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The swine flu pay off
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| Jayx1 |
Dont expect to be hearing much about swine flu after this fall. Why? Because they are about to get the payoff from the scare. Just like Y2K, Sars, bird flu etc the cash in is here. Expect another "scare" in 2 to 3 years ;)
| quote: | TORONTO - Canada will purchase 50.4 million doses of pandemic flu vaccine, an amount that should be sufficient to protect all Canadians who want to be vaccinated against the swine flu virus, federal officials said Thursday.
The order was announced by Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who said the federal government would pick up 60 per cent of the $403.2 million tab for the vaccine.
"This investment reflects the unique circumstances of the situation as well as the gravity," said Aglukkaq, who called it a special one-time contribution. She noted that with seasonal flu vaccine purchases, provinces and territories are responsible for 100 per cent of the cost of their programs.
The vaccine will be bought from GlaxoSmithKline, which will make the product at its facility in Ste-Foy, Que.
Dr. David Butler-Jones, head of the Public Health Agency of Canada, said the size of the order should be sufficient to cover all Canadians who want and-or need pandemic vaccine.
"I think there's a fair degree of confidence that the amount that we've ordered will be sufficient," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"Again, I'm waiting to see what the clinical trials show before being definitive."
That is a reference to the fact that it is not currently known whether one or two doses of vaccine will be needed to protect against the new H1N1 virus.
It is thought, though, that older adults - who seem less vulnerable to the virus - may be able to get by with only one dose. And Butler-Jones said because Canada is likely going to be using vaccine containing an adjuvant - a compound that boosts its potency - there is reason to believe one dose may suffice across all age groups.
He explained the federal math this way:
There are 33.6 million Canadians. The federal pandemic plan suggests authorities should bank on 75 per cent of Canadians wanting or needing vaccination. With 50.4 million doses, 75 per cent of Canadians could each get two doses.
But if only one dose is needed for some or all Canadians, different formulas could come into play.
The order size obviously allows for one dose for 100 per cent of Canadians, or one dose for all and a second dose for 50 per cent of the population, if studies show some people need two doses, Butler-Jones said.
Canada has the option of going back to request more vaccine if studies show two doses per person are needed and demand outstrips supply, Butler-Jones said. But he called that "a very, very unlikely situation."
Polling the government has commissioned suggests that at this point, only about 60 per cent of people might want pandemic vaccine. Only about a third of Canadians get a seasonal flu shot, Butler-Jones pointed out.
"We're ordering more," he said. "This is all hedging our bets to ensure that we err on the side of caution."
In fact, it is quite possible the country could find itself with excess pandemic vaccine on its hands, the chief public health officer admitted.
He said the government is talking with GSK about potentially turning back part of the order, if it becomes apparent Canada doesn't need 50.4 million doses.
"The most likely scenario is that we will end up with excess vaccine. So we'll be working closely with the manufacturer to make sure there are ways to ensure that that can get to other countries," Butler-Jones said.
Canada has first access to vaccine produced at the Ste-Foy plant, having signed the world's first pandemic flu vaccine contract in 2001 with Shire Biologics, a previous owner of the plant. GSK inherited the contract when it bought the facility in 2005.
GSK has indicated it wants to sell an adjuvanted vaccine and the World Health Organization has urged countries to use vaccine formulas that allow limited global supplies to be stretched as far as possible.
Canadian officials have repeatedly said they expect to start receiving supplies of the vaccine in late October or early November, by which time clinical trials already underway in other countries should inform decisions on the size and number of doses needed.
The WHO said Thursday that trials have started in China, Australia, Germany, the United States and Britain and more will start in the days to come.
The head of the agency's initiative on vaccine research, Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny said production of the pandemic vaccine is "on track" and some countries may start to administer vaccine as early as September.
Butler-Jones said Thursday that the public health agency expects Canadians who want vaccine will receive at least one dose before Christmas. If a second is required, those doses will likely be administered after Christmas, he said.
