Mystery illness

[N.o.R.S.u 0]

Newest case is thought to be here in Finland . Middle-aged woman who came back from holiday in Vietnam has similar symptoms. Although what I've heard from the news, doctors don't really believe she has the illness.

[KingBeast 0]

I would imagine the illness will spread al lvoer the place. Even in little finland

Really its amazing, before OFP i had never really heard much about finland and had never spoken to finns before, but now I see Fins every which way I turn

How are medical facilities in finland? I would assume that they are quite good, seems to be my general stereotypical view on Scandinavian countries that they have impeccably clean hospitals and such. Probably just the shiny sterile looking furniture from ikea

I do wonder how different countries would be able to handle this illness if it exploded into a full scale pandemic. Horrible to imagine how bad it would be in the lesser economically developed countries.

[Renagade 0]

strict quarintine and sectoring would be the way to go i`d imagine.

[R. Gerschwarzenge 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KingBeast @ Mar. 18 2003,22:27)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">How are medical facilities in finland? I would assume that they are quite good, seems to be my general stereotypical view on Scandinavian countries that they have impeccably clean hospitals and such.<span id='postcolor'>

Yes they are quite good here.

Edit: Maybe I should say that they were good.

[Oligo 1]

And some answers:

1. Why do antiviral drugs cost so much?

Antiviral drugs (not counting vaccines) are all relatively new inventions and thus they are covered by patents possessed by medical companies. The companies sell the drugs with high prices, because they want to cover the ridiculously high costs (thanks to paranoid legislation) associated with developing new drugs and getting them approved for use. Before you go calling the companies greedy bastards, you should realize that most of the money made by the companies with high-priced new drugs go towards the development of the miracle drugs of tomorrow. If new drugs were sold with the price of aspirin, no new drugs would get developed anymore in the future.

2. Antibiotics and hormones

Somebody mixed these two. Antibiotics are a class of small molecules, which kill or prevent the growth of bacteria. Hormones are small molecules, which humans and other animals use for signalling purposes inside the body. Different parts of human body react differently to different hormones circulating in the body (for example even degenerated male mammary glands react to pregnancy hormones by growing tits).

If antibiotics are fed to livestock, traces of the drug (antibiotics are long-lived, stable compounds) can contaminate meat and other products (like milk) derived from the animals if proper safety periods are not observed (taking time for the drug to break up). If people eat the products, they might get allergic reactions and other untowards effects.

If hormones are fed to livestock, they rarely contaminate meat or milk, since proper safety periods are almost always observed (hormones are used during the infancy and youth of the animals). However, the hormones used in animal treatment and incidentally also in the human contraceptive pill are not the natural molecules, but synthetic derivatives, which are more stable than the natural versions. Thus piss of treated animals and females contains loads of the synthetic hormones, which then proceed on to contaminate the environment.

3. Is Al-Qaeda behind the new pneumonia?

Let me put it this way: If some Al-Qaeda scientist indeed has managed to put together a whole new paramykso virus, I would really want to talk to him. The methods he has been using must be revolutionary and I'm sure he could get his work published in any respectable science journal. So hard would it be for ANYBODY currently to develop a whole new virus, especially in some secret terrorist lab.

4. Are medical facilities in Finland great?

No they are not. Due to the "professionalism" of our government, formerly good finnish health care has degenerated to poor levels compared to average european standards. Go SDP.

[foxer 0]

Once again,some european went in a jungle an had sex with monkies. Just kidding.

Anyways,if you don't get my point.That's how aids got started.Someone in africa mostly likely ate some rare monkey meat,and got aids.He had sex with someone,then some european came down,had sex,then he went back up,then he had sex with an another european.Then it spread it.Well atleast that's how i think aids came about.

[Balschoiw 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Once again,some european went in a jungle an had sex with monkies. Just kidding.<span id='postcolor'>

Ummm...

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Earliest Evidence of HIV Infection in the United States

Although AIDS was not recognized as a new clinical syndrome until 1981, researchers examining the earlier medical literature identified cases appearing to fit the AIDS surveillance definition as early as the 1950s and 1960s.(12) Frozen tissue and serum samples were available for one of these possible early AIDS cases, a 15-year-old black male from St. Louis who was hospitalized in 1968 and died of an aggressive, disseminated KS.(13) His tissue and serum specimens were HIV-antibody positive on Western blot and antigen-positive on ELISA. This appears to be the first confirmed case of HIV infection in the United States. The patient had no history of travel out of the country, so it is likely that some other persons in the United States were infected with HIV as long ago as the 1960s, if not earlier.

<span id='postcolor'>

US citizen got popped in his backyard by an african monkey ?

You really need to shape up:

http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite.jsp?page=KB

[Oligo 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (foxer @ Mar. 19 2003,12:37)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Anyways,if you don't get my point.That's how aids got started.Someone in africa mostly likely ate some rare monkey meat,and got aids.He had sex with someone,then some european came down,had sex,then he went back up,then he had sex with an another european.Then it spread it.Well atleast that's how i think aids came about.<span id='postcolor'>

Yes, damn those euros. First of all they are such wimps. They also go to Africa and have sex with monkeys. What's wrong with them?

Furthermore they invent things like communism, nazism, stalinism, fascism, pacifism and so forth.

The true hub of the axis of evil is surely europe, that land of pure evil. Prez. Bush should liberate the people of europe and educate them in the ways of God.

