Swine Flu news and updates thread

Originally posted by captaintrippy

Originally posted by iwondery75
reply to post by ecoparity

 

My 'what if" question is...if this is a laboratory-manufactured hybrid strain, brought over to ANY of the locations mentioned in the path of fedayeens, which ultimately ended in San Francisco, and was packed in aerosol/spray deodorant cans...we have no idea how many there might have been. What if these cans made it into commercial distribution. Could that account for the higher number of incidences in places like Wisconsin, Illinois, and from a recent post from today, Pennsylvania??

I was more thinking along the lines of the fedayeens each having a couple of cans of deodorant with them, not necessarily putting them into commercial distribution, though that is an interesting thought. I'm more picturing them spraying it directly onto well-traveled areas and things many people would be touching. Else, they could be like suicide bombers - infecting themselves and shaking a lot of hands.

That was my exact thought also. When my contact first told me the virus was "man-made" I gave a scenario where suicide strikers infected themselves and then let nature take it's course. There's no point in trying to distribute the virus hidden in deodorant cans or using mass spraying methods when a weaponized virus is guaranteed to kick off an outbreak if you have a minimum number of carriers infected.

My contacts have mostly taken the "accidental release" scenario vs. terrorism. They aren't "conspiracy" researchers though and having worked in the level 3+ biolabs they know first hand how often stupid mistakes are made. Throwing biohazards out in the regular trash is one of the most common errors leading to accidental release in the worst case and a full geared hazmat team climbing around in the office park dumpster in the best.

Czech republic is ignorant though.... sent some texts to one of my cousins there who is [21] and he laughed saying "Yeah, dont eat piggy piggy if it sneezes"

ahhhh it's such a laugh.... I'm having to cross my legs...

Another mention of the Fedayeen from:
www.freerepublic.com... (from 2002)

A FORMER colonel in Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen, one of Iraq's most brutal militias, has claimed that he trained with fighters from Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist network in secret camps near Baghdad.

...

A former Stasi lieutenant-colonel said: "The courses emphasised chemical weapons which attack the nervous system. They were also taught how to deploy bacteriological weapons - influenza, anthrax and yellow fever."

Originally posted by Night Watchman

Originally posted by captaintrippy


I was more thinking along the lines of the fedayeens each having a couple of cans of deodorant with them

The blog entry that ecoparity quoted is an odd one. The reference to the is especially strange since it seems to refer to a project conducted during the 1990s:

www.acpr.org.il...

Also, during the 1990s, a secret project, code named “Ibn Hayan”, aimed to produce bombs and warheads filled with anthrax germs and botulinum toxin. It was led by top Iraqi BW experts who left Iraq due to the UN inspections, and were allowed by Saddam to assist Libya. The project was directly linked to the Libyan presidency bureau. A number of organizations, including universities and laboratories attached to the ministries of agriculture and health, were engaged in making ostensibly innocent purchases of dual-use diagnostic and laboratory materials. Reportedly, mobile equipment designed to producing biological warfare agents through maintaining constant sterile environment, as well as ancillaries were purchased primarily from China, India and Serbia.

It's worth keeping an eye on but that entry smells like a HOAX to me...

I checked the site out, too, and I don't think it's so much a hoax but a possible product of Israel propaganda? However, it does have an extensive list of somewhat credible sources--if anyone wants to do more diggin' on those

But despite the above caveats, I think it's important to keep in mind the possibility. After all, Obama was highly praised by Gadhafi, etc.
See only somewhat related thread if interested: www.abovetopsecret.com...

~

I am not sure if it has been mentioned in this monster thread before, but as I distinctly remember, Mexico had extremely high numbers of infected cases when this story broke back in April. The deathrate was also extremely high but for some reason this has now been downplayed.

Now, if we take those numbers and make them follow a similar graph line what would we be looking at? Does anyone remember what the initial figures were before they were reset?

Originally posted by captaintrippy

Maybe, but the source I posted earlier that mentioned it seems pretty legit:
Janes.com

Jane's is absolutely a legit source but unless I'm missing something, there is no indication at Janes.com that the referenced project is currently active or has been since the 1990s.

