WHO convenes emergency meeting on swine flu

WHO convenes emergency meeting on swine flu

www.google.com

GENEVA (AFP) — The World Health Organisation will on Friday consult its emergency flu committee of experts on whether the agency should declare a fully-fledged pandemic, a spokeswoman said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

"The emergency committee has been convened today from 2 to 3 pm," said Fadela Chaib, adding that the agenda of the committee, would be on the "severity of H1N1 and also to review international health-related measures."

The total number of swine flu cases has soared to 21,939 and the WHO has so far held back from declaring a full-fledged swine flu pandemic after raising its six-grade alert level to five at the end of April, signalling that a pandemic was imminent.

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(visit the link for the full news article)

Anyone want to bet that the actual number is larger than that and one major talking point in that meeting is that it is mutating?

Star and Flag.

I'm not sure what to make of this, or what the outcome will be. I have followed this new flu since April, and there have been a lot of mixed signals.

I certainly feel that this has the chance of being a major health crisis, and I really hope that that isn't what it WILL be. But.. I know we don't know everything 'they' know, although I wish they would clue us in.

I personally think this will be another test to see what people's reaction will be to a true pandemic announcement.. I don't think we will hear anything TOO major though. If I'm wrong, then I will be happy, as that will mean that they are getting a little more open with the public.


s&f for you. Thanks. (just what I needed when I was on my way to sleep...........

I hate going out on a limb but I wonder if they are taking that new China "Fear of AIDS" virus into account.

I mean the two could become a very serious issue. I think the same site has some info on the AIDS type virus from yesterday.

IF THEY DO DECLARE A LEVEL 6 -

The MORONS at the WHO are about 2 months too late declaring this a level 6. We've known it for weeks.... maybe months. Why the heck are we supporting these idiots? Someone there needs to get hit with a serious pay cut and a slap upside the head. :shk:

Originally posted by komp_uk
I hate going out on a limb but ...........

i will anyway.

to be honest, it sounds like a review meeting. i don't see any reason to say it's a pandemic this week that wasn't there last week or the week before. i'm sure they address the issue of weather or not to upgrade the threat every week.

there has been reports of medical workers contracting H1N1 from their patients.

That alone is a red flag to any infection control organization

www.theherald.co.uk...

the WHO guys are complete clowns

oh its an "Emergency meeting" yet they wait till 2pm to get there?


what a complete joke

its not an emergency at all, if it was they would have had the meeting at 3am.....

reply to post by muzzleflash


Umm Muzzleflash,

You realize that in Geneva, where the WHO meets it's already 2:30pm??

They are meeting NOW

I have read about and posted about patient-nurse transmission. It is well stablished that there is community transmission going on all over the world- and Tentickles- yes- I agree with everything you've said.

I posted on another thread about this, because I read last week (and can't find the balsted BBC article in which it was published) that it is the expectation of CDC, WHO and most biomedical workers, virologists, etc., that a global pandemic was imminent within 10 DAYS. Far ahead of vaccine manufacture, etc.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall right now as they discus whether the lethality or the contagion of the virus would lead them to Level6 (where we've been for some time), or whether they're waiting it out until money might be made through vacinations. Apparently, the best laid plans are not going their way, eh?

With the numbers climbing eponentially (the REPORTED numbers!), and the supposition by us all that they are a mere fraction of the real numbers, how much longer can the world afford to wait before taking a more pro-active approach?

Close the damned borders! Air travel is clearly the biggest risk here. If we're smart, and wait this out logically, we won't need martial law. If people just chill, avoid crowded areas, keep their immune systems well, we might dodge a massive bullet. Instead, "they" are ADVOCATING travel and business as usual- apparently to kill as many as possible- who needn't die.

We had our fourth confirmed death in Illinois- a young, healthy 20-year old mom who gave birth and died. In how many towns is this happening?
I have to admit, I HOPE they go Level 6- at least we'll know what we're dealing with, governmentally, and it just might save lives that would otherwise be thrown under the pharma bus.

Relax they are over playing it in the media here in Australia. Stop panicking. Its obviously for pharmaceuitcal companies to make a profit of their dangerous vaccines.
The hospital where my mum works says that the panic is being overplayed in the media.

Sourced elsewhere:
The latest scare tactics coming out of WHO. Expect more of this rhetoric throughout the summer as a build-up to the final declaration of global mandatory vaccinations for all human beings. I hope this is a wake-up call for those of you possibly still sitting on the fence. We have to prepare a formal Petition immediately for Gov'ts; to lay down the gauntlet & stand up for our inherent sovereignty as individuals. Otherwise it may indeed be too late once these Policies become law. I urge you to get involved now.