When two doses of a vaccine must be given, there has to be an interval between the doses. For this vaccine, it is expected the interval would be at least 21 days. |
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| MarkT |
keep in mind this isn't even flu season...
I'd suggest that we wait and see how this winter goes before we dismiss the swine flu as another 'scare' on par with things like Y2K.
I question this allocation of resources though. IMHO, the regular flu shot is over-administered and the vast majority of people don't need it. I know that issue has been debated to death, so I'll leave it at that :P |
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| VERTiG0 |
| If you get swine flu you deserve to die from it |
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| BTG |
| quote: | Originally posted by VERTiG0
If you get swine flu you deserve to die from it |
hahahah. agreed. |
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| Jayx1 |
| We will see.... they have cried wolf way too many times and the way they are doing this vaccine is suspicious. Not part of the regular vaccine but a seperate one? give me a break! |
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| Endlesswave |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jayx1
We will see.... they have cried wolf way too many times and the way they are doing this vaccine is suspicious. Not part of the regular vaccine but a seperate one? give me a break! |
Well it is a seperate type of flu I think.
The real madness is that MORE people die of the regular flu anyway than HiN1 and the focus is on this, meh. |
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| d-form |
| I think i'll stick to cold fx. :D |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Endlesswave
Well it is a seperate type of flu I think.
The real madness is that MORE people die of the regular flu anyway than HiN1 and the focus is on this, meh. |
They are all different types. They put 3 types in a vaccine every year. So this year we need 2 different ones? Sorry i dont buy it.
I called this BS back when this started and its getting clearer and clearer to me what the motive is here.
Also ive had flu before in the summer. Its not uncommon. Not often but it happens. So this "out of season" thing doesnt work either. |
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| MarkT |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jayx1
They are all different types. They put 3 types in a vaccine every year. So this year we need 2 different ones? Sorry i dont buy it.
I called this BS back when this started and its getting clearer and clearer to me what the motive is here.
Also ive had flu before in the summer. Its not uncommon. Not often but it happens. So this "out of season" thing doesnt work either. |
once again, our resident expert on all matter speaks out of his ass...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090806...swine_flu_shots
"Why can't you get one shot for all — or maybe just two?
The reasons have to do with logistics and caution.
Scientists believe the swine flu vaccine will be most effective if given in two doses, about three weeks apart, although testing is still under way to check that.
Combining swine flu and seasonal flu in one shot is theoretically possible, but it was too late to try it this year. Decisions were made last winter about what flu strains to use in this year's seasonal vaccine, and production was too far along by the time swine flu hit in April to alter the formula.
So seasonal flu and swine flu will have to be given as separate doses, even if it's during the same appointment.
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Then, there are safety questions.
Health officials are haunted by the swine flu vaccine campaign in 1976, which was stopped after unexpectedly high numbers of patients suffered a paralyzing condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. While it's not clear the vaccine was to blame, health officials want to carefully monitor people who get the new swine flu vaccine for any problems.
Scientists are just beginning to test the safety and effectiveness of the new swine flu vaccine, work that is expected to take months. If the seasonal flu and swine flu vaccines were given at the same sitting and some people developed health problems, it would be hard to single out which vaccine caused the problem, or whether it was the combination of them.
"How you're going to separate that out — that's a doozer," said Dr. Samuel Katz, a Duke University vaccines expert, who was a developer of the measles vaccine."
seasonal flu outbreaks are fact, not fiction. sure you can get it year-round, but given that it's more prevalent in colder months, it's a bit early to call swine flu a mere 'scare', no?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season
"Three virus families, Influenzavirus A, Influenzavirus B, and Influenzavirus C are the main infective agents that cause influenza. During periods of cooler temperature, influenza cases increase roughly tenfold or more, resulting in the flu season.
