WHO baffled as pig-disease toll rises

A mysterious pig-borne disease has spread to six more towns in southwest China and the number of people killed has risen to 31, the Chinese government said yesterday as it scrambled to reassure the public.
The health ministry said on its Web site that the total number of people affected increased to 152 by noon on Wednesday -- four more deaths and 21 more cases than the day before. Twenty-one people are in critical condition.

Six more towns in Sichuan Province reported cases on Wednesday, in addition to the two cities, Ziyang and Neijiang, where people first fell ill after slaughtering pigs foaming at the mouth last month, the ministry said.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/07/29/2003265466

Isn't this the sequence of the 1919 'flu pandemic?

There is also the possibility of something nasty like pseudorabies, or even some hitherto unknown virus.

THIS microbiologist and veterinarian says watch this closely; maybe it's time to be afraid.

Mommy nature has decided 7.x billion humans is just a tad too many.

It'll come to America eventually.

SOme in this world will be immune.

Most will not.

Time reveals all.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/28/ldt.01.html

DOBBS: A mysterious new disease has killed dozens of people in China. At the same time, there are rising concerns about the spread of the deadly bird flu in China and other Asian countries. Experts, health experts are now warning it could be only a matter of time before these new diseases spread to the United States.

Kitty Pilgrim has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One hundred thirty people in China sick from a mysterious pig-borne disease. The World Health Organization doesn't know quite what it is, and the death toll is now at 31. BOB DIETZ, WHO SPOKESMAN: I think the first thing that pops into everyone's mind is avian influenza, and then comes SARS, and are we looking at that sort of situation. Very early in the stage to make any rash judgments, but at this point we don't see that kind of threat looming. But we are watching it very closely.

PILGRIM: The disease comes from eating or slaughtering sick pigs, which is commonly done in rural China. The problem with the new diseases suddenly affecting people around the world is that they are an airplane ride away from anywhere, as in the case of SARS, which infected thousands and killed 800 people globally.

They can turn up anywhere. For example, health officials don't know how three people in a family in Indonesia contracted avian flu and died. The CDC currently has 11 quarantine stations in U.S. airports, with seven more planned to be open this year to be able to screen people if necessary.

HENRY NIMAN, FOUNDER, RECOMBINOMICS: It actually is a flight away by a migratory bird or commercial airline. So it literally can arrive in a matter of days. So there's no really room for error that, once it starts to spread, it can move around the world quite quickly.

PILGRIM: The worry is so great in this country, Congress has had five hearings on the flu this year. Scientists think the bird flu virus could mutate, as all viruses do. And there is thought nearly enough vaccine for the current strain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PILGRIM: Now, many experts are convinced the next global pandemic could come from avian flu. It is highly deadly. Last year, 109 human cases caused 55 deaths in Asia. And with the new sudden unexplained deaths in Indonesia, the concern is very, very high right now -- Lou.

DOBBS: Kitty, thank you very much. Kitty Pilgrim.

It goes like Bird -> Swine -> Horse -> Human, with the last link occurring in Fort Riley, KS when horse manure was burned upwind from the campsite, spreading the virus. The virus also spread through cattle, and it killed as many as 40 million people (equivalent to that of the Black Death). Humans became the deadliest vectors in the final stages of the disease, especially the soldiers at war.

this may have a shorter pathway, or it may be not be related

infections.

are you referring to Haemopholis which was isolated in some of the victums of 1918?

Was the flu virus, but most people died of secondary bacterial infections like pneumonia.

was that it killed so fast, long before secondary bacterial infections could move in, and also that it killed young healthy people.

"The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry... It was a combination of the two that caused the deaths. The influenza caused the immune system of the infected to be decreased, thereby allowing secondary infections to kill the patient. The influenza virus is notorius for doing this and is usually NEVER deadly on its own. It is pretty much a virus that causes immunodeficiency which leads to death from other causes.

I saw Barry speak on Book TV and had to read it.

the incubations periods of many victims, it had to be a combination that was the deadliest.

That, and the US Army found both in a section of lung tissue preserved from a dead Private.