The poster on the blog that ecoparity linked to seemed to (if I understand the cryptic info correctly) indicate that the operation to which they refer took place in 2008.

There is absolutely no credible evidence that the blog entry is accurate in any way. I just think we must be careful to not mix completely unsubstantiated, anonymous internet postings with the legit info being posted in this thread by so many.

reply to post by Lebowski achiever


yeah the mexican gov downplayed the figures, the death figures i remember were nearly 200, now they are 65

Originally posted by captaintrippy
Another mention of the Fedayeen from:

As desperately as the Bush administration attempted to make the connection between Iraq and AQ, they failed miserably at doing so. The story you linked is not accurate or at least the attempts to corroborate it have failed time after time.

reply to post by Lebowski achiever
Not anymore

Belgium: Second Confirmed Case of Influenza A (H1N1): Date: May 14, 2009 15:41 UTC Risk: Medium Multiple sources cite Belgium's Minis..2 minutes ago from twitterfeed

It seems to be spreading through the EU fairly fast as well

reply to post by Night Watchman


You're right - there's nothing solid on it since 2003 or before indicating that it is active. I'm probably not looking carefully enough at the clues presented.

H1N1 deodorant spray

NEVER seen a deo spray advertise it is effective against ANy virus before let alone H1N1 ....

Bloomin cheap too considering it will protect you from H1N1... ehem.... yeah right... or give you it!

Trípoli --Panama--Mexico City – El Paso –San Francisco

Would explain why it is so high in Spain I guess... at a push.... Panama... Costa Rica??? hmmmm ....Mexico City is a given....

Originally posted by jonny2410
reply to post by Lebowski achiever

 

yeah the mexican gov downplayed the figures, the death figures i remember were nearly 200, now they are 65

I think.... you could slap a zero onto current figures and not be too crazy for thinking they were kinda right....

Swine flu's "second wave" likely will be the long-predicted "perfect microbial storm" - and an equally predictable product of now-artifical evolution.

Artificial Evolution in the Twenty-first Century

Publicly accessible data on microbial evolution - and the "perfect microbial storm" - deals exclusively with natural organisms. However, chimeras and artificial man-made organisms add to the evolutionary mix, and their roles in the coming 'microbial storm' need to be considered.

Chimeras are artificial lifeforms with a mixture of two or more species in one body - genetically engineered by combining genes from different species. Aside from tomatoes with fish genes, our world now has a population of man-mice, man-pig, man-monkey and numerous other artificial hybrids. As the most dangerous diseases threatening mankind today are zoonoses, or animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans, the role(s) chimeras might play in the planet's current bio-dynamic cannot be dismissed.

Artificial organisms are micro-organisms - part natural, and part "machine" - created by using biotechnology, nanotechnology and computing technology, sometimes called nano-bio-bots. 1990's wisdom said that artificial organisms, and their impacts, were 50 to 100 years in the future. BUT - the main characteristics required for artificial organisms to evolve, and impact natural organisms and natural evolution, all have been announced publicly over the last few years. These characteristics include self-power, and self-assembly or self-replication.

I now am wondering what role chimeras and artificial organisms are playing in the hybridization and evolution of 'natural' organisms, and the threat of this coming "perfect microbial storm."


SOME BACKGROUND

Natural Organisms and "The Perfect Microbial Storm"

2004: Emerging zoonoses and pathogens of public health significance

Infectious diseases have helped shape the course of human history and there is every indication that these diseases will continue to be significant global events. A number of driving forces and societal changes are now creating an unprecedented environment that favours the expansion and perhaps even acceleration of a group of these diseases termed emerging or re-emerging zoonoses.

In a recent publication by the United States Institute of Medicine entitled Microbial Threats to Health, Emergence, Detection, and Response, the authors suggested that a group of factors are swirling and converging to create a perfect microbial storm. This metaphor helps describe the conditions and dynamics that have produced a new era of emerging diseases that began approximately 25 years ago. From the centre, or eye, of the perfect microbial storm, a group of zoonotic pathogens of significant public health concern are emerging.

