| | NoteWorthy News 11-24-09
aNNa'S NoTe: Wow, you're keeping me busy updating the pool! But my hopper's been calling, and I ought to share some links and free up some bookmark space... anyhow, real life is calling me with her siren's song, again. I baked a cake, need to bake pumpkin today and would like to finish up two crates of cider tonight, and have some homeschool stuff to work on. I've also paged 200 pictures into my scrapbooks and rearranged our room for the new baby, cleaning out a TON of clothing. So this is a good thing for today.
CAT WITH SWINE FLU
http://www.veterinarypracticenews.com/...h1n1.aspx
Iowa officials confirmed Nov. 4 that a cat has tested positive for the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. This is the first time this strain of influenza has been diagnosed in a cat. Up until this point, H1N1 had only been found in humans, pigs, birds and ferrets. The 13-year-old indoor cat was taken to the Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center at Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, where it was tested. “Two of the three members of the family that owns the pet had suffered from influenza-like illness before the cat become ill,” said Ann Garvey, DVM, public health veterinarian at the Iowa Department of Public Health.... This is not the only recent H1N1 first. On Oct. 19, the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories confirmed the presence of the virus in a pig sample collected at the Minnesota State Fair...
aNNa'S NoTe: Let's start with disease, shall we? Since it's so big and relevant? Now CATS have H1N1. Just goes to show I was right - felines suck. ((<<Anna hates cats)) Hate pigs, too - they're unclean (no doubt so are cats, I'd wager). It's just wrong-sick. Hey that's punny! Sick? Flu? Nevermind. Anyhow, it's morphing all around us, which preps me for the NEXT article...
H1N1 SUPER-MORPH IN UKRAINE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/world/europe/14flu.html?_r=3
When patients began arriving in Vyacheslav Bonder’s intensive care unit two weeks ago, their lungs so saturated with blood that they could barely gasp, the only thing he could compare it to was a field hospital in wartime. As soon as he hooked one patient up to a ventilator, a second and third would appear in the doorway.
...Two weeks ago, though, doctors here thought they were looking at a medical mystery: the deaths of healthy young people — not the drunks or addicts they usually see — with lungs so inflamed that they resembled liver. Dr. Bonder recalls the numb realization that his ordinary protocol for treating pneumonia was having no impact at all.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news...ople.html
British scientists are examining the strain of swine flu behind a deadly Ukrainian outbreak to see if the virus has mutated. ...An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus.He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal. They look like they have been burned. It's terrifying.' ...Chief doctor Myron Borysevych... diagnosed the disease as viral pneumonia. 'We have sent the analyses to Kiev. We don't believe it's H1N1 swine flu. Neither do we know what kind of pneumonia it is.' Universities, schools and nurseries have been closed, public meetings have been banned and theatres shut.
http://www.naturalnews.com/027503_Ukraine_super_flu.html
Here's what we know with some degree of certainty about the H1N1 virus in Ukraine right now: nearly 300 people have died from the viral strain, and over 65,000 people have been hospitalized (the actual numbers are increasing by the hour). The virus appears to be either a highly aggressive mutation of the globally-circulating H1N1 strain, or a combination of three different influenza strains now circulating in Ukraine. Some observers suspect this new "super flu" might be labeled viral hemorrhagic pneumonia (meaning it destroys lung tissue until your lungs bleed so much that you drown in your own fluid), but that has not been confirmed by any official sources we're aware of.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has issued emergency quarantine orders for nine of the country's regions and ordered the deployment of mobile military hospitals. He announced that the nation had been simultaneously hit with two different seasonal flu strains plus H1N1 -- and then hinted that all three might have recombined into the deadly new Ukrainian super flu. In his own words, as reported by Daily Mail, "Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine: two seasonal flus and the Californian flu. Virologists conclude that this combination of infections may produce an even more aggressive new virus as a result of mutation."
aNNa'S NoTe: In case you haven't heard about this, three flus have come together in Ukraine and have formed a deadly pneumonic virus they can't identify. Schools are closed thru the end of the year, as are public venues such as movie theatres and arenas. The identifying factor is that lungs are 'turning black', 'bleeding' and 'filled with blood/fluid'. Yuck.
