The Minnesota cases are not confirmed but health officials are saying they likely will be. There will be a press conference on this at 9:00 AM Wed.
A child in Texas has died of the flu.
Which brings us to the relative severity, or more exactly, the mortality rate. It has seemed to some a mystery that many have died in Mexico but not elsewhere. However, it is also thought that thousands were ill in Mexico (no reliable estimate exists). So dozens out of thousands have died in Mexico, and now one out of dozens in the US. There simply are not enough data to assess overall mortality and especially to compare Mexico vs. Not Mexico cases.
In a bit of Politics as Usual, in Israel, one official decided to drop the name Swine Flu because Swine is an abomination (see Bible). Mexicans objected. A higher level Israeli official then claimed that the first official was "only joking." Palestinian officials have said that they don't care that it is called swine flu, let's just fix the problem, and the Egyptians are killing all the pigs.
Source of all the above: Your friendly neighborhood public radio show.
I'm not blaming this case of swine flu on Michele Bachmann, I just think it's an interesting coincidence that it occurred in her district.
Wow, the Egyptians are killing the pigs? Even though it's human-human transmission is sustained? That's smart.
Well, you need two pieces of info on this: 1) Almost everybody in Egypt is Halal, so there probably re not many pigs there, and 2) Egypt did have a problem like this a few decades ago where something .... can't remember what ... was transmitting a virus and they didn't kill them all and maybe are thinking this time they'd better.
i hope its not in minnesota but if its not a huge deal!
An epidemic of Rift Valley fever in Egypt