Number of victims to unknown virus growing! State of emergency to be imposed in Ukraine?

Originally posted by thoughtsfull
reply to post by nikiano

 

In early reports Pneumonic plague is mentioned.. even so that does not mean it is not H1N1 or that it is Pneumonic plague.

It's been put on the table... and considering the Pneumonic plague that swept Ziketan, near Xinghai in Qinghai province China a couple of months ago keeps it on the table in my mind.

We have been told over and over that shutting down a country to deal with an H1N1 outbreak doesn't work.. we are also told that masks are useless.. both however are being considered in this instance and are actually pratical in dealing with a plague like outbreak.

From the bits and pieces in the reports, disinfecting streets/stations is the same approach used in Ziketan to deal with the Pneumonic plague..

Not forgetting that an AQ base in Algeira was wiped out earlier this year, and it is believed becuase they were playing with bubonic plague as a bio-weapon.. source

And this is not always about flea bites... given that once the plague bacteira make it way to the lungs it can turn in to the contagious Pneumonic plague, at which it has left the flea/rat/human transference cycle behind.

There is a lot of miss information/lack of information at the moment, but as faar as I am aware/concerned a plague like outbreak has not been taken off the table.. However I really hope it is..

Edit to add AQ Source and some typos



[edit on 1/11/09 by thoughtsfull]

Yes, that's true...pneumonic plague can be transmitted via human to human contact via aerosolized droplet contamination......but the pneumonic plague is quite rare. So, it would be very, very rare for this many people becoming ill at once. That's all I'm saying.

We have a few instances of plague here in the American Southwest every year (usually in biologists) but it's usually found quite quickly, and the transmission isn't spread that fast to so many people.

If it is bioterrorism...Why the Ukraine?? I know the Russians and the Ukranians have their problems, but I can't see the Russians using bioterrorism against them. Who else would want to commit bioterrorism against the Ukranians?

Regarding the masks, yes the officials say that if it's H1N1, masks don't help much. But many airborne infections are transmitted via the droplet form (i.e. you sneeze and the virus/bacteria are on the droplets) and masks to help prevent infections via the droplet route.

So, if they don't know for sure if they're dealing with H1N1 or something else, and if there are no medicines to be found, and if the lungs are truly liquifying, I would think a mask wouldn't be a bad idea until they know for sure if its H1N1.

But hey....I could be completely wrong. I've been wrong plenty of times in my life, that's for sure!

President Viktor Yuschenko has instructed the Health Ministry the governors of the regions where quarantine has not been introduced to provide ambulances to Lviv.
Yuschenko’s press service announced this to Ukrainian News, citing the instructions he issued at a meeting on influenza in Lviv.
Yuschenko issued the instructions at the request of Lviv’s Mayor Andrii Sadovyi.
Yuschenko also instructed the governors of the regions worst affected by influenza to find compromises regarding the operations of markets. According to Yuschenko, markets should temporarily stop operation or sell only foodstuffs.
Yuschenko also intends to instruct the Cabinet of Ministers to change the principles for paying the medical personnel that have been mobilized to the regions where quarantine has been introduced.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Health Ministry declared an epidemic of the A(H1N1) influenza in Ukraine on October 30. The Cabinet of Ministers has introduced quarantine in nine regions, banned organization of mass events, and closed schools for three weeks because of the epidemic influenza.

Source

So more Ambulances are to be sent to Lviv and that markets should stop and those in operation should only sell foodstufs.

Tamiflu has been so overused, that it is no longer helpful in H1N1. A total waste of time. If this is in fact an influenza, it is acting EXACTLY like Spanish Flu of 1918

The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish Flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1.

This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.

[4] Indeed, symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, "One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred."[13]

The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.[10

link:en.wikipedia.org...

So this could be 1918 flu. There was a post I read where a widow described her husband as couging into a blood soaked towel and his ears had turned black. This would explain the petechia type hemorrhage.

Certainly there is massive pulmonary edema.

Just heard from a friend who was due to go to the Ukraine on Friday to see her family (she is Ukrainian). She has had to cancel on the advice that they are more than likely going to shut the borders... however, even if she made it in she has been told that city-city travel is being banned....

Originally posted by thoughtsfull
I'm intrigued why samples are being sent to London (UK) for analysis rather than closer Labs in the EU? any one know?. I would assume by now that all countries within the EU are now set up to diagnose H1N1.. so why London, since I am sure there are a lot of closer labs.

(just throwing out that I know the MOD Chemical Warfare facility at Porton Down has been working on plague vaccines to counter a plague being used as a Bio-Weapon)

I had been wondering the same thing but my wife explained it to me. (She has retired after about 40 years in the health care field, and she did viral testing as part of her work.)

Typically, isolating viral strains begins by using a commercially-supplied test kit. Without going into all the details, with these kits it is often possible to obtain identification of the pathogen in about 24 hours. However, if the test kit only gives the result that all known strains have been excluded as the culprit, then it gets more complicated and requires a good lab with all the right equipment. It also requires more time. So, this would appear to be what we are looking at.

