If you'll recall, I reported on mass animal deaths back on April 12, 2013 (REFER TO POST HERE). One of the mass animal deaths listed was located in China, where there were bloated pigs floating in some waterways and the deaths were only explained as "respiratory failure due to inhaling toxic gas" (REFER TO CHINA NEWS POST HERE). Well, it turns out that the numbers of dead pigs were much higher than I first posted and there were dead dogs as well. Additionally, the local authorities could not determine for certain that the animals actually died because of inhalation of toxic gas and now there is more proof that they may have been sick with the newest mystery virus called H7N9. The World Health Organization does not have a handle on this illness, except to say that it is not SARS, but is symptomatically similar to SARS and that it can be transmitted person-to-person. So far, this illness has spread in clusters in many countries. Also, the WHO says that they (and we) are not ready for a mass flu outbreak. They said that one day and then the next said that they have the outbreak under control. Have you seen Survivors? This is so similar to that case scenario that it is somewhat nerve-racking. Do we trust that they have it under control, or do we trust that they have our panic under control? Here is more information and commentary regarding this illness (H7N9). The information is suspect because it is not consistent, which makes the remarks that the World Health Organization said even harder to believe. As far as I am concerned, there is no panic. However, I don't trust that this new strain is under control.
Is this the next pandemic? Tale of mystery virus unfolds like a movie plot (Commentary)
View full sizeA duck stands near a warning sign at an amusement park in Beijing, China, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Scientists taking a first look at the genetics of the bird flu strain that recently killed two men in China said Wednesday the virus could be harder to track than its better-known cousin H5N1 because it might be able to spread silently among poultry without notice. The bird virus also seems to have adapted to be able to be able to sicken mammals like pigs. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)By Washington Post on April 07, 2013 at 8:11 AM
By LAURIE GARRETT
WASHINGTON — Here’s how it would happen. Children playing along an urban river bank would spot hundreds of grotesque, bloated pig carcasses bobbing downstream. Hundreds of miles away, angry citizens would protest the rising stench from piles of dead ducks and swans, their rotting bodies collecting by the thousands along river banks. And three unrelated individuals would stagger into three different hospitals, gasping for air. Two would quickly die of severe pneumonia and the third would lay in critical condition in an intensive care unit for many days. Government officials would announce that a previously unknown virus had sickened three people, at least, and killed two of them. And while the world was left to wonder how the pigs, ducks, swans, and people might be connected, the World Health Organization would release deliberately terse statements, offering little insight.
It reads like a movie plot — I should know, as I was a consultant for Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion.” But the facts delineated are all true, and have transpired over the last six weeks in China.
The events could, indeed, be unrelated, and the new virus, a form of influenza denoted as H7N9, may have already run its course, infecting just three people and killing two.
Or this could be how pandemics begin.
On March 10, residents of China’s powerhouse metropolis, Shanghai, noticed some dead pigs floating among garbage flotsam in the city’s Huangpu River.
The vile carcasses appeared in Shanghai’s most important tributary of the mighty Yangtze, a 71-mile river that is edged by the Bund, the city’s main tourist area, and serves as the primary source of drinking water and ferry travel for the 23 million residents of the metropolis and its millions of visitors.
The vision of a few dead pigs on the surface of the Huangpu was every bit as jarring for local Chinese as porcine carcasses would be for French strolling the Seine, Londoners along the Thames, or New Yorkers looking from the Brooklyn Bridge down on the East River.
And the nightmarish sight soon worsened, with more than 900 animal bodies found by sunset on that Sunday evening.
The first few pig carcass numbers soon swelled into the thousands, turning Shanghai spring into a horror show that by March 20 would total more than 15,000 dead animals.
The river zigzags its way from Zhejiang province, just to the south of Shanghai, a farming region inhabited by some 54 million people, and a major pork-raising district of China. Due to scandals over recent years in the pork industry, including substitution of rendered pig intestines for a toxic chemical, sold as heparin blood thinner that proved lethal to American cardiac patients, Chinese authorities had put identity tags on pigs’ ears.
The pig carcasses were swiftly traced back to key farms in Zhejiang, and terrified farmers admitted that they had dumped the dead animals into the Huangpu.
Few Chinese asked, “What killed the pigs?,” because river pollution is so heinous across China that today people simply assume manufacturing chemicals or pesticides fill the nation’s waterways, and are responsible for all such mysterious animals demises.
The Yangtze, which feeds Shanghai’s Huangpu, has copper pollution levels that are 100 times higher than U.S. safety standards, and leather tanning facilities along the river have notoriously been responsible for toxic waste, including chromium.
