All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Michigan: Two More Fairs Report Swine Influenza In Pigs

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Last Sunday, in Deja Flu: Pigs With Swine Influenza At Fowlerville Family Fair (Michigan), we saw – for the second year in a row – show pigs at the Livingston County Fair test positive for Swine Influenza.  

While we’ve yet to hear of any human infections from this year’s fair, in 2018, at least two Fowlerville fair attendees were diagnosed with Swine Variant Influenza. 

Since then, two more fairs in Michigan have reported sick pigs.  The Eastern Michigan Fair and the Mid-Michigan Fair (see Pigs test positive for swine flu at Mid-Michigan fair).

Once again, no human illnesses have been reported, but surveillance and testing – particularly for mild cases – is limited.

So far in 2019, we’ve only seen one swine variant case (see CDC FluView Week 21: 1 Novel (H1N1v) Flu Infection – Michigan) – which was reported last May in an adult > 65 years of age (also) from Michigan, who, a bit unusually, reported no recent contact with live pigs.

While cases are likely seriously under-counted, over the past 15 years we’ve seen more than 460 confirmed human infections with these swine-origin flu viruses, with 2/3rds of those reported in 2012.

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Swine Variant Human Cases : 2010-2018  – Credit CDC

The CDC’s general risk assessment of these swine variant (H1N1v, H1N2v, H3N2v) viruses reads:

CDC Assessment

Sporadic infections and even localized outbreaks among people with variant influenza viruses may occur. All influenza viruses have the capacity to change and it’s possible that variant viruses may change such that they infect people easily and spread easily from person-to-person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to monitor closely for variant influenza virus infections and will report cases of H3N2v and other variant influenza viruses weekly in FluView and on the case count tables on this website

Although most people who contract swine variant influenza will only experience mild to moderate illness, and these viruses haven’t (so far) developed the ability to spread in an efficient and sustained manner in the community, the CDC takes these outbreaks very seriously.

Severe illnesses have occurred, requiring hospitalization, and a couple of deaths have been reported.  And of course, there is always the possibility that one of these viruses could someday evolve into being more easily transmissible in humans.

H3N2 Variant:[A/Indiana/08/11] is among the 16 novel viruses currently being  tracked by the CDC’s IRAT (Influenza Risk Assessment Tool) Rankings, and while its severity would likely be low-to-moderate, it has the third highest `emergence score (n=6.0) on their list. 

Since the influenza subtypes that commonly circulate in swine (H1, H2 & H3) are also the same HA subtypes as have caused all of the human pandemics going back 130 years (see Are Influenza Pandemic Viruses Members Of An Exclusive Club?), when swine variant viruses jump to humans, it tend to get our attention.

Given that three Michigan fairs have already reported sick pigs over the past couple of weeks, its worth revisiting the CDC’s advice for anyone planning on exhibiting pigs, or attending a swine exhibition (below).

Take Action to Prevent the Spread of Flu Between Pigs and People

Pigs can be infected with their own influenza viruses (called swine influenza) that are usually different from human flu viruses. While rare, influenza can spread from pigs to people and from people to pigs. When people get swine flu viruses, it’s usually after contact with pigs. This has happened in different settings, including fairs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends people take the following actions to help prevent the spread of flu between pigs and people.

CDC Recommendations for People with High Risk Factors:

  • Anyone who is at high risk of serious flu complications planning to attend a setting where pigs will be present should avoid pigs and swine barns.
  • People who are at high risk of serious flu complications include children younger than 5 years, people 65 years and older, pregnant women, and people with certain long-term health conditions (like asthma and other lung disease, diabetes, heart disease, weakened immune systems, and neurological or neurodevelopmental conditions).

CDC Recommendations for People Not at High Risk:

  • Don’t take food or drink into pig areas; don’t eat, drink or put anything in your mouth in pig areas.
  • Don’t take toys, pacifiers, cups, baby bottles, strollers, or similar items into pig areas.
  • Avoid close contact with pigs that look or act ill.
  • Take protective measures if you must come in contact with pigs that are known or suspected to be sick. This includes minimizing contact with pigs and wearing personal protective equipment like protective clothing, gloves and masks that cover your mouth and nose when contact is required.
  • Wash your hands often with soap and running water before and after exposure to pigs. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.
  • To further reduce the risk of infection, minimize contact with pigs in the pig barn and arenas.
  • Watch your pig (if you have one) for illness. Call a veterinarian if you suspect illness.
  • Avoid contact with pigs if you have flu symptoms. Wait to have contact with pigs until 7 days after your illness started or until you have been without fever for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications, whichever is longer. If you must have contact with pigs while you are sick, take the protective actions listed above.

People with high risk factors who develop flu symptoms should call a health care provider. Tell them about your high risk factor and any exposure to pigs or swine barns you’ve had recently. Human seasonal flu vaccine will not protect against commonly circulating swine influenza viruses, but prescription influenza antiviral drugs can treat infections with these viruses in people.

For more information, visit Stay Healthy at Animal Exhibits.

 

The Library of Congress Digitizes Over 16,000 Pages of Letters & Speeches from the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and You Can Help Transcribe Them

woohoo!