While there are several labs in the EU where they could probably do this work, the samples were sent to the UK so that a WHO-certified lab could do the tests.

Regarding discussions about whether this outbreak is caused by a virus or some type of bacterial strain, I can only reiterate what has been mentioned back in the thread, that it could be a combination of both. A virus could attack the body and weaken it, allowing what are called "opportunistic" infections by strains of bacteria. This is not all that unusual and is why doctors sometimes prescribe antibiotics after a person has had the flu but is recovering too slowly -- especially if blood test titers indicate an ongoing infection that appears bacterial and not viral (as the viral should have declined after a certain period).

I wish we had more information...

This matter of spraying from vehicles or aircraft is also odd because if the means of spread is aerosol -- meaning breathing in minute water droplets from another person's exhaled breath -- then such methods of disinfection are utterly pointless. Many viruses are extremely environmentally sensitive and cannot survive for long periods outside of their host environment (infected person or animal). So a once-only spraying of an area is rather absurd if it's supposed to be preventing a pathogen's spread.

As the majority of cases seem to be reported as acute respiratory illness, there can be little doubt that the likely form of spread is by breathing in the pathogen...

I am also amazed that the Ukraine authorities have seen fit to close all schools and limit travel, but will still be allowing people to go to work! In most larger cities, people use public transport, and those trams, trains, buses and subway/underground cars provide a closed environment that is just ideal for spreading the infectious agent -- especially in colder weather when all the windows are closed and the heating is on. This means higher humidity and ambient temperature, which will allow the pathogen to survive longer in the air.

And they will not allow gathering for concerts, but people can still go to football matches?

Infectious agents don't differentiate on the nature of the crowd or the event. You get a large number of people together for any reason, you increase the risk of mass infection.

There are just so many inconsistencies in all this, that were it not for the well-known ability of governments and their bureaucracies to design a camel when when we wanted a horse (and take months to do so), I'd suspect they really want to do serious harm to their own people. But no: I feel that they are just bumbling along with ill-conceived "emergency plans" that are an utter mish-mash, just like most countries usually do. (Mine included, just in case anything thinks I'm pointing fingers.)

Either that, or there is something very serious going on at high level and we are not even really scratching the surface.

Mike

[edit on 1/11/09 by JustMike]

reply to post by asen_y2k

Thank you for the pics! It looks as dim and dismal there as it does here right now... But I see what you mean about the lack of people.

NOTE to Moderators: Could one of you please get into asen_y2k's post and fix the coding for his pics so that they have the lower (horizontal) scroll bar automatically loaded? Many thanks!

Meanwhile, members can see the whole pics just by right clicking on them and selecting "view image".

Mike

Edit:

reply to post by paxnatus

Yes, and the fact that a large number of cases are being reported in the younger (20 -- 40) age group also mirrors the effects of the 1918 Pandemic.



[edit on 1/11/09 by JustMike]

So, just a question. How serious should this be taken by people in Canada and the States? Or outside ukraine for that matter. Does it look like this more virulant strain has been trapped in ukraine?

Or how long would it take to know if it's outside the ukraine and on the move?

reply to post by paxnatus


That indeed sounds like what is happening and we know that the 1918 virus was taken out of a dead body found in ice so it's possible it has been released into the world once again. Very nice of our overlords.

In Ternopil number of calls ambulances increased threefold.
4post.com.ua...

reply to post by nikiano


Your not the only one, and I wasn't saying you were wrong, just keeping this on the Table until we find out a bit more.. the train stations and trains are being disinfected.. these steps are rather draconian, however could be to deal with a mutated H1N1 or other.. It's waiting/guessing game.

As for bioTerrorism, I would't consider the China outbreak bio-terroism and that was Pnemonic plague.. and if I did consider bio-Terroism I would certainly not release such an agent in any nation equiped with the means to deal with and contain an outbreak.

I would however consider placing it in a country that borded on those nations. In this instance that would make it the carrier nation and the transport mechanism rather than the target. but again that would mean bio-terroism and I do feel a plague outbreak can occur naturally.

reply to post by Trayen11

Back in the days of the 1918 Pandemic, it took some months to go round the world. But it did just that.

These days, with modern methods of transport, a serious and very infectious pathogen could be spread from a single country to the rest of the world in a matter of days.

This is not just because we travel internationally far more than people did a century or even 50 years ago; it's because of the way many of us associate with other humans on a daily basis.

In olden days, many lived in the country and rarely traveled far. If they did, it was by their own means. Those in cities (which were generally smaller then) also did not generally travel such great distances to get to and from work, and when they travelled the methods of transport were no so integrated.