Can I ask any legal experts out there to contact me ASAP to aid in drafting a formal petition placing upon our Gov'ts the reponsibility to defend our right to bodily self determination. I am aware we have also a number of Doctors & nurses among us too. Please if you can also step forward we'll really appreciate your endorsement. Some may ask what's the point of a petition now? It's too late. Or futile in the face of Draconian policy. I think we have to prepare for the worst but also build toward a legal defense proactively - a preparatory pre-emptive measure which may very well aid us in court come 2010.

Need I also remind you that the MAJORITY of these cases are linked to pre-existing complications, auto-immune deficiencies and/or naturally occurring flu symptoms. In many of those countries mentioned insufficient standards of health safety (sewage/industry) & malnutrition are the primary factors behind any such illness. The WHO is running wild on fear-mongering & we have to wake up when the wool is being pulled over our eyes folks! thx, Joel/founder VRM

'The disease has reached 64 countries and infected 18,965 people, causing 117 deaths, WHO said.'

'"We still are waiting for evidence of really widespread community activity in these countries, and so it's fair to say that they are in transition and are not quite there yet, which is why we are not in Phase 6 yet," Fukuda told reporters.'

ca.news.yahoo.com...
www.who.int...


[edit on 5-6-2009 by Applesandoranges]

www.globalresearch.ca...

Sarkozy’s Secret Plan for Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination
by F. William Engdahl
The French Government is developing secret plans to impose mandatory vaccination of the entire French population, allegedly against possible Swine Flu disease according to reports leaked in a French newspaper. The plan is without precedent and even defies recommended public health advice. Pharmaceutical giants benefit from the move, as the Swine Flu increases the trend to militarization of public health and use of needless population panic to advance the agenda.
According to a report in the May 30 edition of the French newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, the Sarkozy government has authorized spending of an estimated €1 billion to buy vaccines allegedly to combat or protect against H1N1 Swine Flu virus. The only problem is that to date neither the WHO nor the US Government’s Center for Diseases Control (CDC) have succeeded to isolate, photograph with an electron microscope and chemically classify the H1N1 Influenza A virus. There is no scientifically published evidence that French virologists have done so either. To mandate drugs for a putative disease that has not even been characterized is dubious to say the least.
Even more bizarre is the admission by the US Government’s Food & Drug Administration, an agency responsible for health and safety of its citizens, that the ‘test’ is approved for premature release to test for H1N1 is not even a proven test. More to the point, there is no forensic evidence in any of the deaths reported to date that has been presented that proves scientifically that any single death being attributed to H1N1 Swine Flu virus was indeed caused by such a virus. European epidemiologists believe the deaths reported to date are ‘coincidental’ or what are called opportunistic infections.

What we know conclusively is that the people who died often had prior respiratory complications of an undisclosed nature. People die every day with respiratory diseases. In the USA alone some 36,000 flu-related deaths are recorded yearly with no undue panic or alarm. Most are elderly or patients with lung diseases. To date in all France, 24 people have been identified by health authorities as even having ‘symptoms’ of H1N1. It is worth noting that the WHO and CDC list the symptoms of H1N1: temperature, coughing, headache, runny nose. Hmmmmm. Do you know anyone with such Swine Flu symptoms? Also worth noting is that in the counting of the more than 15,000 ‘confirmed’ H1N1 Swine Flu cases worldwide the vast majority made miraculous recovery within three to seven days, just as in the case of a bad cold.

The goal: Militarization of Public Health

Increasingly it is becoming clear that the successive waves of mass panic created in recent years by CDC, WHO and leading government agencies has an ulterior motive. We have been hit with mass panic over eating beef when cattle in the UK and elsewhere developed fatal illness that was called BSE or ‘Mad Cow’ disease. Later evidence emerged that BSE was the result of vaccination of the cows to kill harmless insects that got under the animal’s skin. More recently, after reports of incidence of what is called ‘Blue Tongue’ disease in cows, sheep and goats in Belgium and Holland in 2006, animal veterinary authorities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria imposed mandatory vaccination or treatment with drugs allegedly to protect the animals from bites by insects allegedly carrying the usually harmless illness.

The vaccinations of the animal herds has been made mandatory for an illness that typically was so mild as to go unnoticed and in only extreme rare cases could be tied to death. All animals after three months must be vaccinated. The vaccines, according to a report in the Swiss publication Aegis-Impuls from 2008, resulted in mass deaths, decreased birth rates, decline in milk yields, heart attack and other severe effects. The vaccines were used despite the fact none apparently had been previously certified as safe. They typically contained aluminium hydroxide and Thiomersol or mercury, as adjuvants and or preservatives, both highly toxic and both also used in most human vaccines.