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A recent research done by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) on influenza virus identified the virus as having "butter-like coating". The coating melts when it enters the respiratory tract. In the winter, the coating becomes a hardened shell; therefore, it can survive in the cold weather similar to a spore. In the summer, the coating melts before the virus reaches the respiratory tract."
hardly 'scientific' sources/explanations, so I'm sure some proper research would yield far more accurate and detailed info...but this was found in a mere 30 seconds online. so why don't you at least do that before acting like everything is a big conspiracy or that you know it all? |
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| PivotTechno |
http://www.thestar.com/article/671620
Swine flu: How scared should we be?
CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR
In 2005, the world faced a looming catastrophe.
Avian flu virus had jumped from birds to humans in Southeast Asia and was expected to spread throughout the world, causing up to a billion deaths.
Canada, like most Western nations and the World Health Organization (WHO), began stockpiling the anti-virus drug, Tamiflu. Ottawa bought 22.5 million doses; Ontario, 10 million. People were hoarding it.
By August, Margaret Chan, then WHO's chief of influenza pandemic preparedness, now its director-general, was no longer talking about if a pandemic was going to happen:
"The only question is: When? We have to be on the lookout for it any time, any day."
Dr. Richard Schabas, an internal medicine specialist and former Ontario chief medical officer, was withering about that assumption and didn't hesitate to say so:
"Our science just isn't strong enough for us be making these kinds of alarmist predictions that we're hearing from WHO and others."
Schabas was right. The bird flu pandemic never materialized.
Any more than the 2003 SARS pandemic. WHO predicted it would cause 100 million deaths. Worldwide, 774 died and, alas for the victims and for Toronto tourism, 44 of them lived here. But SARS turned out to be a hospital-acquired, not community-spread, series of outbreaks, not a pandemic.
Flash forward to the present.
Schabas, now the medical officer of health in Hastings and Prince Edward Counties, is at it again.
He's calling the swine flu H1N1 virus that has been making its way around the globe since April – killing more than 700 on its journey – a "pandemic dud."
Despite WHO's forecast that a more severe second surge of H1N1 will arrive this fall, causing up to 2 billion cases and many more deaths, Schabas insists the evidence strongly suggests "that's very unlikely.
"Historically, viruses starts to dissipate in a second surge because a lot of people get immunity from the first."
Swine flu was supposed to hit Canada "fast and hard" during the first wave this spring, he says: In fact, the official projection was "10,000 to 50,000 Canadian deaths and eight to 12 million cases of infection in the first two to three months."
As of this week, four months later, only 55 Canadians have died. Officials stopped counting cases of infection after they reached about 3,000 earlier this month.
"Swine flu may return in flu season, in October and November," says Schabas, "but the incidence of serious illness will be low."
He points to Australia where swine flu arrived in May, at the start of its autumn and winter. As of this week, 45 people have died there and the number of cases is about 16,000.
Schabas says a flu virus with a second surge more potent than the first has never happened before – and he includes the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. An estimated 500 million people, one third of the world's population, were infected then. Lacking antibiotics or ventilators, anywhere from 20 million to 50 million died.
Schabas says there is nothing but anecdotal evidence to support the common belief that the Spanish flu, as it was called, consisted of a first wave in the spring of 1918, then a second, more lethal wave in the winter. He suspects it was an altogether different virus the second time round (but that's also unproveable).
He blames the media for exaggerating fears, not so much with inflammatory stories, but by being "amazingly uncritical" of the public health establishment. It's been consistently wrong, he says – about SARS, about avian flu, about the first wave of swine flu, "but no one in the media takes them on and says that."
The current WHO warning "will almost certainly be the latest pandemic false alarm in a growing list. I think H1N1 is just going to fizzle away."
Is Schabas out there on his own again, a contrarian whistling in the wind? Almost, but not quite.
Enter Dr. Neil Rau, medical director of infection prevention and control at Halton Healthcare Services. He too flatly says swine flu's second wave isn't going to be a "a bestseller pandemic" any more than the first.