Microbes continue to evolve and adapt and now, with the tremendous acceleration and expansion of global trade, human movement and travel and the burgeoning global population of both people and animals, the microbes have an even greater opportunity to adapt, change, and be transported to new hosts and ecosystems, often with catastrophic results. Changes in our weather, climate, ecosystem, animal production systems, economic development, and land use continue to alter the dynamic between hosts, vectors, and microbes in novel ways.

Also see: 2005: Steps must be taken to turn tide of public-microbial war

Chimeras

Animal-Human Hybrids

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras - a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal. ...human cells with rabbit eggs... pigs with human blood... mice with human brains

"Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health, and affront species integrity."

"One doesn't have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," (says Jeremy Rifkin). "It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain." "

Artificial Organisms and "The Perfect Microbial Storm"

...a new class of organisms is likely to emerge. These organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will originally be designed by humans. However, they will reproduce, and will "evolve" into something other than their original form, they will be "alive" under any reasonable definition of the word. ...The pace of evolutionary change will be extraordinarily rapid. ...The impact on humanity and the biosphere could be enormous, larger than the industrial revolution, nuclear weapons, or environmental pollution. We must take steps now to shape the emergence of artificial organisms.

Source: Articifial Life: The Coming Evolution. Farmer, J. Doyne, and Alletta d'A. Belin in Artificial Life II from Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Proc. Vol. X, Redwood City Calif.: Addison-Wesley, 1992, p. 815.

"Breakthroughs" in Nano- and Biotechnology - a Few Highlights

Nano-bio-bots

Tiny robots powered by living muscle have been created by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles. ...The devices were formed by "growing" rat cells on microscopic silicon chips, the researchers report in the journal Nature Materials. ...Less than a millimetre long, the miniscule robots can move themselves without any external source of power.

"Nanotech researchers have built tiny self-assembling machines that even grow their own muscles from cells taken from living animals. ...Besides just blurring the line between organism and machine, the first of these nano-bio-bots may signal a breakthrough in how to mass produce bio-machines: The hybrid devices were grown on silicon chips using the same principles and some of the same technology employed to make integrated circuits. ...The work is a dramatic example of the marriage of biotechnology with the tiny world of nanotechnology. ...the cells assemble, then they undergo a change, so that they actually form a muscle. ..."Now you have a device that has a skeleton and muscles on it to allow it to move." ...Under a microscope, you can see the tiny, two-footed "bio-bots" crawl around.

"I can make hundreds of thousands as easily as I can make one," said lead nanotechnology researcher Carlo Montemagno of the University of California, Los Angeles. ..."They're absolutely alive," Professor Montemagno told BBC News. "I mean the cells actually grow, multiply and assemble - they form the structure themselves. So the device is alive."

***

Fly-eating robot powers itself

Customizable, Self-assembling Nanotubes

***

"One of the projects DARPA is currently supporting is work by a team at Michigan State University's College of Engineering, who are developing
reconfigurable micro-robots for use in military, intelligence and law enforcement ...."

***

Pentagon plans cyber-insect army

The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. ...The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later. ...A similar scheme aimed at manipulating wasps failed when they flew off to feed and mate.

Ed. Note: What happened to the wasps - and their nano-parts - after they "flew off to feed and mate"?

***

"The combined integration of PNI and gold with silicon-based microdevices has allowed us to fabricate the world's first self-assembled muscle-powered micro-robots," stated the scientists' research paper. ...The team is now trying to apply the system to piezoelectric materials which produce electricity when compressed. If successful this will allow glucose, described as a ubiquitous renewable resource, to be used to create power.

***

Solar Nano-Power

"These flexible photovoltaics could harness half of the sun's spectrum not previously accessed." ..."We made particles from semiconductor crystals which were exactly two, three or four nanometres in size. .." ...Then, they tuned the tiny nanocrystals to catch light at very short wavelengths. ..."The key was finding the right molecules to wrap around our nanoparticles... Too long and the particles couldn't deliver their electrical energy to our circuit; too short, and they clumped up, losing their nanoscale properties. It turned out that one nanometer eight carbon atoms strung together in a chain was 'just right'."

