It was just yesterday that King County Executive Ron Sims said it was likely that Swine Flu – which the World Health Organization (WHO) is now calling H1N1 influenza A – would hit the Puget Sound area, and already three schools in Seattle have closed, including Aki Kurose Middle School in Hillman City.
Madrona K-8 in the Central District was the first to close after an 11-year-old student came down with what officials say is probably H1N1. He had a cough and fever Monday, and his mother kept him home. He was later hospitalized and is recovering. Madrona K-8 is closed for 7 days, and will reopen on May 7.
Today, public health officials recommended that two additional schools be closed. Aki Kurose Middle School and Stevens Elementary will be closed starting tomorrow, Fri., May 1, and will reopen on Fri., May 8.
At this point, all other schools remain open. However, as we’ve seen in the last 48 hours, that can change quickly.
Seattle Public Schools is asking that students from schools closed due to the outbreak not gather outside of school during the week that school is closed:
If students or staff do become ill, avoid contact with others and remain at home from work and school either for 7 days after illness starts or for a full day after the illness is over, whichever is longer. If your symptoms are more severe, call your health care provider to discuss if you need to be seen and evaluated, and tell them about the school closure for swine flu. Read more…
What You Can Do To Prevent the Spread of Swine Flu:
- Sneeze or cough into a tissue, elbow or sleeve. Throw the tissue in the trash after use.
- Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
- If you are sick, stay home.
Symptoms of Swine Flu:
- Fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills, fatigue.
Source: Seattle Public Schools
Related:
- Madrona K-8 Closed as Precaution Against Spreading Swine Flu (4/30/09)
- Sims: Swine Flu Probable; King County Prepared (4/29/09)
Who to know, where to eat & what to do in one of America’s most diverse zip codes!
{ 18 comments }
Swine Flu, Schmine Flu. This isn’t the big pandemic folks. The media is falling all over themselves to manufacture a crisis. The latest reports are that this is a mild flu.
The real problem is the panic and shutting down of Aki Kurose for a week or more. The bulk of our crime is committed by young males aged 13-19 or so between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM. How many young males will be wandering the community for a week with nothing better to do than break into somebody’s house? We can only pray they’re at home in bed with the flu.
Seems the manipulated media wants us to believe we should be afraid of epidemics, so at a later date, we’ll vote for a specific candidate or fear-based legislation that further deprives us of our rights. They are grooming us, apparently. Any news outlet that picks up this story should realize they are participants in this. Catching the flu is normal and common, and easily overcome with common medicine. No need to create global terror in the process.
According to the CDC, approximately 36,000 people die from Influenza each year. Why are we getting so concerned about a fairly mild flu? Media attention/distraction? Never let a “good” crisis go unexploited?
I remember when I was young there was a Swine flu breakout in the 70′s, If I remember correctly lots of people died from it.
We’re on the map!
Actually, this was a hot topic at Beacon Pub last night, and there is clearly still a lot of misinformation out there re H1N1 flu and why it’s different from the seasonal influenza outbreaks we’re used to.
Might want to check out actual FACTS from the CDC instead of the panicked scuttlebutt at your local watering hole.
Swine Flu and You!
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/swineflu_you.htm
Last night I also met a guy who said he shot a guy once in Angie’s over a pool game. I love the South end.
You guys! Cut the conspiracy theory nonsense already. The WORLD Health Organization is monitoring this situation because it has the potential to greatly effect the WORLD. This is not our evil government out to get us. Every country is taking precautions because if they didn’t, and it turns out to be bad, you guys would be whining that no one takes care of us.
The 1918 flu killed 40 million people. Yes, with our fancy hospitals and nice antiviral drugs, the people in this country will probably not take the brunt of it. But the WHO is looking out for less prosperous countries as well.
A quirk of the 1918 flu was that it predominantly killed young, healthy people (unlike your 36,000 thousand of “regular flu” deaths sited above, which are primarily the elderly and health-challenged). Early results from Mexico suggest that this new flu may have that same tendency. So the medical professionals are concerned.
“Cut the conspiracy theory nonsense already. The WORLD Health Organization is monitoring this situation because it has the potential to greatly effect the WORLD. This is not our evil government out to get us. Every country is taking precautions because if they didn’t, and it turns out to be bad, you guys would be whining that no one takes care of us.”
Can I get an AMEN? Thank you, Susan. You boys would do well to zip it and listen to a mom for a change.
Looks like we’ve left town for the right weekend…although I admit down here in SF we’ve seen our fair share of face masks walking around. I’d much rather have the middle schoolers stay home for a week than risk getting sick.
I can definitely see the correlation between this flu and other pandemics – Susan noted the most major point in the last paragraph of her comment – but we also need to recognize that in countries with health care advantages this strain of influenza isn’t a killer.
The situation reminds me of cow pox, which was a less deadly precurser to small pox and, if contracted, made one immune to small pox. It was a risky thing to do, but it worked, and spawned the first use of the word “vaccinated” by Edward Jenner.
…and no, I’m not saying that we should all run out and contract swine flu – just noting the correlation!
