Swine flu: You may be contagious longer than you think

Part of the public-health mantra for dealing with the H1N1 flu pandemic is the recommendation that patients remain isolated while the illness runs its course. Experts have estimated that is about seven days. Others recommend that people remain isolated for an additional 24 hours after the fever is gone (without the use of fever-reducing medication), as detailed in Monday's L.A. Times special health section on flu. But a new study suggests that people with H1N1 flu may be contagious longer than previous suspected.

Researchers in Quebec studied 44 people across a variety of ages who had confirmed cases of novel H1N1 influenza (swine flu) last spring. On the eighth day of illness, a nasal swab was taken to check for virus levels. Among all age groups, from 45% to 75% still tested positive on flu tests, and 19% were still shedding replicating virus -- meaning germs that can infect others.

The study suggests that the isolation period for H1N1 patients is seven to 10 days, said Dr. Gaston de Serres, the lead author of the study, from Laval University in Quebec.

"Policies on how long should people stay home are difficult," de Serres said. "With seasonal influenza, normally after a week the contagiousness is gone. H1N1 appears to be shed longer in all age groups, but not much longer. ... I think the key message here is for those who would want to stay home for just a couple of days, that is likely to be insufficient. I think this study shows you are not contagious for just a day or two but probably for a week."

The study was presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco.

-- Shari Roan

Comments

[BARB]

http://www.rense.com/general86/dngers.htm

There has been a tremendous rush (called "fast-tracked") to get these vaccines on the market. The tests they have done were only a few days to a few weeks long. This is totally insufficient time to determine any realistic, long-term, and potentially hazardous immune responses. Nothing has been done in any responsible manner. There is absolutely no Precautionary Principle (first do no harm) in place. What we have, first and foremost, are both out-of-control greed and scare tactics. These are directed to uninformed citizens, while the international pharmaceutical companies will make billions of dollars, with the very real potential of enormous harm to millions of victims is looming ever closer.

We all are their experimental lab rats. There is no concern about harming or killing anyone, because the companies (GlaxoSmithKline, Baxter, and Novartis, and others) have been indemnified by the government, so that there is absolutely no recourse for any deaths or injuries these vaccines may cause. Why would they do that, if these vaccines were safe? What secret and criminal plans were done behind closed doors to hatch this real X-Files plot? From investigative reports by Jane Burgermeister, Dr. A. True Ott, and Canadian doctor Ghislaine Lanctôt (author of "Medica Mafia"), it appears that there is criminal collusion between officials in the US government, WHO/UN, and the pharmaceutical corporations.(1)

(SNIP)

Here are some historical reminders of past flu epidemics. They were all contrived and created in some hidden laboratory.

The vaccine used in the mandated 1976 supposed swine flu "epidemic" caused the deaths of 2,000 people before it was removed; and 4,000 filed injury law suits. Before that, it was the Salk polio vaccine, also fast-tracked with $9-million of tax-payer money, to inoculate 57-million Americans before it was even proved to be safe to use. And it wasn't. African green monkey kidney tissue was used to grow the polio virus; and it proved to have long-term and deadly effects. In 1955, the "British Medical Journal warned against the used of the Salk polio vaccine."(2) The warning, and there were others as well, was ignored. Before genetic engineering opened a Pandora's Box, this vaccine "was an uncontrolled experiment in interspecies viral transmission."(3) Long-term, but not known then (in the financial rush to get this vaccine produced), the use of this monkey's tissue was to be the cause of cancers detected much later. This cancer-causing monkey virus, known as SV40 (still debated in some medical circles) is documented in "The Virus and the Vaccine: The true story of a cancer-causing monkey virus, contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the millions of Americans Exposed."(4)