***

Super Microbes Eat Radioactive Waste ...sponsors at the Energy Department doubt the public is ready for the release of this laboratory-engineered bug into the environment. It might eat nuclear wastes, but they worry about what else might it do...

Molecular evolution by design

A group at UIUC has announced a process that may be called managed evolution. It involves using multiple steps where by successive approximation they evolve a protein in the direction of having the properties they desire. This significantly reduces the amount of labor involved in the evolution and screening process.

The authors conclude that their new method may provide "a general approach to engineering biomolecules and biosystems such as receptors, enzymes, antibodies, ribosymes, DNAzymes and viruses with novel functions."

Evolution

The notion that the world around us is continuously evolving is a platitude; we rarely grasp its full implications. We do not ordinarily think, for example, of an epidemic disease changing its character as the epidemic spreads. Nor do we think of evolution in plants and animals ocurring in a matter of days or weeks, although it does. And we do not ordinarily imagine the green world around us as a scene of constant, sophisticated chemical warfare, with plants producing pesticides in response to attack, and insects developing resistance. But that is what happens, too.

If we were to grasp the true nature of nature - if we could comprehend the real meaning of evolution - then we could envision a world in which every living plant, insect, and animal species is changing at every instant, in response to every other living plant, insect, and animal. This restless and perpetual change, as inexorable and unstoppable as the waves and tides, implies a world in which all human actions necessarily have uncertain effects. The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do. ...That is why even our most enlightened past efforts have had undesirable outcomes - either because we did not understanbd enough, or because the ever-changing world responded to our actions in unexpected ways.

Sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing technological power. One area where this will occur is in the meeting point of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and computer technology. What all three have in common is the ability to release self-replicating entities into the environment.

Source: Prey. (c) 2002 by Michael Crichton. Inroduction.

Nano-Bio-Bot Evolution

In the Golem project (Genetically Organized Lifelike Electro Mechanics) we conducted a set of experiments in which simple electro-mechanical systems evolved from scratch to yield physical locomoting machines. Like biological lifeforms whose structure and function exploit the behaviors afforded by their own chemical and mechanical medium, our evolved creatures take advantage of the nature of their own medium - thermoplastic, motors, and artificial neurons. We thus achieve autonomy of design and construction using evolution in a limited universe physical simulation, coupled to off-the-shelf rapid manufacturing technology. This is the first time robots have been robotically designed and robotically fabricated.

Also see: The New Military

Nanotechnology and biotechnology are BIG business - and most new "consumer products" contain nanoparticles. So any fears that nanoparticles might escape are practically groundless. We're already buying the little suckers - paying to rub them on our faces, eat them, and spray them in our homes. ...Our only defense here is claiming "lack of fully informed consent."

But - the nanoparticles used in consumer products probably were not designed to self-assemble and replicate. They might anyway, and they might hybridize in nature with microbes, but they weren't designed to.

Arguably though, the real problem comes from nano-bio-bots designed to self-assemble, replicate and self-power, and from genetically engineered artificial organisms.

Presumably, the laboratories where they are made are constructed to prevent their escape.

But can we guarantee that nano-bio-bots and artifical organisms don't escape from commercial laboratories? How?

IMO - the opposite is pretty much guaranteed: nano-bio-bots and other artificial organisms have escaped, and are replicating in the natural world.

Assuming nano-bio-bots and artificial organisms have escaped from the lab, are they cross-breeding with natural microbes to exacerbate the coming "perfect microbial storm"?

Any thoughts?


Researched and written in 2006. More here: The Perfect Microbial Storm

sofi

Wuz sumone asking about crisis start numbers?