“This is not our evil government out to get us. ”
Please allow me to challenge your opinion with an article written by someone who recently worked for the most powerful and wealthy people in the world. If you read this, truly understand it, and still say our government has our best interests at heart without a doubt, I have to say you’re clearly ignoring overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The gentleman who wrote this article is a former researcher for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and has a PhD in economics from MIT. Since you probably don’t know what the IMF is, let me just say that the IMF represents the private interests who are wealthy enough to fund most of the governments that are in existence, to keep them running. This includes our own government (the people who run the IMF also control our Federal Reserve banks).
This is not about any single “evil” government but an international group of financiers who are working for their own benefit, and not yours. They also control most of the mainstream media throughout the world, as they own controlling stakes in most of it, so please question your sources of information.
Please read –
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
The IMF is evil.
Finally, somebody else is taking up my cause! We are no longer living in a Democracy but an Oligarchy. Our government, like many contemporary governments, exists to cater to the whims of the titans of industry and the financial elite. The Atlantic feature explains the global & domestic economic system quite well.
As far as conspiracy theories are concerned, this wouldn’t be the first time that governments & nations have attempted to distract the public. SARS was a more serious epidemic than the Swine Flu, so far. However the SARS epidemic didn’t receive the same “pandemic” label. Seems to me there are many nations that would benefit from having a pandemic (or the appearance of a pandemic) to distract from the financial pandemic that has the world fixated on every world leader right now.
(Maybe we’d better check up on what the world leader’s are doing while everyone is focused on Swine Flu?)
I know I have been guilty of digressing on RVP on occasion, but I think correlating the IMF to the current flu outbreak (no pandemic label) is a bit of a stretch.
While you are stewing about conspiracies, there are government and non-government healthcare professionals spending endless days trying to figure out if this flu will become more virulent so that people don’t die. These same people aren’t working hard because they want someone specific in “office”, they are working hard because that’s what they do.
Flu season is over. Healthy people are getting sick when they normally don’t. For precautions sake, experts in the field are working their asses off to respond, to serve their communities.
I wish I could be as certain as you, Whitney. I’ve learned to question authority and never blindly trust what I read or hear from the major-market news sources.
Did you know that our entire news industry is controlled by only five mega-corporations? In the 1980′s, under Ronald Reagan, there were about 50 corporate news companies. In the 1990′s, under Bill Clinton, the number had shrunk to a dozen news agencies. Now, there are only five major news companies in the United States. They decide what news we will hear and how they want to ‘spin’ the news to shape public opinion. You may think you’re getting good information but that would be a mistaken assumption. Try the BBC, you’ll learn more about the United States government by watching the British Broadcasting Corporation. Really.
Back to the flu; were you aware that SARS & Bird Flu were potentially much more frightening viruses? Perhaps you’ll recall the widespread slaughter of domestically-raised chickens and other fowl in China? Nobody is slaughtering swine in Mexico or the U.S. or anywhere else for that matter. If you glean your news tidbits carefully you’ll find that the Swine Flu ‘pandemic’ has been ongoing for months in Mexico. Patient zero, the little Mexican boy, isn’t the real patient zero after all. The current Swine Flu is just not proving to be as deadly as the media has portrayed it. So, why isn’t the news moving on to new topics? Why is Swine Flu leading every news cycle? It’s a question worth asking.
The new Swine Flu is a variant of a Swine Flu virus that we’ve seen before. Sure, there are differences in the new flu but that’s what flu is all about —it evolves and survives to infect new hosts. Any new flu poses the same risks of evolving and becoming a super flu. That’s what viruses do. You have to wonder, why is THIS flu so special? I don’t have the answer. However the timing is very interesting.
History is good teacher. The invasion of Grenada back in 1983 has long been believed to be cooked up to distract the public’s attention from Ronald Reagan’s huge blunder in Beirut when he ignored terrorist threats and 241 Marines were killed. The invasion of the tiny caribbean island of Grenada happened 48 hours later. Nobody paid any attention to Reagan’s blunder in Beirut because we were fighting in Grenada.
Maybe the corporate-owned media is just tired of all the bad economic news? Or, perhaps there is reason to distract the public from our financial woes? Has anybody taken a close look at the legislation that’s pending before congress during the last few days? Pending a vote in the next few days? You know there’s some weighty legislation before congress and the American people should be paying attention. Maybe the corporate news wants the public to focus on something else for awhile? It’s plausible. Who knows why the only news is wall-to-wall coverage of a pretty ordinary flu?
One thing is certain, the American people are sheep and easily led astray.
“Wag the Dog”, you know? It’s just something to consider.
I usually point people to the article below which outlines in detail the numerous government programs that have existed (and still exist) solely for the purpose of manipulating public perception.
The mainstream media is most definitely complicit in these types of programs. If you still trust the “headline news” from big media (including the AP articles picked up by local news), you should do a little digging around.
Please read: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm
…to get you started on this topic… and yes, this most definitely relates to swine flu. Or, at least, the likely fabrication of an outbreak.
Working like crazy to address this issue is only helpful if there actually is an issue. Uneducated help can often do more harm than good.
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