"It's not going to be the evil foe they're expecting. We'll see more incidence this winter, but there is no evidence of more virulence coming."
Why are he and Schabas seemingly alone in their contradiction, or at least downplaying, of what public health officials nationally and internationally have been saying since April?
"Fear of sticking out? Empire justification?" he offers, then adds: "Schabas and I aren't funded by organizations whose existence relies on appearing prepared. There are a lot of people out West, in B.C. (where H1N1 first hit in Canada), who tacitly agree."
The infectious disease specialist says he's not a contrarian for the sake of it. He's skeptical because of the evidence to date: the vast majority of swine flu cases have been mild, there has been no surge in emergency admissions, and no extensive absenteeism.
"We've spent so much time and money preparing for a pandemic, but just because we're planning for one doesn't mean this one is it. With SARS, the world was too slow; we under-shot, now we're over-shooting."
The frequently heard view that a flu pandemic is overdue because it's been 41 years since the last one is a non sequitur, he adds: the longer you go without something does not increase the likelihood of it happening.
Not that Rau is oblivious to the "mongrel" H1N1 virus, which is a hybrid of human, swine and avian flu strains: "I give it some respect because it broke out of season; there's no immunity in half the population, it's a new virus, it spreads person-to-person and selectively attacks young people."
(One theory is that H1N1 virus may kill via a "cytokine storm," an overreaction of the body's immune system. The strong immune systems of young adults are vulnerable, the weaker ones in children and older adults far less so.)
This week, the UK revised its death count down from 29 to 26 – many of whom had underlying medical conditions – and has been debating the pros and cons of closing schools in September.
Rau doesn't think the threat requires such "incredibly disruptive" actions.
"The virus is in the community so closing schools won't do anything. I'm against futile interventions. I'm not saying do nothing – preparedness is a good thing – but a healthy dose of pragmatism is needed now."
Canada's National Public Health Agency and its Ontario counterpart (created in response to the SARS outbreak) haven't caused excessive alarm with their communications, Rau notes approvingly. But other comments have been needlessly alarming, he says, citing a hospital official who said last week that "people will die" because the civic strike is disrupting public-health workers from pandemic planning.
"Public health used to quash information, now they are thinking aloud. It's easy to cause fear to an ordinary person."
The Canadian government says that when a swine flu vaccine is ready and has been tested, probably by early November, there will be enough for every Canadian.
Will Rau be among them? "It will likely be safe, but I won't get one until there have been a million doses given and there is evidence it is safe." |
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| MarkT |
essentially, the argument the 'contrarians' are making is that the risk assessment model is flawed in that the actual level of risk (likelihood of a pandemic) is lower than what is being used when these decisions are being made and we're therefore allocating too many resources to the issue.
my point is simply that we, as 'ignorant' members of the general public, are not equipped ourselves to say with any confidence that they are correct or to comment on whatever risk assessment models are (hopefully) being used to make the decisions that are being made.
we are limited to questioning the motives of all involved to ensure that factors like "profit" don't unduly skew the assessment model and decisions being made.
Jay takes it too far. it's valid to question the profit motive of drug companies and others, and to suggest that the WHO's raison d'etre is furthered here...but it's quite another to prematurely dismiss the whole thing and justify that dismissal afterwards with "see, I called this early", especially when coming from a position of zero accountability should his ignorant opinion prove to be false. |
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| Jayx1 |
My logic is simple. Cry wolf too many times and i stop believing you. And then i start to question your motives. Doesnt take studies (which can be fabricated) to prove that.
Could swine flu be a real thing? Maybe, but consistent scare patterns speak otherwise.
Y2K, bird flu, swine flu, global warming.
You name it... some have been proven false... some are very questionable but they all have one thing in common. They have made a few people very very rich.
Fear sells. Our society has figured that out and is now capitalizing. You can partially blame 24 hour news for aiding and abetting this. |
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