And across China — especially in Beijing — air pollution was so bad in January and February that pollution particulate levels routinely peaked at higher than 10 times the U.S. safety standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
When I was in Beijing in late January, the air pollution was so thick that it visually looked like fog, obscuring all sunlight and even skyscrapers located less than three city blocks away.
So, hideous as the pig carcasses might be, Shanghai residents tended to shrug them off as yet another example of the trade-offs China is making, pitting prosperity against pollution.
Mystery Coronavirus Renamed Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus As Two Saudi Healthcare Workers Fall Ill
As the new coronavirus spreads and infects more people, especially those who have traveled to Saudi Arabia, a formal name is finally given to the faceless killer.
The Coronavirus seen under an electron miscroscope. Photo: AFP
The WHO's assistant director general for health security and the environment, Keiji Fukuda, told a Riyadh news conference on Sunday the new virus posed an "important and major challenge" for countries affected and the world generally.
He said experts were still grappling to understand all aspects of the virus and how humans become infected, stressing, however, that "this new virus is not the SARS virus."
"This is a new infection and there are also many gaps in our knowledge that will inevitably take time to fill in," a WHO statement cited Mr Fukuda as saying.
"Of most concern, however, is the fact that the different clusters seen in multiple countries increasingly support the hypothesis that when there is close contact this novel coronavirus can transmit from person-to-person," he said.
"This pattern of person-to-person transmission has remained limited to some small clusters, and so far, there is no evidence that this virus has the capacity to sustain generalised transmission in communities."
The world is unprepared for a massive virus outbreak, the deputy chief of the World Health Organisation warned on Tuesday, amid fears that H7N9 bird flu striking China could morph into a form that spreads easily among people.
Keiji Fukuda told delegates at a WHO meeting that despite efforts since an outbreak of another form of avian influenza, H1N1, in 2009-10, far more contingency planning was essential.
Rapid-reaction systems were crucial, given that health authorities’ efforts are already hampered by lack of knowledge about such diseases, he insisted.“Even though work has been done since that time, the world is not ready for a large, severe outbreak,” Fukuda said.
“When people get hit with an emerging disease, you can’t just go to a book and know what to do,” he said.
According to the latest official data, H7N9 avian influenza has infected 130 people in China, and killed 35, since it was found in humans for the first time in March.
It is one of a vast array of flu viruses carried by birds, the overwhelming majority of which pose little or no risk to humans.
Experts are struggling to understand how it spread to people, amid fears that it could adapt into a form that can be transmitted easily from human to human.
H7N9 bird flu appears contained, UN health experts say
International experts praise China's efforts, but note outbreak has cost economy US$6.5b
Chinese Health Mininster Li Bin. Photo: Xinhua
The H7N9 virus appears to have been brought under control in China largely due to restrictions at bird markets, but caused some US$6.5 billion in losses to the economy, UN experts said.
Health authorities worldwide must be on the lookout to detect the virus, which could still develop the ability to spread easily among humans and cause a deadly influenza pandemic, the experts said.
The new bird flu virus is known to have infected 130 people in mainland China since emerging in March, including 36 who died, but no cases have been detected since early May, Health Minister Li Bin told the World Health Organisation.
One case was found in Taiwan in April, making a total of 131.
"The immediate outbreak has been controlled, but it is also unlikely that virus has simply disappeared. We believe we need go another autumn/winter/spring season to know," said Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director general for health security.
"We also have high concern over the potential, I stress the potential, to gain the ability to sustain transmissibility."
There was no evidence of sustained spread among people and "most cases probably resulted from infected poultry or perhaps contamination related to live poultry markets", Fukuda said.
Drug-resistant strains of H7N9 bird flu discovered
A worker catches a live chicken at a poultry market in Shanghai, China on April 5, 2013. /AP PHOTO
Drug-resistant cases of a deadly new strain of bird flu have been identified.
In a study published in The Lancet on May 28, researchers detailed three patients with the new avian flu strain that's hit China, known as H7N9, whose sickness could not be treated by Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and similar drugs.
"The apparent ease with which antiviral resistance emerges in A/H7N9 viruses is concerning; it needs to be closely monitored and considered in future pandemic response plans," the authors wrote.
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Two new viruses threaten global outbreaks
H7N9 is the name for a subtype of influenza viruses that is often found in birds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, a new H7N9 strain discovered in China looks different from previous strains. Prior to this China strain, H7N9 had never been detected in humans. TheWorld Health Organization said 131 people have been infected with the new bird flu as of May 24, including 36 deaths.
There is no solid evidence yet of human-to-human transmission, though there is concern the virus can mutate to a strain spread more easily among people.
