As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.

With permission from the patients, investigators followed the trail of grocery purchases to a Rhode Island company that makes salami, then zeroed in on the pepper used to season the meat.

Never before had the CDC successfully mined the mountain of data that supermarket chains compile.

“It was really exciting. It was a break in the investigation for sure,” CDC epidemiologist Casey Barton Behravesh said.

At least 245 people in 44 states have been sickened in the outbreak. That includes 30 in California, 19 in Illinois, 18 in New York and 17 in Washington state.

The victims included Raymond Cirimele, a 55-year-old Chicago man. He said no one asked for his shopper-card data, but he would have provided it if someone had.

“I don’t have any secrets, so I’m not worried about it,” he said. “It’s kind of like the whole airport security and all that. I’d rather fly on a safe plane.”

…

Some privacy advocates, though, are troubled.

Longtime shopper-card critic Katherine Albrecht, director of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, said she worries that the practice could lead to a switch from a voluntary system to mandatory use of such cards.

“That sends chills down my spine,” she said.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

Indeed, be not complacent in this regard, but continue onward with diligence and patience. The vaccine I wouldn’t touch with a 10 meter cattle prod, but the tactic of separation or “social distancing” is still, IMHO, the best method for decreasing the risk of infection.  And get some Sambucol, it really works well.

H1N1 cases have continued to drop since December and into the first weeks of 2010, but health officials say now is not the time to assume the worst is over.

“We want and need to avoid complacency,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, a director with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week. “Having as many people vaccinated as possible is our best course of action, even if we can’t read the tea leaves of the future.”

Source/Full Story: The SouthtownStar

H1N1 influenza kills Native Americans and Alaskan Natives at four times the rate of the rest of the population, making immunizations critical for native people, say national health experts.

“The virus has hit Indian Country especially hard,” said Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Health and Human Services secretary.

Sebelius joined Dr. Yvette Roubideaux, director of Indian Health Services, and Dr. Ralph Bryan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a teleconference Tuesday to introduce HHS’s new public service announcements. The announcements, starring Cherokee actor Wes Studi, focus on promoting H1N1 immunization in Native populations.

Sebelius said more Native Americans die from H1N1 complications because the population has a higher rate of underlying health issues, such as asthma, diabetes and heart disease.

Source/Full Story: rapidcityjournal.com

About 800,000 doses of swine flu vaccine for young children were recalled in the United States on Tuesday when the manufacturer discovered that the vaccine wasn’t as potent as it should be.

Most of the doses – some of which were received in the Bay Area – already have been given to children, but the recalled vaccine poses no health risks and children who received the shots do not need to be revaccinated, public health officials said.

The state received about 47,800 doses of the recalled vaccine. At least two Bay Area counties had some of the vaccine – San Francisco received about 9,000 doses and Santa Clara County received about 900 doses. The San Francisco Public Health Department will send back 500 unused doses of the recalled vaccine, but the rest of it probably has been used.

“We suspect there’s no real implication,” said Dr. Susan Fernyak, director of communicable disease control and prevention at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “Most likely children who already received the vaccine are going to have an adequate immune response. We’re going to accept they got proper immunity from it.”

Source/Full Story: Kids given recalled swine flu shot not at risk

About 22 million Americans have become ill with pandemic H1N1 influenza in the past six months and 3,900 have died, according to new estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of pediatric deaths — about 540 — is four times as high as the number that physicians, hospitals and health departments had reported to the public health agency in Atlanta.

The new estimates, drawn from detailed surveillance and record-checking in 10 states, sketch the most detailed picture by far of the national toll from the new flu strain that emerged in California and Mexico in April.

“We feel we’re finally able to update the public on how big a toll this virus is having so far,” Anne Schuchat, a CDC physician helping to run the federal government’s pandemic response, said Thursday. “I am expecting all these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise.”

The total number of people who have been hospitalized is 98,000, with 36,000 of them age 17 and younger. The vast majority of deaths — about 2,920 — have been in people age 18 to 64.

In an average flu season, the seasonal virus contributes to the deaths of about 36,000 people — 90 percent of whom are 65 or older. Many are close to death, with flu being only one factor leading to their demise. That is not the case with H1N1’s victims, most of whom are much younger, and about 20 to 30 percent of whom were healthy before contracting the virus.

Source/Full Story: washingtonpost.com
Technorati Tags: H1N1

Contaminated fresh ground beef caused a possible E. coli outbreak that killed two people and sent 16 others to hospitals, federal health officials said Monday.

Twenty-eight people may have become ill after eating beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. All but three of the suspected infections are in the northeastern U.S. and 18 are in New England, said CDC spokeswoman Lola Scott Russell.