Now, for example, when I go to work in the center of my city, I get on a tram and ride for around 20 -30 minutes with a whole bunch of total strangers. Then we go our separate ways. In the evening, I do the same. So in one day, just with two tram rides, I am sharing breathing space with maybe 100 people that I don't even know. And some of them, especially in the center of town, are tourists, who are either just visiting, just arriving, or just leaving on the next plane for Lord only knows where.

That's the real "problem". We have become accustomed to sharing the air we breath with large numbers of people from many and diverse places, so if one of them passes an infection to some of us, then we might well pass it on to hundreds of others in the following days while it's incubating (but we are infectious) until we are too sick to go to work.

So -- is it a serious problem? It might be. It's pretty much a given that many people got out of the Ukraine as soon as the restrictions were announced. It's also likely that some of the were infected but asymptomatic or at least sub-clinically infected.

Where did they go? Home, mostly... whereever in the world home is for them.

Mike

17:03 In Ivano-Frankivsk region, 10 people have died from viral pneumonia.

Про це повідомив у неділю на брифінгу голова Івано-Франківської облдержадміністрації Микола Палійчук . Told in the head Sunday at a briefing in Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration Mykola Paliychuk.

I found the following information on Wikipedia:

Link

Pneumonic Plauge

Since 2001, Six Outbreaks
Spreads person to person
Kills 90 to 100% population

Symptoms:

Most apparent is coughing, often with hemoptysis (coughing up blood)

* Fever
* Weakness
* Headache

Rapidly developing pneumonia with:

* Shortness of breath
* Chest pain
* Cough
* Bloody or watery sputum (saliva and discharge from respiratory passages)


So, if we take the most apparent symptom, coughing, and this how it spreads, we can safely assume everyone who has it will spread it elsewhere if they are in public. Take low end of 90% death rate to whoever catches this and does not get treatment in 24 hours and we have a MAJOR problem here.

Again, this is if it's the pneumonic plauge which has not been verified but is suspect.

IF, this is what is happening on top of or in conjunction with the H1N1 virus then it WILL spread further and is going to cause a LOT of problems around the world.

The wiki article mentioned that 98% of cases for this come from Africa.

Originally posted by thoughtsfull
reply to post by asen_y2k

 

Asen, how are you and your fellow hostel compatriots doing?

Have you heard back from your Embassy? hope you hear soon.

We are ok, some are down with season cold and flu, nothing major, though moral is low, one cough can make him and the rest around him shake in their pants...

I have not heard from the Embassy. I believe because its Sunday and the Embassy remains closed today.

And regarding the Picture, I posted the links separately below. Clicking on that opens the full image.

Originally posted by mkross1983
reply to post by paxnatus

 

That indeed sounds like what is happening and we know that the 1918 virus was taken out of a dead body found in ice so it's possible it has been released into the world once again. Very nice of our overlords.

The problem is that the N1H1 that has been going around is or was only a few base pairs away from the same lethal genome of the 1918 flu. Flu only has about 6 genes and these are always changing so that it can overcome natural resistance in the hosts, us. The only way to know is to compare the complete genome of the new virus and the 1918 virus. If they are the same then it has been released, if not, mother nature is going to do a cull on us humans.

If there is only a 1% case mortality rate and this thing hits 60% of the worlds population that is going to be lot of deaths. If the infection rate is the same for the rest of the world as it is in the Ukraine then we will see a lot of problems with food distribution, critical services like water and power and a health care system that will not be able to respond due to over loading.

Right now there are a lot of people that will recover because they got admitted to a hospital. If they were not given that level of care they would have had a good chance of dieing. Most of us right now are thinking about who, what or why. If this is a new strain of N1H1 that is as deadly as the 1918 flu we had better start thinking about what we are going to do when it gets to our home town. I am old enough to have had grandparents live through the 1918 flu. The stories I got were not nice. So and so died, my sister died, every one in the house was sick and I was the only one that didn't get it and I stay up for 3 days doing all I could. That is what I was told as a kid.

Good info about what maybe is goin
on right now... even if the article dates back
to the year 2000
salvoblue.homestead.com...


Not sure if i'm doing it properly, kinda new at posting
sorry

DP...

[edit on 1/11/09 by asen_y2k]

reply to post by mkross1983


We have no evidence (yet) for this to be declared the plague. RussiaToday are suggesting a mutated Swine Flu - the worst case scenario.

Originally posted by infinite
17:03 In Ivano-Frankivsk region, 10 people have died from viral pneumonia.

Про це повідомив у неділю на брифінгу голова Івано-Франківської облдержадміністрації Микола Палійчук . Told in the head Sunday at a briefing in Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration Mykola Paliychuk.

I believe this is the 1st time in Ivano Franskivsh, right? As far as I remember never heard of any deaths from there.

If you notice its not Swine flu, its viral pneumonia. This is what scares me.

reply to post by asen_y2k


Government is suggesting it is, however, the WHO are investigating a potential mutation. Belarus is reporting similar outbreaks - Moldova too.