Rhiza Labs FluTracker Forum

Why, at this point in the Pandemic, would any lab be analyzing any "mild" cases at all?

Mild cases of H1N1 are RARELY diagnosed, let alone, typed and sent for sequencing. I know, because I work on the front lines where we gather the samples. We (at this point) don't even send off samples to the CDC on ventilator patients. We just accept the fact that this young person in ARDS on a ventilator has swine flu because we can't identify it without lengthy tests that (no matter the outcome) do NOT change our course of treatment. So most doctors don't worry about confirming it anymore, why bother? They just treat it. Confirming it takes time and MONEY, and only tells them what they knew to begin with. Often,the only cases we actually confirm are the ones that die.

So, yeah, there are a LOT of people who end up on ventilators and spend weeks in intensive care with Swine flu that are NOT confirmed in REAL TIME. That's a fact. Some.... are NEVER confirmed. But they lived, so it doesn't matter. We don't say Swine flu positive anymore... we label them as "swine flu alert". Big difference.

The sequences that are coming out this far in the Pandemic, were at least in Grave condition, if not deceased. (I'd bet).

Why would any government, or independant Lab waste the man-power or the money analyzing "Mild" cases?

If they ARE fnding these mild cases, then you can bet this is just a screening sample, that is randomly taken and represents only a tiny fraction of the actual cases.

All of these numbers, and these sequences you have to understand (like Niman does) represent tiny, micro-tips of HUGE icebergs beneath the surface.

Niman understand this, while many do not.

When you start veiwing it this way, you begin to understand that "two out of four sequences released... " begins to grow exponentially in the grand scheme. The thing that really bothers me is the "released" part of the whole equation. Why is information so withheld? Valuable information should be shared in a world that is trying to size up this threat.

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"Old Mother Goose, when she wanted to wander, would ride through the air on a very fine gander."
1916
"Mother Goose had a house,
'Twas built in a wood,
Where an owl at the door
For sentinel stood."

littlebird

You are making a very important point and your first-hand involvement makes that point even more cogent. Because the mild or even ventilator cases are not sampled, we cannot know what percentage of those non-lethal cases are D225G/N strain. They might ALL be for all we know. We don't have the data to say one way or the other.

As you say, the only sequences we get are from the cases that are really bad off and RIP -- and to complicate it further because the CDC and WHO don't label their sequences as fatal or non-fatal, niman jumps in with his 100% fatal assumption and labels all of the fatal cases D225G/N, which is bosh.

niman has never answered a number of theoretical questions about his D225G sky-is-falling scenario: 1) how a strain that is so lethal can spread fast enough to represent a serious risk -- there is a point on the curve at which increasing lethality results in decreased transmission, 2) how it can be spreading at all without filling up the morgues -- all of those sampled fatalities niman concludes are D225G/N had to come from somewhere; and 3) how a strain that has deep-lung tropism can be transmitted at high enough levels to justify a panic -- if it is restricted to deep-lung it is, almost by definition, not readily transmitted.

Somebody needs to go back and review Koch's postulates as adapted to viral pathogens before scaring the pajamas off of everyone monitoring this site.

Actually, there are reasons to test milder cases and Ukraine is a good example. To understand what is happening at the viral genetic level thye needed milder cases to identify differences with the severe/fatal cases. When all of the fatal cases were showing D225G/N they expanded testing to other areas and included milder cases in areas that were not yet seeing the high number of fatal cases. There were also issues on how the virus is grown/cloned which affected levels of some RBD's. There is also the issue of H274Y, which can go undetected in milder cases which don't require antiviral treatment. In the WHO report on D225G, the vast majority of sequences cited are from non-fatal cases.

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Methinks it is going to get warmer and warmer in this here panic-pastry kitchen of ours:


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Public hearing on handling of H1N1 pandemic – A public parliamentary hearing “The handling of the H1N1 pandemic: more transparency needed?” was held during the session on 26 January. The hearing brought together representatives of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and of European vaccine manufacturers, as well as independent medical experts, to discuss this topic with parliamentarians. The hearing was initiated by the outgoing Chair of PACEs Sub-committee on Health Wolfgang Wodarg, who together with some other members of the Assembly of the Council of Europe requested in a motion in December that the Assembly look into this question. The hearing was open to the press. Both hearing and press conference were webcast live.

Biography

Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg is a german physician. Born in 1947. He studied medicine in Berlin and Hamburg and obtained his medical degree and a doctor´s grade from the University of Hamburg. He obtained his postgraduate qualifications in internal medicine and pneumology, in public health, social medicine, hygiene and environmental medicine in Germany and further training in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University/ Baltimore, USA.

He worked as a ship´s doctor, port health authority and in the Bernhard-Nocht-Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hamburg. He practiced medicine in several clinics and was the director of a public health institute in Northern Germany for 13 years before getting elected for the German Bundestag.

Dr. Wodarg initiated and chaired for ten years the Specialist Committee on Environmental Health of the Chamber of Physicians (FAGUSH) and was a member of the Epidemiology Task Force in his country Schleswig-Holstein.

He was MP from 1994 till 2009, for the whole time a member of the Health Committee and since 2005 in the Committee for Economic Cooperation and Development.

He initiated and was the speaker of the Enquete Commission "Law and Ethics of Modern Medicine" of the German Bundestag.

Dr. Wodarg is an Honorary Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE). From 1998 until January 2010, he was a member of the PACE, since 2002 Vice-Chairman of the European Socialist Group, since 2006 speaker of the German Social Democrats and deputy head of the german delegation in Strasbourg. He was the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Culture, Education and Science and afterwards Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health until January 2009. Parallel he was a Member of the Political Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe.

His initiatives and reports brought important issues such as "Faked Pandemics", private military companies, the role of media for democracy, palliative medicine or genetic testing and genetically modified organisms on the political agenda. Recently he was rapporteur on "Private military and security firms and the erosion of the state monopoly on the use of force” for the Political Affairs Committee and on "Palliative care: a model for innovative health and social policies” for the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee.

Dr. Wodarg is a lecturer at the University of Flensburg and President of the Rheuma-Liga Schleswig-Holstein.

Public hearing on handling of H1N1 pandemic
Here the statement presented by Dr. Wodarg:

http://www.wodarg.de/english/3064512.html

Percent H1N1 positive samples in North Carolina on a CLEAR upswing

http://www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/gcdc/flu0910.html

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Pure political theater. The fake flubees will be toast.

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www.twitter.com/hniman

It's only as clear as the numbers are that are written on the measuring stick. And right now, it would appear that not only are many of the measuring stick's numbers missing, but the measurements are being taken by people who are blindfolded and throwing darts.

I don't have a clue if there is a source of information out there that is entirely truthful. I'm beginning to think that anecdotal evidence in the form of blogs and forums like this contain more truth than any official numbers.

The key number on cases is the % positives. The number positive depends on the number tested, but when the % rises there are real increases. Look at the % positive in Figure 2 and you can see the real deal on the start of the third wave.
The % positive is 25, and it hasn't been than high since November, when wave 2 was declining.

http://www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/gcdc/flu0910.html

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Commentary

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/02051 ... NC_W3.html

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www.twitter.com/hniman

The latest CDC report shows an overall rise (from 8.9% to 13%) in samples positive for H1N1 in Region 4 in the latest report, providing additional evidence for the start of wave 3

Region 4: AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN;

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www.twitter.com/hniman