Despite mass protests and reports to the veterinary authorities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, the warnings went unheeded and mandatory mass vaccinations continued. Little wonder that farmers are taking their tractors to the streets to protest.

The report of a secret French government plan to vaccinate every French citizen over three months of age, over 100 million doses, is more than alarming. According to the French Le Journal du Dimanche, anticipating a probable return of the virus in the fall, the government will spend nearly a billion euros to buy vaccines. Authorities will announce in the fall if they decide to make the vaccine mandatory. "We will be ready to go in a very short time", explains the Minister of Health. According to sources, the state wants to order 100 million doses of flu vaccine from three laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi and Novartis. The latter two are French companies.

The French report comes just after the State of Massachusetts State Senate passed a mandatory vaccination bill that authorizes mandatory vaccination against purported H1N1 Swine Flu. In New York State the state hospital planning authority is debating making mandatory annual vaccination against flu of all public health employees, despite the fact that no approved vaccine for H1N1 exists. More and more it is beginning to appear that the scare about pandemic from flying birds or flying pigs is an excuse to justify mandatory vaccination with substances whose harmful side effects are demonstrably worse than any flu they should guard us against.
Novavax, a US pharmaceutical company based in Rockville, Maryland, conveniently enough just announced it is developing a vaccine for H1N1 based on “virus-like particles” that contain three key proteins of the flu virus without the genes required for replication. The vaccine is produced by techniques of genetic modification of organisms or GMO. The announcement came within days of the company announcing losses for the fiscal year of $36 million.
The drug Tamiflu which is officially recommended by the WHO as treatment to ‘ameliorate’ the symptoms of possible Swine Flu or H1N1 Influenza A as it has been renamed, is itself highly toxic. Health Canada informed Canadians of internatio

[edit on 5-6-2009 by Applesandoranges]

Hosted by Google Back to Google News
WHO consults emergency flu committee

43 minutes ago

www.google.com...

She later told AFP: "There is no decision to expect to move to phase six today," referring to the six-level pandemic alert scale.

The alert is now at phase five, which signals that a pandemic is "imminent."

Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman added that travel recommendations would be discussed by the emergency committee.

The experts would also be asked to give their opinion on "adding a characterization of severity" to the alert scale.

A senior WHO official had said Tuesday that the world was "getting closer" to a swine flu pandemic as the virus shows early signs of spreading locally in countries outside the Americas.

"Globally we believe that we are at phase five but are getting closer to phase six," Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general, said then.

He cited Australia, Britain, Japan, Spain and Chile in particular as countries where the flu was showing early signs of local spread.

Australia's swine flu tally jumped by more than a third to nearly 900 on Thursday.

Some 69 countries around the world have reported 21,940 cases to the WHO, according to latest figures on the WHO website.

Under the WHO's guidelines, one key criteria for a move to the highest phase six alert would be established community spread in a country outside the first region in which the disease was initially reported, in this case, outside the Americas.

Other than geographical spread, WHO officals said last month that they were also looking at the severity of the virus, possible changes in the pattern of illness, its impact on poor countries or circulation in the southern hemisphere where it could mix with seasonal flu.

Fukuda said Tuesday that the swine flu situation could be described as "moderate" rather than "mild".

This is because "we do not have a full handle on the number of people with serious illnesses," he added.

This is also interesting .."Victoria on swine flu alarm list" www.theage.com.au...

Victoria on swine flu alarm list
Daniella Miletic and Peter Gregory
June 6, 2009

SINGAPORE has become the first country to advise its residents not to travel to Victoria because of swine flu, compounding fears that the state's rising infection rate could significantly harm tourism.

Local tourism operators have accused the Singapore Government of overreacting, and Premier John Brumby warned countries against "scaremongering".

The warning, published on the Singapore Government website yesterday, asks residents to avoid "non-essential" travel to Melbourne and the state of Victoria.

The warning also advises against travel to Mexico, the US, Canada, parts of Japan and Chile.

If the trip is unavoidable, it asks travellers to steer clear of crowded areas and people who look unwell.

[edit on 5-6-2009 by tarifa37]

www.globalresearch.ca...

The Swine Flu scare has boosted the stock market values of Big Pharma. Following initial reports from Mexico on the influenza outbreak, the demand for anti-flu drugs has skyrocketed.

Supported by media disinformation, an atmosphere of fear and intimidation has unfolded. Health “emergencies” have been declared in various parts of the US.

The most sought after influenza drugs are Tamiflu and Relenza. Treatment courses by the US government have been released from the national stockpile “to make sure health care providers are ready for any escalation in cases.”

