posted a story on another thread and has given me permission to paste it here :

"My last contact with my source was last Saturday and I will repost what I learned at that time. Evedently under these circumstanses security is extremely high concerning communication..........I did get a message from her son on Tuesday and the only thing I can add is that it is mutating.......to what level I have no idea.........

I have a top level contact with the CDC who is a scientist working on this flu issue.......

In confidence I was told

"Do not take any up coming vaccination"

"What you hear in the media and government .....multiply by 4"

"This is the first of many rounds as this mutates"

This is the first time I posted this info here on ATS.......So for me and my family that is our first step......Not to take the vaccine or anything "Bird" related....My big fear is that our government will be forcing us to take the vaccines in the very near future as the mutation progresses with H5N1........There is some real evil lurking in our governement and world.

As far as what to do next..........I am working on that.....

But tonight say a prayer.......... "

________________________________________________

As a regular contributor to ATS there is no reason to think this has been made up. Clouds in the Sky sounds genuine to me........