Showing posts with label 4/5/2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4/5/2013. Show all posts

Friday, April 05, 2013

Blog 8, H7N9 in China


On Thursday, April 4th, it was confirmed that there are 14 cases of the H7N9 flu in China. Six of these cases were fatal. This is weird because federal health officials have been making a vaccine for it, but were really only working on it as a precaution. People are still trying to see if the flu is transmitted through people, or birds, since wild birds previously carried it. 
The vaccine is being rushed, even though it takes a month to make. But even after the vaccine is made, it still has to be tested on ferrets. It will still take a few more days after that to see if the ferrets get sick.
It is hard to see how dangerous this flu is, because even through their have been reported and fatal cases, these could be the only ones that are serious enough to be taken to a hospital.

This article repeats itself a lot. The question that I have about this topic is, if the virus came from animals, is it still a social problem? I ask this because in that case, the problem would not have started between people, it would have started in animals! Another social problem in this article is the fact that it is going to take the vaccine over a month to be made! This could cause several deaths in China due to the flu! The final problem here is that there could be a great number of people not reporting they have the flu because their can't or don't feel the need to go to the doctor. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/asia/cdc-has-begun-work-on-vaccine-for-new-china-flu.html?ref=health&_r=0

Emma Starnes
9:25am, 4/5/2013