zoonoses
revere | April 25, 2009There may not have been much news at the CDC briefing, but it is coming thick and fast now. The CDC works through state health departments and defers to them on information about what is going on in their localities. Hence all questions about this were deflected at the 1 pm CDC briefing. I think I understand the thinking behind this but it doesn't serve the goal of getting the information out there quickly. CDC needs to be the information clearing house for all the swine flu news going on around the country and they need to do with absolute transparency. Here's what has developed since that…
revere | April 25, 2009There will be an update from CDC later today and WHO's expert committee established under the new International Health Regulations (IHR) meets via teleconference this morning North American east coast time at 10 am (4 pm Geneva time) to consider whether the swine flu situation merits declaring it “a public health event of international concern.” If they do, WHO Director General Margaret Chan may respond by raising the pandemic threat alert level from the current phase 3 (new virus: no or limited human to human transmission) to phase 4 (new virus, evidence of increased human to human…
revere | April 24, 2009Two recent sources of information, a conference call for clinicians and a just concluded media conference call held by CDC Acting Director Richard Besser.
Clinician call:
An emergency conference call for the Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity (COCA) was announced just hours ago on the Clinicians Terrorism and Emergency Preparedness listserv. It was "live blogged" via the Comments Thread by reader Abigail, MD. Here's the gist (lightly edited), as typed by her in real time (thanks!):
Update on current emergency situation - 8 individuals in US with swine flu, the hospitalized patient…
revere | December 1, 2008The common cold is probably common because a lot of different viruses cause similar symptoms. We usually treat it symptomatically or just endure it. We rarely expend much time, effort or money identifying which virus caused it. As as a result we undoubtedly haven't identified all the viruses that can make us miserable in the inimitable way we identify as a "head cold." When we entered the 21st century, some 8 years ago, there were a lot of stories about what the future might bring and I was interviewed by a well known medical TV reporter (Dr. Timothy Johnson) about what I thought would happen…