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How To Keep Yourself from Being Infected With Swine Flu

Swine flu is an illness which derives its name from a virus that infects pigs. While the virus cannot affect people, they are likely to get an infection from time to time. The virus is communicable and can be transmitted from one person to another.

The symptoms of swine flu are like those manifested in a regular flu and may include cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, fever, chills and fatigue.

The H1N1 virus continues to become widespread in the United States. The Center for Disease Control believes that the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths will continue within the coming days and weeks.

The Center for Disease Control is aggressively responding to the growing outbreak. The objective of the agency is to curb the spread and severity of the illness as well as to inform health care providers, public health officials, and the general public to fend off the challenge by the medical crisis. Likewise, the CDC is giving interim guidance on a daily basis as a response to the rapidly growing crisis.

For treating swine flu, there are antiviral medicines that can be administered. So far, oseltamivir, amantadine, rimantadine, and zanamivir are the approved drugs for swine influenza treatment in the United States.
However, amantadine and rimantadine will not work against swine flu as the H1N1 virus was found to be resistant against these medicines. Laboratory procedures, on the other hand, have proven that H1N1 is susceptible to oseltavimir and zanavimir.

Using antiviral drugs in the treatment of swine influenza works by making your illness milder and making you feel relieved earlier than expected. Aside from that, antiviral medicines prevent the onset of serious complications.

Antiviral medicines are most effective when administered after the onset of the illness usually within a couple of days. However, it should be considered two days after the onset of symptoms, especially for hospitalized patients or those at greater risk for influenza-related complications.

Administration of anti viral drugs is also useful in preventing influenza when given to an individual who is not sick but has exposed to a person with swine influenza.

It can reduce the possibility of infection by 70% to 90%. The duration of intake will be determined by the condition of the patient. Currently, there are no accessible vaccines for protecting against H1N1.

In order to keep yourself from getting infected by the virus, here are some of the things that can be done:

– Keep yourself informed about H1N1. You can visit the official website of the World Health Organization or check brochures from local hospitals or medical facilities.
– Since the influenza virus can be transmitted from one person to another through coughing or sneezing, you can keep yourself busy by doing the following:

– When coughing or sneezing, cover your nose and mouth with a tissue. After using the tissue, dispose of it and throw it in the trash.
– Wash your hands with soap and water after coughing and sneezing. Use alcohol-based hand sanitizers whenever necessary.
– To prevent germs from spreading, refrain from touching your eyes, mouth, or nose.
– If you become ill, the CDC recommends that you avoid contact with other people at work or school so as not to infect them.
– Comply with public health advice concerning school closures, crowd avoidance, and social distancing efforts.

As far as swine flu is concerned, health authorities are doing everything they can to prevent the outbreak of another deadly virus.

H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu)

Responsible for binding the virus to host cells is called the HA (hemagglutinin) peplomer while the virus that allows to break its bonds to the host cell once it is ready to move on is called the NA (neuraminidase) peplomer. This type is also called H1N1 Flu or well-known as Swine Flu. Swine flu is a type of virus infected from pigs. Humans do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen.

But, randomly, the human race got infected with Swine flu. Most frequently, these cases occur in persons with direct exposure to pigs (example: owner and or workers in the swine backyard or industry or even the children near pigs at a fair).

The virus is contagious and can spread from human to human. Symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu such as cough, fever, body aches, sore throat, chills, fatigue and headache.
Swine Flu is a respiratory track infection from the hogs. This kind of virus can kill the human race just like what happen to a pregnant woman and another individual in Texas with also reported death in Washington. This infection is a worldwide virus outbreak that started in Mexico and eventually spread from one country to another continent including China.

A flu deadly disease occurs when a new influenza virus emerges for which people have little or no immunity at all and those whom their hospitals are more than 10 to 20 miles from their community can easily infected with the Swine Flu. The transmission of human to human of Swine flu can also be done.

This is thought to happen in the same way as seasonal flu occurs in people, which is mainly through coughing or sneezing of people infected with the influenza virus to an uninfected individual will be infected also. People may also become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then they touch their mouth or nose. The disease spreads easily by human to human transmission and can be cause with serious sickness, and can spread to other individuals in your community, spread out across the country and even worldwide in a very short period of time.

A big NO-NO to some individuals who think that swine flu can also get from foods we eat. Take note that influenza viruses cannot be transmitted by food by means of eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and properly cooked pork is safe.

Swine Flu can be monitor if you consult to your health officer directly if you are not feeling well for more than 24 hours especially if you have a hog race industry in your backyard. They will advice you on how to plan, prepare and prevent the Swine Flu virus that spread out worldwide.

Don’t Touch That Pork: A Few Swine Flu Truths And

Don’t Touch That Pork: A Few Swine Flu Truths And Myths

With all the wailing and gnashing of teeth involved with the latest flu outbreak, I think it’s time we set a few things straight about the swine flu. Think of it as a little public service announcement just to shock some of you out of that panic and get you thinking straight.

First of all, pork is safe. Yes, I know it’s called swine flu but it’s nothing like mad cow disease. That’s why there’s a flu at the end instead of disease, of course. The disease spreads via the same way normal flu spreads: contact with a contaminated area or person then contact with either the eyes, nose, or mouth of the prospective infected. Cooked pork can’t possibly be ever infected because cooking and preparation make sure that the meat is clean and healthy for consumption. So, yeah, no need to worry about the ham and bacon in the supermarket.