Swine Flu Sickens at Least 257 People
April 30, 2009
www.webmd.com...

reply to post by Hx3_1963


Also, Guardian.com timeline lists:

The toll from the swine flu epidemic appears to be stabilising in Mexico, with only seven more suspected deaths. This brings the total number of people suspected to have died from swine flu in Mexico to 159, with almost 2,500 others possibly affected.

reply to post by captaintrippy


And, keep in mind the recent WHO study:

The H1N1 (swine flu) virus spread to more countries Tuesday as scientists estimated the new strain could have sickened 23,000 people in Mexico alone before anyone realized it was an epidemic.

Haven't seen that figure much since then.

Well then it looks like the MSM and TPTB have got you exactly where they have been trying to get you, way to go.

There is never a happy-medium around here, is there. It's either complete despair and chaos along with the "we are all going to die!" syndrome, or it's utter dismissal of something.

As far as being cautious, I am cautious, I do know this is an actual risk, and I am careful with what I do. I just think people go overboard. We get continual updates from "contacts," par for the course around here. Anonymous people that supposedly are in the know about everything, and somehow, people from this board are buddy-buddy with them. From these 'contacts' we keep getting gloom and doom messages.

People give our rather disorganized government bodies far too much credit imo. Media blackout? Nonsense. If there was a large outbreak or deaths associated with illness in any town, the local news agencies would be covering it, guaranteed. I am hearing nothing, I haven't seen a single person with flu symptoms, nor heard about one through the grapevine.

I have a reasonable amount of trepidation and have a plan of action, if things 'get worse,' which they could, if this were to mutate in a bad way, which while there is a very low chance of this, it's possible. But I feel an inordinate amount of fear-mongering goes on.

Just because people don't personally believe that a super flu is 'spreading like wildfire,' nor that it is 'very very bad,' (key terms people use to blow it out of proportion a bit), doesn't mean they are ignorant idiots, unable to deduce what is really going on.

I highly doubt this will be any worse than the last couple 'pandemics' that were at that time, also blow way, way out of proportion. I'm ready if it turns out different, I just don't think there is nearly as much to this as people are making out.

reply to post by fleabit


Yeah but you slap air stewardesses at least yes? *grin*

Originally posted by fleabit

Well then it looks like the MSM and TPTB have got you exactly where they have been trying to get you, way to go.

There is never a happy-medium around here, is there. It's either complete despair and chaos along with the "we are all going to die!" syndrome, or it's utter dismissal of something.

As far as being cautious, I am cautious, I do know this is an actual risk, and I am careful with what I do. I just think people go overboard. We get continual updates from "contacts," par for the course around here. Anonymous people that supposedly are in the know about everything, and somehow, people from this board are buddy-buddy with them. From these 'contacts' we keep getting gloom and doom messages.

People give our rather disorganized government bodies far too much credit imo. Media blackout? Nonsense. If there was a large outbreak or deaths associated with illness in any town, the local news agencies would be covering it, guaranteed. I am hearing nothing, I haven't seen a single person with flu symptoms, nor heard about one through the grapevine.

I have a reasonable amount of trepidation and have a plan of action, if things 'get worse,' which they could, if this were to mutate in a bad way, which while there is a very low chance of this, it's possible. But I feel an inordinate amount of fear-mongering goes on.

Just because people don't personally believe that a super flu is 'spreading like wildfire,' nor that it is 'very very bad,' (key terms people use to blow it out of proportion a bit), doesn't mean they are ignorant idiots, unable to deduce what is really going on.

I highly doubt this will be any worse than the last couple 'pandemics' that were at that time, also blow way, way out of proportion. I'm ready if it turns out different, I just don't think there is nearly as much to this as people are making out.

The only "extreme" I see around here is from you. No one is encouraging panic, first of all.

Second of all, the information I and a couple of other people have posted from our contacts just so happens to have been completely accurate.

Maybe if you had actually been following the thread rather than jumping in to troll it you would know that.

The "ATS negativity" thing ended a week plus ago. The continued validation of the posts you're trying to challenge put an end to it. I could be wrong, I guess. If you can get 2 other posters who have been part of this thread and actively so since then to post support for your challenge then I'll consider entertaining it.