George Ure (and HpH) predicted that in January/February a mutation of H1N1 would hit Canada and go global from there, because of the Winter Olympics. Now, either he was off by half a globe (the mutation going global from Ukraine, not Canada) or it's going to go GLOBAL from Canada, but appears elsewhere (and he didn't have that info). Either way, he was right about one thing: immunizing against a strain the way we have only causes a 'roadblock' for the virus to morph in order to continue to thrive. Flus work that way. Letting something run its natural course is much better than forcing it to become a worse version of itself. But don't let my logic stop you from getting the shot...
SUPER-FLU HITS NORWAY
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles...orway
Nov 23 -Norwegian health authorities say they have discovered a mutation in the H1N1 flu strain which could cause more severe symptoms. A potentially significant mutation in the H1N1 influenza strain could be responsible for causing more serious illness. Geir Stene Larsen, General Manager of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said the mutation makes it possible for the virus to fasten itself or infect deeper into the bronchioles, and therefore provide for a more serious progress of the disease. The mutation was found in the bodies of two people killed by the virus and one person who was seriously ill.
aNNa'S NoTe: Keyword: bronchioles (lungs). It's moving in the general direction of Canada, in a mere two weeks since it morphed in Ukraine. Oh, but wait for it...!
SUPER-FLU FOUND IN OHIO
http://www.kcci.com/news/21670309/detail.html
Iowa has officially recorded 21 H1N1 deaths, including seven in Polk County alone. But the county's medical examiner said... "In the autopsy, what we're seeing is very heavy, wet hemorrhagic lungs, lungs with a lot of blood in them," said Dr. Gregory Schmunk. ..."They do appear to fit clinically the course of a H1N1 viral-type pneumonia." He said the cases he's seen in Polk County were all middle-aged adults with a few underlying health conditions."These may be the patients that are obese," Schmunk said. "Obesity restricts your ability to breathe and clear the virus from your upper respiratory." He also said that some of the patients had diabetes...
aNNa'S NoTe: Which is why I question if the Canada thing was a mistake on HpH's part... it seems to have gone global from Ukraine, NOT Canada. Unless the rampant spread takes off from the Winter Olympics. We'll have to see. But for the record, HpH also says it will circle the globe nine times. This would be time number two, the first as 'swine flu', the second as 'pneumonic flu'.
GERM WARFARE?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...troops/
U.S. military officials sent a medical team to a remote outpost in southern Afghanistan this week to take blood samples from members of an Army unit after a soldier in the unit died from an Ebola-like virus.Dr. Jim Radike, an expert in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Role 3 Trauma Hospital at Kandahar Air Field, told The Washington Times that Sgt. Robert David Gordon, 22, from River Falls, Ala., died Sept. 16 from what turned out to be Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever after he was bitten by a tick. The virus is transmitted by infected blood and can be carried by ticks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
...Dr. Radke said the hemorrhagic fever is similar to Ebola "in that the end there is internal degeneration and external bleeding. From the Black Sea to upper Turkey, you'll see a dozen or more cases a year. Afghanistan falls right in the middle." ...Dr. Radke said U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan not only have to worry about the Taliban but also a host of ailments not commonly found in the West."Diarrheal diseases, typhoid fever, skin ailments and tuberculosis are some of what we have to be on the lookout for," he said.
aNNa'S NoTe: Tack on another reason we SHOULDN'T be messing around over there. Wouldn't it be lovely if THAT was brought back and spread here by soldiers? NOT SICK, JUST WHACKED
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091110/ap_on_sc/eu_vatican_aliens
E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church. "The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.
...Earlier this year, the Vatican also sponsored a conference on evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."The event snubbed proponents of alternative theories, like creationism and intelligent design, which see a higher being rather than the undirected process of natural selection behind the evolution of species.
aNNa'S NoTe: I still believe this is an elaborate set-up by spiritual wickedness in order to prepare the world for the coming 'army' of demons... which may (in all liklihood) show up as 'aliens' offering 'help' to us in our time of troubles. Time will tell. But it's nice to know the Catholic church is going to be the welcoming committee. ((shakes head))
INCOMING!!
http://www.newscientist.com/article...ces.html
As the US government ponders a strategy to deal with threatening asteroids, a dramatic explosion over Indonesia has underscored how blind we still are to hurtling space rocks. On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed. However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth's surface, says astronomer Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada. Brown and Elizabeth Silber, also of UWO, estimated the explosion energy from infrasound waves that rippled halfway around the world and were recorded by an international network of instruments that listens for nuclear explosions. No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact.
aNNa'S NoTe: This is for the folk who think we'll be able to just blow up Wormwood when it approaches our planet. Yeah, like THAT'LL happen. I found it very interesting, though. Especially the part where it was SO big that it rippled across half the world... and we never heard anything about it. Hrm!
