"Pandemic potential" for Mexican flu outbreak

(Photo: 1918 flu poster, Idaho Observer, October 2005)

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James Wilson (Veratect) Blog


[20090427 0930 PDT]
First confirmed case in Spain, a 23 year old who returned from Mexico on 22 April.
Five suspected cases hospitalized in Sweden
Five suspected cases hospitalized in Denmark
New Zealand flight attendants & crew grounded "as a precautionary measure", testing still pending on students. At least 12 and as many as 32 people are voluntarily quarantined after sharing a flight with the college (high school) students.
Probable case in Michigan.
Second suspected case in Israel.
Suspected case in Italy.
Five suspected cases in Switzerland.
Patient being tested in Norway
Suspected cases (no numbers) reported in the Netherlands
Five suspected cases in Costa Rica. Nine ruled out.
Canadian vacationing in Manchester hospitalized. Being tested.
Nine suspected cases quarantined in Australia (4 in Sydney, 5 in NSW)
Four suspected cases reported in France.
Seven new fatalities, suspected swine flu, in Mexico City.
Khazakhstan Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues travel advisory for Latin America
WHO confirms 40 cases in the US
First suspected case reported in Peru
20 additional suspected cases in Catalonia, Spain
Confirmed case in Veracruz, Mexico
Three suspected cases in Bielefeld, Germany
Three suspected cases in Murcia, Spain
Suspected cases in Mexico now at 1600
Private school closure in South Carolina because of "fears that young people who recently returned from Mexico might have been infected"

As you can see from the tweet summary, news coverage and detection of cases is accelerating. Rumour says that WHO may raise the pandemic alert phase today.

The BCCDC reminds us that cases reported here are "mild". Dr. Danuta Skowronski:

It’s reassuring that this swine influenza virus does not automatically mean hospitalization and death ... It may have just the typical influenza-type presentation and symptoms. … This is not necessarily scary monsters.

[20090426 2300 PDT]
Michael Osterholm, University of Minnesota:

What makes this so difficult is we may be somewhere between an important but yet still uneventful public health occurrence here — with something that could literally die out over the next couple of weeks and never show up again — or this could be the opening act of a full-fledged influenza pandemic

Death toll in Mexico reaches 103 (confirmed and suspected swine flu cases).
Canada confirms two cases in BC, institutes surveillance at YVR (Vancouver International Airport).
Bronx day care tests negative (5) or "inconclusive" (1).
Suspected cases in Dallas-Fort Worth (3).
Australia suspected cases from Queensland test negative (2). Two NSW residents being tested.
Three more students in New Zealand test positive for Influenza A.
Mexico City produce vendors/taxi drivers report business down 50% in last two days.
Sacramento (grade?) school ordered closed until no influenza-like illness detected for one week.

Pandemic preparation funding in the stimulus bill was attacked by Republicants.
HHS nominee has been opposed in the Senate by Republicans.
Swine flu: thoughts for the day on 20090426


[20090426 0900 PDT]
Overnight, Mexico raised the total of confirmed flu deaths to 64, then 68, then 81. Unconfirmed reports of over 200.

In NY, preliminary testing of "probable" swine flu cases does not match any known H1/H3 subtypes. CDC performing further analysis.

Price gouging on face masks in Mexico City. Mayor says 70% of bars, clubs, & restaurants are shut down. All public events canceled for 10 days. All Sunday masses in Mexico canceled.

Suspected cases: France, Israel, Spain, Chile.

New Zealand suspected cases confirmed.

[20090425 2311 PDT]

Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, says that the current outbreak of flu in Mexico has "pandemic potential".

Wikipedia is wonderfully up to date.

Mexico has seen 1300 potential cases, with 20 confirmed flu deaths and as many as 83 possible deaths. At the upper end, that's about a 7% mortality rate, and apparently the deaths are skewed to young adults. Flu mortality is usually a 'U', with highest mortality in the very old and the very young. Higher rates of mortality in the young or middle adult ranges is unusual, and the most famous example of that mortality profile is the 1918 flu pandemic.

Potential non-Mexican cases are in the US (CA, TX, NY, KS), Canada (Montreal, Nova Scotia), the UK (one member of a flight crew who's been to Mexico recently), and New Zealand (college students).

Biosurveilliance has a timeline up and Veratect is on twitter.

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Happy Día de los Muertos

This weekend, take some time to honor those in your family who went before, blazed the trails and brought you into this mad mad world. Sing a song for them, remember them, what they liked to eat, what they looked like, good stories, not so good stories. Take a moment to ground yourself and then go back to looking toward what will hopefully be a brighter future.

The Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos in Spanish) is a holiday celebrated mainly in Mexico and by people of Mexican heritage (and others) living in the United States and Canada. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and relatives who have died. The celebration occurs on the 1st and 2nd of November, in connection with the Catholic holy days of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day which take place on those days. Traditions include building private altars honoring the deceased, using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed, and visiting graves with these as gifts. from wikipedia

There are many cultures around the world that celebrate some sort of Ancestor-worship holiday. In the modern world we tend to rush ahead full force, but it is a worth while lesson to remember where we came from. So Happy Day of the Dead!

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Joe Arvizu Died Due To Institutional Racism

photo Armando Olea

Emergency Care, Si. Recovery Care, Drop Dead, Wetback.

Everyone involved denies it was racism.

How can anyone blame Nuns doing God's work for killing this boy, Joe Arvizu on the basis of race?

The nuns (and doctors and nurses) saved his life when he came into St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix on October 19 with bleeding in his brain after bumping his head messing around at church. Two days later, they discovered he had leukemia.