Of course that is one person, but his symptoms and disease course paralleled millions.

YMMV. But for me, that is QED.

It is evidently akin to ebola. So far, the only victims are people who slaughtered a sick animal, it appears, but we saw how fast other diseases exploded. China has also been caught illegally using human flu vaccines on poultry, which is just begging for a totally resistant strain of avian flu. Oh goody.

definitely not ebola though, as you said, it is a bacteria

Even WHO is saying its more than bacteria. Pigs usually have no problem with bacteria. Need stress or another infection to activate virus. Case fatality rate is above 80%

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/07280503/Sichuan_152_82_CFR.html

I do know my microbiology, having a degree in it. Case in point, bubonic/pneumonic/septicemic plague: caused by bacterium called Yersinia pestis, highly lethal, no virus involved.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/diseased-pigs-dug-up-and-resold-for-eating/2005/07/28/1122143967005.html?oneclick=true

By Hamish McDonald Herald Correspondent in Beijing
July 29, 2005

Unscrupulous traders dug up the day-old carcasses of diseased pigs and sold them for human consumption, a Chinese newspaper has reported.

The World Health Organisation has been puzzled by the extent and severity of an outbreak of streptococcus suis that has claimed the lives of 27 people among 131 infected in the cities of Ziyang and Neijiang, in the south-western province of Sichuan.

The bacterium is common in pigs and can cause sickness, but is rare in humans. Patients develop high fever, bleeding under the skin and toxic shock. The last big outbreak was in Jiangsu province seven years ago, when 14 people died.

The provincial capital's Chongqing Evening News has reported that police stumbled upon a trade in animals condemned as infected, slaughtered and buried.

Last Sunday they found a pig vendor, Chen Ping, with two dead pigs and a sick one on his tricycle. He had bought the pigs for a bargain 50 yuan ($8.15) each. He complied with a police order to bury the pigs, but the next day he dug them up and sold them in another town for 480 yuan each.

...snip...

as the Philippines, North Korea... In my time in the Orient, I've seen and first hand heard of this type of thing occuring OFTEN.

they have diagnosed Streptococcus suis infection. It is bacterial, not viral, so treatable with antibiotics in theory. This strain may be especially virulent. The people who caught the disease from the pigs were all involved in slaughter/butchering, and all had skin wounds through which the bacterium apparently gained entry.

WHO is investigating the possibility that some other disease organism is involved in addition to S. suis.

Not likely to involve flu.

it is an especially virulent strain, which should NOT have made so many people sick

...Moreover, H5N1 and Ebola have a region of sequence identity between HA and spike genes....

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/07190501/Boxun_Ebola_Strains.html

...According ProMED-mail, the website of the International Society of Infectious Diseases, the symptoms best correspond to the relatively rare Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever...

https://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-7-25/30562.html

Here is the link to ProMED-mail

http://www.promedmail.org/pls/promed/f?p=2400:1000

Why this is different:

"It could be another disease altogether, it need not be _Streptococcus suis_, because the presentation is so atypical," Samson Wong, a microbiology associate professor at the University of Hong Kong, told Reuters. "In past literature, there have been 1 or 2 cases when people died within 36 hours, but those were exceptions rather than the rule. The deaths in China are very unusual," Wong said. Wong also said many patients in Sichuan were bleeding under the skin, a symptom that has been cited in only 2 or 3 cases in medical literature on the bacteria.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050729/wl_afp/healthchinadisease_050729053030

...
Preliminary laboratory tests in China indicate the outbreak is caused by the streptococcus suis bacteria, which is usually spread among pigs.

The WHO has said it is baffled because if the disease is caused by the bacteria, it would be the first time it had struck so many people at one time -- raising fears it had become more virulent....

...Chinese version of what's happening in China, despite their botched handling of the SARS fiasco.

The WHO is baffled because the disease appears to be the result of a VIRAL infection, not a bacterial infection as claimed by the Chinese.

SARS wasnt a worldwide plague despite what many doomsayers seemed to want us to believe at the time.

bacteriologists and virologists who are very vigilant in their duties.

How is that?