Fairbank Farms recalled almost 546,000 pounds of fresh ground beef that had been distributed in September to stores from North Carolina to Maine. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recall notice, dated Saturday, said the possibly tainted meat had been sold in numerous ways, from meatloaf and meatball mix to hamburger patties.
…
Some of the ground beef was sold at Trader Joe’s, Price Chopper, Lancaster, Wild Harvest, Shaw’s, BJ’s, Ford Brothers and Giant stores in packages that carried the number “EST. 492″ on the label. Those products were packaged Sept. 15-16 and may have been labeled with a sell-by date from Sept. 19 through Sept. 28, meaning they’re no longer being sold as fresh product in supermarkets, Fairbank Farms said.

The rest of the ground beef, packaged in wholesale-sized containers under the Fairbank Farms name, was distributed to stores in Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. That meat was likely repackaged for sale and would likely have differing package and sell-by dates.

The USDA was urging customers with concerns to contact the stores where they bought the meat.

Ron Allen, Fairbank’s CEO, urged consumers to check their freezers for the recalled ground beef.

Companies subject to such recalls are allowed to cook tainted meat to kill the bacteria and then use it in other products, a common practice in the food industry.

That won’t happen in this case, the company said.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com
Technorati Tags: E. coli

Just remember, “Social Distancing”, i.e physical separation from the public will be the most essential tool for avoiding infection, not a vaccine.

Swine flu is causing unprecedented illness for so early in the fall — including a worrisome count of child deaths — and the government warned Friday that vaccine supplies will be even more scarce than expected through this month.

Federal health officials said 11 more children have died in the past week because of the virus.

Manufacturer delays mean 28 million to 30 million doses, at most, will be divided around the country by the end of the month, not the 40 million-plus that states had been expecting. The new count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention means anxiously awaited flu-shot clinics in some parts of the country may have to be postponed.

It also delays efforts to blunt increasing infections. Overall, what CDC calls the 2009 H1N1 flu is causing widespread disease in 41 states, and about 6 percent of all doctor visits are for flu-like illness — levels not normally seen until much later in the fall.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about half of the child deaths since September have been among teenagers.

And overall for the country, deaths from pneumonia and flu-like illnesses have passed what CDC considers an epidemic level. About 6 percent of all doctor visits are for flu-like illnesses, levels not normally seen until later in the fall.

The CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat (SHU’-kit) says, “These are very sobering statistics.”

This new strain is different from regular winter flu because it strikes the young far more than the old, and child deaths are drawing particular attention. Eighty-six children have died of swine flu in the U.S. since it burst on the scene last spring — 43 of those deaths reported in September and early October alone, said CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat.

That’s a startling number because in some past winters, the CDC has counted 40 or 50 child deaths for the entire flu season, she said, and no one knows how long this swine flu outbreak will last. Half of those early fall child deaths are among teenagers, also surprising as preschoolers are thought to be most vulnerable.

Source/Full Story:  Yahoo! News
Technorati Tags: Swine flu, H1N1

U.S. health officials have lost track of how many illnesses and deaths have been caused by the first global flu epidemic in 40 years.

And they did it on purpose.

Government doctors stopped counting swine flu cases in July, when they estimated more than 1 million were infected in this country. The number of deaths has been sitting at more than 600 since early September.

Other nations have stopped relying on lab-confirmed cases, too, and health officials say the current monitoring system is adequate. But not having specific, accurate counts of swine flu means the government doesn’t have a clear picture of how hard the infection is hitting some groups of people, said Andrew Pekosz, a flu expert at Johns Hopkins University.

The novel H1N1 flu seems to be more dangerous for children, young adults, pregnant women and even the obese, according to studies based on small numbers of patients. But exactly how much more at risk those people are is hard to gauge if the overall numbers are fuzzy.

“This wasn’t as critical early on, when case numbers were low,” said Pekosz. But now, it’s hard to say exactly how swine flu’s dangers vary from group to group, he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is relying on a patchwork system of gathering death and hospitalization numbers. Some states are reporting lab-confirmed cases. Others report illnesses that could be the new swine flu, seasonal flu or some other respiratory disease.

Some say that’s a more sensible approach than only counting lab-confirmed cases. Many people who got sick never get tested, so the tally of swine flu cases was off almost from the very beginning, they say.

“It was a vast underestimate,” said Dr. Zack Moore, a respiratory disease expert for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News
Technorati Tags: swine flu, H1N1

I would consider the cares and concerns of these parents to be prudent, and not irrational by any stretch of the imagination.  What idiot would even say such a thing!?   Ahh…government officials of course.  And I wonder if Ms. Sebelius would be willing to be held accountable for any damage done by the vaccine, since she unconditionally vouches for it’s safety.   I’m thinking something about a snowball’s chance…

…
A recent poll by Consumer Reports found that two-thirds of parents plan to delay or skip getting their children the H1N1 shot altogether.