Secondly, there’s a treatment. Zanamivir and oseltamivir are neuroaminidase inhibitors which is a fancy description of what they do; they’re a type of antiviral drugs that inhibits cell reproduction of viruses so that they won’t spread in the patient’s body. The Center for Disease Control has highly recommended their use for the treatment and control of the disease. Actually, if you find yourself sick, you can do initial treatment via the normal over-the-counter antibiotics that you use when dealing with the normal flu. These can help make the symptoms more bearable and help your body resist the disease better. Those and quite a bit of bed rest can go a long way to make you feel better.

Thirdly, it’s not gonna kill us all. Even at the height of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, with its more than fifty million worldwide death count, the human race wasn’t exactly in danger. Plagues and diseases have been a part of human civilization and history for years. Humans have a way of surviving and infections eventually burn out, one of the disadvantages of killing your hosts too quickly. The bodycount may pile high but no natural disease can eliminate the human species that easily. Besides, like I mentioned earlier, it is treatable and you can recover from it.

Fourth, it’s not that contagious. Okay, yeah, it’s contagious, but like all diseases it has its particular infection vectors and if you know those vectors, a disease can easily be avoided. In this case, swine flu it may be, but it’s still the flu. This means it spreads through the contact points I said earlier. Regularly washing your hands before eating is a step in the right direction and, also, not hanging around sick people, though that one should be pretty obvious.

Fifth, it’s still the flu. The description maybe a bit vague and the name exotic, but it’s still the flu in the beginning. You’ll know you’re from it the same way you know you’re sick from the flu: colds, coughs, chills, and fatigue. That’s the initial stuff though. If you were smart, you’d have taken your antibiotics and lessened the effects. If you’re okay after a few days, that was just the normal flu. However, if the symptoms persist, and you start to vomit or start to suffer from diarrhea, then it’s swine flu and you better call for a doctor.

Well, that’s all then. Hopefully, these bits of information help clear up a few things about the swine flu and help you to undestand the currect situation the world is in.

An Overview of Swine Flu

Swine flu or influenza is a condition caused by strains of subtypes of Influenza A virus called H1N1, H1N2, H3N1, H3N2, and H3N3. These viruses are common in pigs located in midwestern United States, Canada, South America, Mexico, Mainland China, Japan, Taiwan, Europe, and other Eastern Asian countries.

Transmission of influenza virus from swine to humans is relatively uncommon and does not always result to human influenza but often leads to production of antibodies in the blood. When properly cooked, pig meat does not have the potential of passing the virus. Transmission that leads to human influenza is called zoonotic swine flu.

People who work with pigs, particularly those with direct exposure, are at greater risk of being infected with swine flu. Towards the middle of the 20th century, identification of influenza subtypes became likely paving the way for an accurate diagnosis of transmission to humans. Since then, 50 infections have been confirmed and recorded.

It is rare for these strains of swine flu to be transmitted from one human to another. In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to common influenza as well as influenza-like illness such as chills, sore throat, fever, coughing, muscular pains, severe headache, and general discomfort.
The 2009 swine flu outbreak in humans was caused by a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 which have genes that closely resemble swine influenza. The root of this new strain is not known. According to the World Health Organization for Animal Health, this new strain has not been isolated in pigs. It is capable of human-to-human transmission and manifests the normal symptoms of influenza.

Swine can be infected with human influenza such as the case of the 1918 flu pandemic and the 2009 flu outbreak. Swine flu was first proposed as a disease associated with humans during the 1918 flu pandemic. During that time, pigs became simultaneously sick with humans.

Influenza virus as a cause of disease in pigs was first identified in 1930. For the next six decades, strains of swine influenza became almost exclusively H1N1. From 1997 to 2002, new strains of three varied subtypes and 5 different genotypes were identified as the cause of influenza among pigs in North America.

From 1997-1998, H3N2 strains developed. They included genes acquired through reassortment of human, avian, and swine viruses and have been a principal cause of wine influenza in North America. Reassortment between H1N1 and H3N2 resulted to the development of H1N2. In Canada, a strain of H4N6 resulted from the reassortment of avian and swine flu but was isolated on a single farm.

The H1N1 variant of swine flu is one of the descendants of the strain that brought about the 1918 flu pandemic. While persisting in pigs, the descendants of the 1918 virus have also been transmitted throughout the 20th century which resulted to the usual seasonal influenza outbreaks.
It is interesting to note that direct infection from pigs to humans is rare, with only 12 confirmed cases in the United States since 2005.

However, since the influenza strains remain in the pigs after they have disappeared in the human population can make these pigs a reservoir where the influenza virus could survive and later on transmitted to humans as soon as their immunity to the strain is no longe effective.

Swine flu has been recorded as zoonosis in humans several times, oftentimes with limited distribution and rarely with massive distribution. Swine outbreaks are common and can lead to significant economic losses in the industry, mainly leading to stunting and expanded market time. Swine influneza, for instance, the British meat industry has experienced 65 million of losses annually.