Wall Street meltdown, Swine Flu Panic, Pig Farms, Pandemic Fear Inflatable mortuaries
Isaac Hayes - 3rd May 2009We don't know how dangerous Swine flu is, or will become, because swine flu will mutate over the next several months.
It would be wise to get ready for multiple waves of market panic on Wall Street in the run-up to flu season. Fact is that it is occurring in the spring is also unusual - flu epidemics almost always occur in winter.
Antiviral medication still works so far, but the reality is that it could change as the virus mutates. We have antibiotics to help fight the secondary infections and there probably aren't inherent production problems with vaccine production, at this stage. But that could change just like anything else.
Swine full will mutate over the summer, because flu viruses make lots of errors when they copy themselves, not to mention new strains can be very sloppy.
The real danger lies in that people and animals will also come down with two forms of flu at once, allowing the viruses to swap some genetic material, and this could make the virus more deadly and render vaccines made over the summer ineffective by winter, all just great news for Wall Street. On the other end the virus could mutate into a perfectly innocuous bug, and fizzle away........care to take a bet?
Few things are more contagious than rumours and panic on Wall Street, when markets are already on a death roll. Misinterpretation of critical data by medical experts will amplify and introduce errors of their own, which will pass around.
All great news for Wall Street.
Asian stock markets retreated on Monday as investors worried the outbreak of swine flu in North America could grow into a worldwide pandemic that deepens the global recession.
It will be more than interesting to see how the airlines survive this, as investors dump there stocks and buy drug makers.............its all getting more absurd, and I guess exciting.
The funny thing about all this is that American pigs had suffered mild attacks of H1N1 flu that affected them every winter.
In 1976 there was an outbreak ofswine flu in humans at a military camp in New Jersey with one death. The virus was not able to spread and soon "fizzled out".......So what changed?
By 1998 the H1N1 strain combined with both human and bird viruses to produce "triple reassortants" that surfaced in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas.
The bird element - two genes for the RNA polymerase enzyme - allowed the viruses to replicate rapidly and become more virulent. Today there are so many kinds of swine flu that outbreaks at pig farms are no longer seasonal, and its been said that one in five US pig producers were said to make their own vaccines because the vaccine industry could not keep up with the changes.
In 2004 Richard Webby from St Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee gave a warning that pigs in the US were "an increasingly important reservoir of viruses with human pandemic potential", not to mention a similar by Amy Vincent, of the US Department of Agriculture.
The big problem with the Mexican Swine Flu virus strain causing panic is that it has surface proteins the human immune system cannot recognise. The evidence suggests that swine flu was a disaster waiting to happen, and the warning signs have been there from the start.
The question should be asked why has happen, and who is most responsible, and even more so if this turns into a pandemic.
So far,things are going well. Should infection become more widespread, the system for distributing antiviral drugs will be put to the test: that will be a more challenging task, especially if large numbers of people request attention simultaneously. It is also hard to know whether there are other imported cases that we simply don't know about, and thus its no wonder that Tamiflu is selling like hot cakes.
The strategy is to contain initial outbreaks and so delay the start of an epidemic, rather than trying to spread resistance across the entire population. Influenza is notorious for its ability to mutate.
The British flu season has passed, so there is a very real possibility that we will see very limited transmission in the UK for many months. This is what happened in the most recent pandemic, in 1968: that strain of the disease arose in south-east Asia in July, but no epidemic in the UK until December.
Just what this will do to Wall Street is anyone’s guess.
The aspect of the 1918 pandemic , with its stories of people who were well in the morning being dead by night-time, can only fuel our fears when we talk about flu pandemics, but it did happen.
Hospitals could be "rapidly overwhelmed" and forced to turn away critically ill patients if a flu pandemic reaches Britain, according to the Government's own assessment.
During the peak of a flu pandemic, complications such as pneumonia could mean there are 10 times as many people requiring ventilators as the NHS can supply.
If demand cannot be met, it recommends doctors deny treatment to the weakest patients so that resources can be shared among the greatest number.
If there is competition for places in intensive care units, patients suffering from advanced cancer could be refused beds along with pensioners suffering from severe burns, those with multiple organ failure and children suffering from advanced cancer, severe burns or trauma.
Buy hey, don’t worry because plans for Inflatable mortuaries, 24-hour cremations and "express" funerals could all be used to dispose of thousands of bodies in a flu pandemic, Coffins would be reused to cope with the huge numbers of fatalities. Bodies of the dead could also be stored in refrigerator trucks.
Department of Health projections put the total UK death toll from a pandemic as high as 750,000. It was confirmed in 2006 that officials have ordered millions of extra body bags as a precaution.
Still worried about your investments?