Tamiflu is produced by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche on behalf of a US based biotech company Gilead Sciences, Inc. While the drug is produced by Roche, it was developed by Gilead Sciences Inc. which owns the intellectual property rights.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was one of the major shareholders of Gilead Sciences. In 1997, Rumsfeld was appointed Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc., a position which he held until becoming Secretary of Defence in the Bush administration in 2001. Rumsfeld was on the Board of Directors from the establishment of Gilead in 1987.

Fortune Magazine in a report published at the height of 2005 bird flu crisis, described Gilead as one of the most politically connected companies in the biotech industry. Rumsfeld’s interests and/or holdings in Gilead following his resignation in 2006 are not known.

Stock Values

The share price of Gilead on the NYSE has risen substantially since the announcement of the Mexican swine flu outbreak (see graph):
Chart for Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD)
“The U.S. government released a quarter of its stockpiles of the drugs after declaring a national health emergency with 40 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu. Seven of those cases are in California, 28 in New York City, two each in Texas and Kansas, and one in Ohio.

Mexico raised the suspected death toll from its outbreak to 149 people — 20 of those confirmed as swine flu — and cancelled all schools until May 6. Nearly 2,000 people there have been hospitalized with serious cases of pneumonia.

Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines active against influenza viruses, including swine influenza viruses, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Swine influenza A viruses detected in the United States and Mexico appear resistant to two antiviral drugs — amantadine and rimantadine — but laboratory tests indicate the viruses are sensitive to Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, and Relenza, which is known as zanamivir.

The Tamiflu oral antiviral, approved in the U.S. to treat and prevent influenza A and B virus infection in people age one or older, is sold by F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., which pays sales-related royalties to Gilead. Roche said it has 3 million packages of Tamiflu on standby — part of 5 million treatments donated to the U.N. health agency in 2006 — and can deliver the drug anywhere within 24 hours.” (San Francisco Business Times, 27 April 2009)

www.globalresearch.ca...

Yesterday, the World Health Organization warned that "all of humanity is under threat". That sounds extremely dire, indeed.

However, the science says something different.

For example, as the Los Angeles times notes today:

Scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza -- at least in its current form -- isn't shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.

In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.

The LA Times goes on to provide useful detail:

Mounting preliminary evidence from genetics labs, epidemiology models and simple mathematics suggests that the worst-case scenarios are likely to be avoided in the current outbreak.

"This virus doesn't have anywhere near the capacity to kill like the 1918 virus," which claimed an estimated 50 million victims worldwide, said Richard Webby, a leading influenza virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn...

"There are certain characteristics, molecular signatures, which this virus lacks," said Peter Palese, a microbiologist and influenza expert at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. In particular, the swine flu lacks an amino acid that appears to increase the number of virus particles in the lungs and make the disease more deadly...

We expect to see more cases, more hospitalizations, and, unfortunately, we are likely to see more deaths from the outbreak," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Wednesday on her first day at work.

But certainly nothing that would dwarf a typical flu season. In the U.S., between 5% and 20% of the population becomes ill and 36,000 people die -- a mortality rate of between 0.24% and 0.96%...

And a pandemic doesn't necessarily have a high fatality rate...

Though scientists have begun to relax about the initial toll, they're considerably less comfortable when taking into account the fall flu season. They remain haunted by the experience of 1918, when the relatively mild first wave of flu was followed several months later by a more aggressive wave.

The longer the virus survives, the more chances it has to mutate into a deadlier form.

"If this virus keep going through our summer," Palese said, "I would be very concerned."

The bottom line is that while this flu is certainly spreading worldwide, and while it could mutate into something extremely lethal, right now it is fairly mild.

Note: Precautions, such as frequent hand-washing, should certainly be undertaken. And studies note that Vitamin D can help ward off flus or reduce their severity.

reply to post by redhatty


Redhatty-

I reported on another thread that a Scotish nurse in her 20s and in excellent health, and a young, healthy Welsh doctor have both contracted the virus from their patients. Isn't that the sort of "final frontier" proof of community transmission?

When are people going to WAKE UP and see what's around them? Am I the only one pulling my own hair out at the global stupidity, the lack of response- the denial by the MSM? How much more info does WHO NEED to prove that this is real, spreading exponetially and killing people OUTSIDE of flu season?????? (exasperated question marks)....

reply to post by Applesandoranges


I'm a biomedical rsearcher. I'll sign any petition you circulate regarding our health freedoms.

Hey guys-

Just an FYI- my left hand goes numb with typing- spine injury- please overlook my typos with patience. Thanks