Some believe the vaccine was rushed and not adequately tested. Others just don’t trust flu shots in general and avoid them each winter like the plague.

But government officials say those concerns are irrational. H1N1 flu has hit children particularly hard — 36 youths in the U.S. had died from it through August — so they are advising parents very strongly to do what’s best for their kids and get them vaccinated.

“I think many of the concerns by parents are based on the perception that this vaccine has been rushed into production and may not be safe,” said Tom Skinner, spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“And we understand parents’ concerns — they want what is best for their children. We often tell people the best antidote for fear is information. And we ask them to really seek out sound and reliable information from sources they trust.”

Skinner said the vaccine was made in exactly the same manner as the seasonal flu vaccine, which has a “very, very good track record as far as safety is concerned.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the rounds Tuesday and Wednesday morning, appealing to all Americans to get the vaccine and trust that it is safe.

Sebelius unconditionally vouched for the safety of the vaccine, saying it “has been made exactly the same way the seasonal vaccine has been made, year in and year out.”

Health experts say most fears about the flu vaccine, especially the seasonal vaccine, are unfounded.

Source/Full Story:: FOXNews.com
Technorati Tags: H1N1, vaccines

A national campaign to inoculate tens of millions of Americans against H1N1 influenza began Monday, with health care workers in Indiana and Tennessee targeted as the first recipients, federal health authorities said.

“I think the world has watched history unfold,” Dr. Judy Monroe, Indiana’s state health commissioner, told reporters at Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis.

Earlier Monday, the hospital received a shipment of 52 boxes — each containing 100 pre-filled sprayers.

“This first 5,200 doses that came to Marion County is really just the tip of the iceberg,” Monroe said.

Health Director Virginia Caine said the shipment will be split among the county’s hospitals.

A similar scene unfolded at LeBonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee, where three children have died from H1N1, sometimes referred to as swine flu.

Jennilyn Utkov, a spokeswoman for LeBonheur, said the hospital received about 100 doses. By noon, the supply had been depleted.

The vaccines shipped to both sites and to a few other places around the nation are the first of some 195 million doses the U.S. government has purchased from five vaccine manufacturers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Dr. Jay Butler told reporters at the Indianapolis event. That number includes both spray and injectable forms.

Butler, who heads the agency’s 2009 H1N1 Vaccine Task Force, has promised there will be enough for anyone who wants it.
…
From August 30 until September 26, the agency tallied 16,174 hospitalizations nationwide and 1,379 deaths associated with influenza virus infection.

The 27 states reporting widespread flu activity are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

Source/Full Story:: CNN.com
Technorati Tags: H1N1, vaccine

Gov. John Baldacci, I know your a nincompoop, and I strongly suspect you of being a scalawag!

Tell me sir, if you can, how you go about having “a responsible and aggressive vaccination” campaign when the very means by which you go about establishing it has as it’s primary feature a negation of responsibility for those administering the program?  How do you define responsibility exactly?

Oh, the “vaccination and public education campaign” will be aggressive, of this I have no doubt, but it will be so by virtue of a lack of liability in the event of someone being injured or killed by the vaccine.   Somehow I get the creepy feeling that someone is just after the children, and will take whatever steps necessary to get them.  Paranoid ya think?  We’ll see.

“And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.”  Mark 12:17

“We the people” do not belong to the State, and neither do our children.  You and those of your ilk would do well to remember this, and keep your grubby mitts off our kids.

Gov. John Baldacci on Tuesday declared a statewide civil emergency because of the H1N1 influenza virus, paving the way for mass immunization of Maine schoolchildren and other residents.

The emergency designation protects schools and health care providers against liability claims related to their participation in school-based vaccine clinics this fall for both the seasonal flu and the H1N1 flu. “Maine has been proactive in its response to this new flu,” Baldacci said in announcing the proclamation. “But as the school year begins, we must continue our vigilance, which will require a responsible and aggressive vaccination and public education campaign. It’s our goal that every person in the state has access to vaccines for the seasonal and H1N1 flu.”

In accordance with recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials in Maine are encouraging public schools to offer on-site immunization clinics for all children, including infants over 6 months and preschoolers as well as children who are home-schooled. Participating schools will offer the seasonal influenza vaccine as soon as possible, and many also will offer the new H1N1 vaccine when it becomes available.
…

The emergency proclamation allows for those clinicians, once their credentials have been approved, to become temporary employees of the state, relieving provider agencies from the administrative burden and legal liabilities associated with hiring them directly.

…
Schools are no more liable for injuries associated with the vaccine clinics than they would be for injuries incurred at a basketball game or other community event, Mills said. And while vaccine manufacturers are generally not liable for ill effects of the vaccines they produce, Mills said, the federal government does have a compensation fund for vaccine-related illnesses or injuries.