“Democracy may not exist,” Astra Taylor declares in the title of her new book, “but we’ll miss it when it’s gone.” This inherent paradox, she argues, is not fatal, but a tension with which each era’s democratic movements must wrestle, in messy struggles against inevitable opposition. “Perfect democracy… may not in fact exist and never will, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress toward it, or that what there is of it can’t disappear.”

Taylor is upfront about “democracy’s dark history, from slavery and colonialism to facilitating the emergence of fascism.” But she is equally celebratory of its successes—moments when those who were denied rights marshaled every means at their disposal, from lobbying campaigns to confrontational direct action, to win the vote and better the lives of millions. For all its imperfections, the women’s suffrage movement of the 19th and early 20th century did just that.

It did so—even before electronic mass communication systems—by building international activist networks and forming national associations that took highly-visible action for decades until the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. We can learn how this all came about from the sources themselves, through the “letters, speeches, newspaper articles, personal diaries, and other materials from famed suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”

So reports Mental Floss, describing the Library of Congress’ digital collection of suffragist papers, which includes dozens of famous and less famous activist voices. In one example of both international cooperation and international tension, Carrie Chapman Catt, Anthony’s successor (see a published excerpt of one of her speeches below), describes her experience at the Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Rome. “A more unpromising place for a Congress I never saw,” she wrote, dismayed. Maybe despite herself she reveals that the differences might have been cultural: “The Italian women could not comprehend our disapproval.”

The fractious, often disappointing, relationships between the larger international women’s suffrage movement, the African American women’s suffrage movement, and mostly male Civil Rights leaders in the U.S. are represented by the diaries. letters, notebooks, and speeches of Mary Church Terrell, “a founder of the National Association of Colored Women. These documents shed light on minorities’ laborious suffrage struggles and her own dealings with Civil Rights figures like W.E.B. Du Bois.” (Terrell became an activist in 1892 and lived to fight against Jim Crow segregation in the early 1950s.)

The collection includes “some 16,000 historic papers related to the women’s rights movement alone.” All of them have been digitally scanned, and if you’re eager to dig into this formidable archive, you’re in luck. The Library of Congress is asking for help transcribing so that everyone can read these primary sources of democratic history. So far, reports Smithsonian, over 4200 documents have been transcribed, as part of a larger, crowdsourced project called By the People, which has previously transcribed papers from Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Walt Whitman, and others.

Rather than focusing on an individual, this project is inclusive of what is arguably the main engine of democracy: large-scale social movements—paradoxically the most democratic means of claiming individual rights. Enter the impressive digital collection “Suffrage: Women Fight for the Vote” here, and, if you’re moved by civic duty or scholarly curiosity, sign up to transcribe.

via Mental Floss

Related Content:  

The Women’s Suffrage March of 1913: The Parade That Overshadowed Another Presidential Inauguration a Century Ago

Odd Vintage Postcards Document the Propaganda Against Women’s Rights 100 Years Ago

The Library of Congress Makes Thousands of Fabulous Photos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

The Library of Congress Digitizes Over 16,000 Pages of Letters & Speeches from the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and You Can Help Transcribe Them is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don’t miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooksFree Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Former Shin Bet chief: Netanyahu’s annexation of Area C would lead to “bloodbath”

PNN / Bethlehem

The former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, Yoram Cohen, warned of the annexation of so-called “Area C” in the West Bank to Israel,  would lead to “an unnecessary bloodbath”.

“Steps should be taken to reduce the occupation in the West Bank, improve transportation, improve work, and transfer areas from Area B to Area A, which is entirely under the control of the Palestinian Authority,” Cohen said.

Area B is under Palestinian civilian control and Israeli security control. Area C, which accounts for 60 percent of the West Bank, is under full Israeli control under the Oslo Accords. Earlier this week, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to build 6,000 housing units in Israeli settlements in area C and only 700 housing units for Palestinians.

Cohen referred to the armed clash at the security fence in the eastern Gaza Strip last night, during which Hamas fighter Hani Abu Salah was killed when two officers and two soldiers were moderately wounded. “The state is investing billions in manpower, technology and intelligence to prevent such events. But in this case the work was done well. ”

He added that launching an Israeli attack against the Gaza Strip in the wake of such an operation could lead to another round in which hundreds of rockets were fired at the “Gaza envelope” (the region of Israel surrounding the Gaza strip). “Our deterrence may have been damaged by the fact that we did not want to degenerate into a major battle or a war,” he said.

Cohen added that, during the Gaza offensive in 2014, “we did not know the places of the tunnels on the Israeli side, and we were not able to correctly estimate the intentions of the other side for the war.”

Opinion | Kirsten Gillibrand Is Right: Racism Is About White People – The New York Times

white women in the suburbs that voted for Trump and explain to them what white privilege actually is.” “When their son is walking down the street with a bag of M&Ms in his pocket, wearing a hoodie, his whiteness is what protects him” from being shot, she said, invoking Trayvon Martin. “When their child has a car that breaks down and he knocks on someone’s door for help and the door opens and the help is given, it’s his whiteness that protects him from being shot.” She also made clear that it is not the sole responsibility of candidates of color to talk about racism.

Hundreds Of Migrant Children Separated From Parents End Up In NY. Here’s One Of Their Stories – Gothamist

‘If this separation is justifiable in the eyes of the government, then the government should provide complete information.’

Source: Hundreds Of Migrant Children Separated From Parents End Up In NY. Here’s One Of Their Stories – Gothamist