And on the seventh day, the nuns packed his poor brown undocumented ass in an ambulance and shipped him to Mexico. Where he died when his mother couldn't provide a blood transfusion. Game. Set. Match.

One to seven brown kids a week get shipped to Mexico. Undocumented. Poor.

Arizona Republic

"They said they knew that we couldn't pay the bill, so they couldn't continue with the treatment anymore," Rosa said, through a translator. "I asked for a payment negotiation, but they said that no, we couldn't make it with the income we have. I didn't want to make any decision by myself, but they told me the ambulance was ready."

Over his mother's objections, Joe was taken first to a hospital in Agua Prieta, then transferred to one in Hermosillo. His mother followed the next day while his father, a bricklayer, stayed behind with their other children.

Joe died on Dec. 3. Rosa couldn't supply the hospital with blood for a needed transfusion.

His death has shocked this central Phoenix community, where teachers, students and parents are asking why one of our leading hospitals - and a Catholic one, at that - dumped a boy whose only goal was to join the Army.

"This is an absolute community disgrace," said Sue Stodola, a North parent. "And my question is, is this what it's come to?"

Sister Margaret McBride, vice president of St. Joseph's Mission Services, said the hospital's charity committee reviewed Joe's case but decided he could get treatment in Mexico.

While Medicaid picked up the cost of his emergency care, there was no one to pay the rest of the tab. He wasn't well enough to be sent home, and McBride said there were no skilled nursing or rehab facilities in Arizona that would have taken him, no one who would have offered to treat an illegal immigrant with no money.

Racism? Oh, of course not.

The hospital simply can't afford to support everyone past the emergency phase, and they already lose $17 million a year over and above what the government will reimburse (as do most hospitals; it's a condition of having a hospital license.) Choices have to be made. Priorities have to be set. It isn't (gasp) racism!

EVERYONE is claiming this isn't about race or his undocumented status. It's about money.

Bullshit.

If Joe Arvizu'd simply been poor but with papers, he'd be alive today. Why? Because the hospital couldn't have shipped a U.S. citizen to freaking MEXICO, a goddamned third-world country when it comes to medical care. Joe Arvizu died because the hospital made a racist choice...

He has no papers -- dump him.

So a kid, 16 year-old Joe Arvizu died.

Because of a choice the nuns made -- send this kid to Mexico and hope for the best. But no matter what happens, we wash our hands of his blood. We simply can't "afford" to treat him.

Except it isn't true they couldn't afford to treat him. They chose not to treat him. Because if they were truly dealing with what they could and couldn't afford, they'd have done it fairly, without taking documented and undocumented status into account. Everyone who was poor would have had a fair shake at their resource pool, instead of just dooming the poor undocumented kids to shitty medical care. Because that is racism, plain and simple.

It's too much to expect for the Prosecutor in Maricopa "Let's Drive Out the Illegals" County to return an indictment of contributory negligent manslaughter against the Nuns... but wouldn't that be swell?

The mother says she isn't angry at St. Joe's. I'm sorry for her loss and glad she's finding some kind of piece.

I'm pissed as hell. Goddamn racist nuns.

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A True Should-Be Ought-to-be American

photo Frank Siteman/Allposters

Christopher Buchleitner, 9, Orphan, Reunited With His Dogs
Border Crosser Who Saved His Life -- Sent Back To Mexico

Thanksgiving night, nine-year old Christopher Buchleitner and his mother were driving home from a camping trip at Peña Blanca Lake near the Mexican border, 60 miles from Tucson.

And then everything went wrong...

Young Chris' father, Jack, had committed suicide several months previously on Labor Day. His mother, Dawn Alice Tomoko, lost control of their car, and went over a cliff. They landed 300 feet from the road. While mom was alive, she was trapped and dying. Christopher wiggled out of the car and started walking away -- in the cold desert night, all alone, down at the base of a cliff. Age nine.

Enter, stage left, a border crosser, Jesus Manual Cordova, 26. He was wandering through the desert. He came upon the boy. Together they returned to the car, comforted the dying mother whom they could not free, built a fire for warmth, and in the morning when hunters came upon them, the young boy and the young border crosser were both alive, as were the boy's dogs -- a golden retriever and a Queensland heeler.

The boy was dusted off to University Hospital in Tucson. The young man was taken by the Border Patrol to Nogales and let go -- on the Mexican side of the border.

If being a citizen is fundamentally the willingness to sacrifice yourself for the good of your community, Jesus Manual Cordova has met the test. Instead of continuing through the desert to freedom, he stopped and rendered aid, knowing the cost.

Any sane society would welcome this young man with open arms, the keys to the city, a full-ride to the University of Arizona, and a passport. The Republican-run Border Patrol shoved his brown-skinned ass right back over the border without even getting an address for the boy's family to write a thank-you card.

The boy is out of the hospital and has his beloved dogs back. He is currently with his uncle's family; whatever happens, he'll be with family we're told, and his dogs will stay with him.

Of Jesus Manual Cordova, there is no sign.

He has vanished into Mexico.

Or hopefully, walked back through the desert again, to a better life.

One final note... the young boy and the young man: they have the same birthday. Make of it what you will. Certainly, the border crosser made it possible that night for the boy to someday, many birthdays from now, become a man.

A man hopefully, as much a man as Jesus Manual Cordova.

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Let's Talk Mexico

Jon Stewart interviews Vicente Fox, former President of Mexico.
October 8, 2007

Your thoughts...

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