Malware may knock thousands off Internet on Monday
By LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite repeated alerts, tens of thousands of Americans may still lose their Internet service Monday unless they do a quick check of their computers for malware that could have taken over their machines more than a year ago.
The warnings about the Internet problem have been splashed across Facebook and Google. Internet service providers have sent notices, and the FBI set up a special website.
According to the FBI, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April. About 64,000 still-infected computers are probably in the United States.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority said about 25,000 of the computers initially affected by the malware were in Canada, but now only about 7,000 machines remain infected there, according to Canadian Internet Registration Authority spokesman Mark Buell.
He said his organization, together with Public Safety Canada and the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, has developed an online site where computer users can check their computers for the malware.
People whose computers are still infected Monday will lose their ability to go online, and they will have to call their service providers for help deleting the malware and reconnecting to the Internet.
The problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of more than 570,000 infected computers around the world. When the FBI went in to take down the hackers late last year, agents realized that if they turned off the malicious servers being used to control the computers, all the victims would lose their Internet service.
In a highly unusual move, the FBI set up a safety net. They brought in a private company to install two clean Internet servers to take over for the malicious servers so that people would not suddenly lose their Internet.
And while it was the first time they'd done something like that, FBI officials acknowledged that it may not be the last, since authorities are taking on more of these types of investigations.
The temporary Internet system they set up, however, will be shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT Monday, July 9.
Most victims don't even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their online surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.
But popular social networking sites and Internet providers have gotten more involved, reaching out to computer users to warn of the problem.
According to Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent, many Internet providers are ready for the problem and have plans to try to help their customers. Some, such as Comcast, already have reached out.
The company sent out notices and posted information on its website. Because the company can tell whether there is a problem with a customer's Internet server, Comcast sent an email, letter or Internet notice to customers whose computers appeared to be affected.
Grasso said other Internet providers may come up with technical solutions that they will put in place Monday that will either correct the problem or provide information to customers when they call to say their Internet isn't working. If the Internet providers correct the server problem, the Internet will work, but the malware will remain on victims' computers and could pose future problems.
In addition to individual computer owners, about 50 Fortune 500 companies are still infected, Grasso said.
Both Facebook and Google created their own warning messages that showed up if someone using either site appeared to have an infected computer. Facebook users would get a message that says, "Your computer or network might be infected," along with a link that users can click for more information.
Google users got a similar message, displayed at the top of a Google search results page. It also provides information on correcting the problem.
To check whether a computer is infected, users can visit a website run by the group brought in by the FBI: http://www.dcwg.org .
The site includes links to respected commercial sites that will run a quick check on the computer, and it also lays out detailed instructions if users want to actually check the computer themselves.
___
Associated Press writer Charmaine Noronha in Toronto contributed to this report.
"We have received multiple reports that a new, convincing, and dangerous worm and phishing scam is making the rounds on Twitter. Hacked accounts are sending DMs to users and stealing their login information. In fact, one of our own has received one of these direct messages....
...If you get this DM, DO NOT VISIT THE LINK. It takes you to a replica of the Twitter() login page where the hackers will steal your account and use it to send out more infected DMs to your friends." -- Mashable
"Thelatest one, a worm called Koobface, has hit all the social networks, includingFacebook, MySpace, hi5, Bebo and Twitter, and can riddle your network with malware,spyware and can steal sensitive data right from your workstations’ hard drives.Like past generations of computer bugs, Koobface wants to not only infect yourcomputer, but then use you as a jumping off point to infect others. But unlike past viruses, Koobface and similarnew malware programs are leveraging your company’s social network account toreach out and infect your online friends and business associates.
“Somewherein the world there are some guys sitting around and dreaming up things thatwill make you click on a link,” said Chip Reaves, global director of ComputerTroubleshooters, the largest international network of outsourced IT providersthat offers onsite computer services to small businesses. “Koobface’s most effective way to spread isto send links to your friends with text like ‘I can’t believe it’s you in thisvideo – were you sober? LOL!’ Koobface combines state-of-the-art software whichcan infect your computer in multiple ways with these creative lures designed tomake you want to click on the infected links. It’s pretty insidious.” -- Booty Daily
View full sizeA duck stands near a warning sign at an amusement park in Beijing, China, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Scientists taking a first look at the genetics of the bird flu strain that recently killed two men in China said Wednesday the virus could be harder to track than its better-known cousin H5N1 because it might be able to spread silently among poultry without notice. The bird virus also seems to have adapted to be able to be able to sicken mammals like pigs. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)By 
By | Associated Press