[Renagade 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (foxer @ Mar. 19 2003,12:37)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Once again,some european went in a jungle an had sex with monkies. Just kidding.

Anyways,if you don't get my point.That's how aids got started.Someone in africa mostly likely ate some rare monkey meat,and got aids.He had sex with someone,then some european came down,had sex,then he went back up,then he had sex with an another european.Then it spread it.Well atleast that's how i think aids came about.<span id='postcolor'>

mna,there are plenty of conspiracy theories on where aids came from and how it spread to places

[foxer 0]

I was just kidding about sex with monkies...

However though,Aids is an monkey disease.I'm thinking that some european(other) explorer went down to africa.He then had sex with an african or ate rare/cook monkey meat,or Got rape by a monkey,other stuff.Now whatever happen he went back to europe,or the US,and had sex or some type of blood transfer.Most likely there was lots of explorers ,even american ones,that did the samething.Ok now we go to the 1960s.This is the decade aids took off i believe ,because of hippies,drugs,sex with lots of partners.

Anyways thats the way i think it happen.

[Oligo 1]

Actually there were some vaccinations way back around sixties. The vaccines were prepared from monkey blood. Now which is more likely: Some of the monkeys carried simian HIV virus thus contaminating the vaccines or some simian HIV carrying monkey raped an explorer or got raped by one?

[theavonlady 2]

HK Hospital Chief Ill with Pneumonia, Fears Spread

*cough*

[theavonlady 2]

IT'S SPREADING

[second_draw 0]

Are all the fatalities elderly? I know that here(australia) there are quite a few people who die from the common flu but this is only because they are older and their bodies aren't what they used to be. Big difference between super viruses and hardy viruses. This quote seems to say something about this:

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">...said he had notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of one case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) although the affected person was now well and had not infected anyone else.....<span id='postcolor'>

[SFG 1]

Ah, **** its in my state now..

2 confimed suspected cases of SARS

http://www.wpecnews12.com/engine.....ry.html

[Tex -USMC- 0]

I'm feeling very above it all at this point. Apparently this SARS has flu symptoms, spreads like the flu, kills less people than the flu, and it isn't actually the flu. I gotta say, I'm not too worried.

[Longinius 1]

Some 3500+ people diagnosed with it so far. 104 dead.

[Warin 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tex [uSMC] @ April 09 2003,06:36)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I'm feeling very above it all at this point. Apparently this SARS has flu symptoms, spreads like the flu, kills less people than the flu, and it isn't actually the flu. I gotta say, I'm not too worried.<span id='postcolor'>

What sort of gives me pause when I think like that (And I do think like that for the most part) is that I bet people were saying that in 1918 when the Influenza Pandemic started.

I am not trying to be a fear monger, but with the way people travel and live, another pandemic could well be coming. I think one should take the current SARS scare with a grain of salt, but also remember that nature has a sick sense of humour.

[theavonlady 2]

Let's play conspiracy.

And..........................

Do sharp dressers survive longer?

[Die Alive 0]

yahoo oddly enough

Forgive me father for I have SARS!

-=Die Alive=-

[peanuckle_00 0]

U.S. Beef gives you tits, LMAO.

[Oligo 1]

The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed 20 million people, although the virus that caused it killed only 2% of those it infected. SARS, however, kills 5% of those it infects, being equally easy-spreading as influenza (it is thought that a single canadian woman with SARS managed to infect up to 500 people). Thus, in a case of a pandemic of SARS, we're probably facing more fatalities than with the epidemic of 1918.

Yeah, let's panic.

[-iCeMaN- 0]

MeH, I don't really give a damn about SARS. People these days are so paranoid, not going to chinese stores and wearing gas masks and being so damn precautious. And plus, where I live, the chance of g..ett..ing..SAR..S is...o God..can't feel...legs....trachea...closing..in on it..self....can't....breathe......BLA

[foxer 0]

5% is high for all the drugs we have now in days.But Then again,think about china Billion people,everyone living soo close.Compact cities will have most of the problems,Atleast that's what i think.I doubt it would be a problem for cities that is spread out.

[IsthatyouJohnWayne 0]

Massive paranoia over terrorism leading to draconian measures by western governments, the possibility of a massive outbreak of an untreatable virus with strong links to Hong Kong and the far east that could concievably kill millions. A coverup of the extent and seriousness of the disease.

And thats just Deus Ex   .

I have have to hand it to those guys in Austin, they really hit the nail on the head in relation to the main concerns of the early years of the new millenium.

( well apart from the whole New World Order, Illuminati /AI as god thing.Obviously.(?) )

SARS then

I dont really feel at all vulnerable here in the UK(at the moment).We've had what- 1 reported case here? . If i regularly used central London transport or international airports maybe id feel differently but my small though growing concern is that im due to be going on a major trip to Toronto (and a few other places in Canada and N.America) in about 3 months.

As you may know the World Health Organisation has added Toronto to a list of cities to avoid .

Well three months is a fairly long time and as i see it the disease is likely to either escalate and get worse in that time  (in which case 'oh sh¬t' in advance) or the threat will slowly start to recede(in which case '....cautious yaying' ).

As luck would have it there was just a special TV news report on about the SARS situation in Toronto, but as luck would have it that report was cut off after a few seconds due to sound faults.

So seeing as there are a few proud (Canadian style)

Maple leafers here , i just thought id ask how it looks from that end.

Do you live in or near the Toronto area? Do you feel safe?