Source/Full Story:: Bangor Daily News
Technorati Tags: John Baldacci, H1N1, civil emergency, vaccinations

Swine flu vaccinations may begin in three weeks, earlier than previously anticipated, after the first U.S. tests found a single shot to be effective in eight to 10 days, U.S. health officials said.

The first shots may be available by the end of this month and administered to patients the first week of October, said Nancy Cox, director of the flu division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Health officials had previously planned for vaccinations to begin in mid-October, requiring two shots administered three weeks apart.

Swine flu outbreaks have rippled across U.S. schools and universities after pupils returned to classes in the past few weeks. Washington State University reported more than 2,500 cases, and the CDC last week reported a nationwide spike of influenza cases months earlier than the past three flu seasons. The test results are boosting hopes the vaccine may be available in time to curb the first pandemic in 41 years, Cox said.

“We were anticipating that it would begin mid-October,” Cox told reporters today at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco. “This was a conservative estimate but it was a necessary conservative estimate. We now feel that we will have vaccine for more people earlier and this is extremely good news.”

Source/Full Story:: Bloomberg.com
Technorati Tags: vaccinations, Swine Flu

Almost three-quarters (73%) of American colleges and universities are reporting cases of influenza-like illnesses among students, with the highest rates in the Southeast and Midwest, the American College Health Association says.

There were 4,045 new flu-like illness cases between Aug. 29 and Sept. 4 among 204 schools taking part in voluntary reporting, the new data show.

Most schools are not testing to confirm the virus is H1N1, or swine flu. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nearly all the flu virus now circulating is H1N1.

So far there has been only one flu-related college death. Troy University freshman Andrew Salter, 18, of Valley, Ala., died on Sept. 4 after fighting first H1N1 and then pneumonia, says university official Herbert Reeves.

So far Washington State University in Pullman has been hardest hit, with about 2,500 cases, says the school’s Paula Adams.

Source/Full Story @: USATODAY.com
Technorati Tags: H1N1

For most people, August is a month for swimming pools and summer vacations, with the aching misery of fall and winter flu outbreaks still safely distant.

This year, however, public health experts say the H1N1 flu that emerged in April is poised to return with a vengeance much earlier than the regular seasonal flu — possibly as soon as the end of this month, when many schools reopen.

Drug makers are scheduled to begin testing this week of two potential vaccines to help prevent H1N1, or swine flu. Immunizations against the disease, however, aren’t expected to be available until mid-October.

Even then, the government plans to first distribute the H1N1 shots to 159 million people — about half the U.S. population — in certain high-risk groups, such as pregnant women, children, adults with chronic diseases, health care workers and emergency medical workers.

People in those groups also will receive priority in getting doses of antiviral medication such as Tamiflu. Government officials say they don’t expect shortages of H1N1 vaccines, although they caution that availability and demand may be unpredictable

If supplies are limited at first, the remainder of the population– most of the healthy adults who help provide the nation’s services and keep its economy running — will have to wait to receive vaccine and anti-flu medications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the meantime, public health experts say, individuals and families might be asked to stay home from work, school, church, public events, public transportation and other crowded places for as long as four months — the worst-case scenario — to help prevent the spread of disease.

While inconvenient, such “social distancing” measures can help contain an epidemic, saving lives and ultimately saving companies money by keeping workers healthy and productive, said Dr. Bruce Lee, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Pay very close attention to what the CDC and what other public health officials are saying — and that’s actually a big problem because I think a lot of people don’t pay much attention — and take it seriously,” said Dr. Lee, an assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology and biomedical informatics. “If they say to implement social distancing, do it.”

Source/Full Story: post-gazette.com

Ten percent of the freshman class at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy has swine flu, and that number could rise in the coming days as more test results come in.

”We were expecting to see the number go up before it came back down because we had a lot of tests out still,” Petty Officer Ryan Doss, an academy spokesman, said Monday. “The flipside is that the number of people coming into the clinic feeling symptomatic has gone down. We hope it’s an indication that this is going to keep declining, but we’re going to stay prepared for anything.”

By last Friday, there were eight confirmed cases of swine flu, also called novel H1N1 influenza, with 22 more on Sunday, three early Monday and four more Monday afternoon. The total, 37, consists of 31 out of a class of 285 “swabs,” the newest students at the school currently taking part in a mandatory summer session, four cadets who were training them and two clinic staff members.

The academy submitted five more samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing Monday. Thirteen tests are pending.

”We’re sending more samples in for testing than we originally did because we’ve seen cases of H1N1 that are not as severe,” Doss said. “People are not showing all the symptoms that medical staffs have seen throughout the country.”

Source/Full Story: TheDay.com