FACE OF MOUNT FALLS OFF
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US...nSTCText
...a landslide over the weekend was more than Koch and the other 1,500 people in the Nile Valley [in Central Washington State] bargained for."We just had the whole face of the mountain just pretty much come off," said Valerie Royster, manager of the Woodshed Restaurant, which sits just across the road from the edge of the landslide. The slide covered a quarter-mile to half-mile of State Route 410, which connects Yakima with Mount Rainier National Park, with rock up to 30 feet deep, said Washington state Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Westbay. ...Westbay said the slide was like nothing the state has seen before, in that it wasn't the result of a weather or seismic event. "We've had rockslides, mudslides, avalanches, but nothing like this," he said. Geologists were calling it a "natural land movement," he said.
aNNa'S NoTe: I love how they immediately state it had nothing to do with a seismic event. Because you know I'm waiting for a major seismic event regarding Mount Ranier in the near future. And guess what localse just HAPPENED to be the setting for this? Only I'm expecting some link to an underwater earthquake along the San Juan de Fuca in Seattle, so... hrm.
ANOTHER BIG ONE FOR INDONESIA?
http://www.theage.com.au/world...07-gn4t.html
SCIENTISTS who examined last week's devastating earthquake in West Sumatra have come to an alarming conclusion: it was not ''the big one'' they have long been forecasting for Padang. The region will likely feel the brunt of a powerful earthquake in coming years that will dwarf the ferocity of last week's quake and could be accompanied by a large tsunami, according to a top Indonesian seismologist. Moreover, last week's quake has done little, if anything, to relieve the immense pressure building kilometres below the surface as the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates grind against each other. ''We had all been expecting one in West Sumatra, and when the earthquake happened last week, we all thought 'OK, this is the one we had been anticipating','' said Sri Widiyantoro, an Australian-trained geophysicist from the Bandung Institute of Technology. ''But now we have had a close look at it, we now know that it wasn't.''
aNNa'S NoTe: I'm thinking the people there - if smart - would MOVE. BTW, I should update my earthquake chart. We've had hardly a day go by that there hasn't been a 6.0 or larger the past month... AND SEA LEVELS RISE
http://abc.com.au/news/stories/2009/11/23/2750931.htm
A new study has found the east Antarctic icesheet, which sits behind Australia's Casey Station, has lost billions of tonnes of ice in the past three years... The majority of the loss is in coastal regions and is estimated at 57 billion tonnes a year. The Australian Antarctic Division's Dr Roland Warner says the study confirms Antarctica is contributing to a rise in global sea levels. ...It is estimated that sea levels are rising a total of three millimetres a year. The study also found the smaller but less stable West Antarctic icesheet is also shedding significant amounts of ice.
WATER RISES AT THE EQUATOR
http://www.latimes.com/news...05.story
The effect of climate change is anything but hypothetical to retired Colombian naval officer German Alfonso. ...
For five years, Alfonso, 74, has watched tides rise higher and higher in the Boca Grande section of Cartagena. This month, tides briefly inundated the only mainland connection to his neighborhood, a converted sandbar where about 60 high-rise condo and hotel towers have been built in the last decade or so.
...According to a recently updated World Bank study on climate change in Latin America, Alfonso and his neighbors have reason to be concerned. Not only are the effects of global warming more evident in Latin American coastal cities, the report says, but the phenomenon could worsen in coming decades because sea levels will rise highest near the equator. ...Even at the lower end of projections, parts of this city would be knee-deep in sea water.
..."The projections are based on assumptions generally accepted by the scientific community and do not include the cataclysmic effects of possible advanced ice melting in the Antarctic or Greenland," said co-author economist John Nash.
aNNa'S NoTe: Another place NOT to put on your retirement list. If people aren't seeing that stuff is really moving, shaking, flooding, and changing, they're... too wrapped up in their cellphones. And... that's all for now. We'll call this the natural disaster edition, and do an economic one next time, k?
SIX DAYS UNTIL DECEMBER
((and then there'll be another variety of 'Noteworthy News'!!))
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