Disease in Ukraine?
 

So I'm a little curious about something. I was listening to a talk show on the radio this morning and they talked about a serious plague going on in the Ukraine. It sounded interesting so I looked it up. I found reports that a disease was starting to spread near the end of October. Then, maybe a week later, the health minister said that nearly 200,000 people had contracted the disease and thousands were in hospitals being treated. This article was from the first few days of November.

Ukraine Mystery Outbreak Sparks WHO Concern as Disease Spreads - Bloomberg.com

There was another article from November 5th about how the WHO was trying to play it off as just being H1N1, which it probably isn't. At this point, 500000 people were sick. Though I'm not sure about the validity of this article.

WHO Continues To Deceive: Assumes That Ukraine Plague Is H1N1 Swine Flu

The last article I found was from the Kyiv Post on a blog entry dated the 16th, and stated 1.25 million people were sick and had acute respiratory problems. And the disease it looks like might be something called H5N1.

H5N1: Ukraine succumbs to "Supari's disease"

My question is, what the **** is going on? That means over the course of maybe 3 weeks, well over 1 million people contracted a disease and I haven't even heard about it here in the US? Does anyone over in Europe know what's going on there? It appears any news dropped off after that last article, from what I can find... Seems kinda scary to me.

That is a little perplexing and unnerving as I haven't heard a damn thing about it till now and I check my news updates once an hour if I'm on my my computer. Good on your for digging to find these articles. My rational side is saying that there's a lot of news from that area that never sees the light of day in North America, I mean the genocide in Darfur barely made it in some of the newspapers I use to read, so why should this? Of course then you look at the numbers and something that big should've been reported about here earlier. Then my conspiracy side is saying the reason the media isn't reporting it is because they've done a lot of damage making people believe they'll die if they shake someone's hand, something like this might send them over the edge. I tell you though, it doesn't help that I'm currently reading World War Z and the way the zombie virus started was a lot like this... just sayin'

It's been on the news here, but I don't know much more about it than what you summed up.

In the norwegian news article I read, some doctor from the Ukraine said the lungs were black like they'd been burned when they sliced some dead people open. Doctors there seem to think it's not the influenza virus but something else.

For those who don't want to read articles.

Yeah I found that video after posting that too... I wouldn't mind even if I knew about the strange lung thing to be honest. What concerns me is the rate of infection and the fact that all coverage of any sort seems to have disappeared. I mean, over 1 million people in 3 weeks is seriously bad. Some of those articles related it to the beginning of the swine flu in Mexico, but that was nothing like this. Those videos make me feel like we're looking at potential zombie infection. Though I have a bit of a secret to confess... If I find out there's a zombie outbreak ocurring, I'm there in a heartbeat.

And by the way, I could be wrong but isn't that essentially the Black Plague?

The only similarity I see is the "black lungs" part, but there are three types of the black plague, pneumonic plague, bubonic plague, and the septicemic plague. The first plague affecting the lungs and giving them that black appearence. I'm no historian or disease expert, but I wouldn't be suprised at all if it was the Black Plague back for more.

By the way, as an interesting side note, I discovered something pretty ****ing scary in my searches. An article from the end of November stated that in the last week, the number of fatalities due to swine flu jumped up by 1000. Most notably over here in the Americas, from about 4800 since April to 5300 in one week. And from about 350 to 650 in one week in Europe. That's really not a good sign.

Virus mutation spreads as swine flu deaths leap

Do you think it could be Anthrax or some other toxic chemical?

I don't like to speculate much because I'm hardly qualified and there are doctors who have seen what goes on and seem to say different, but what I think is that this is a very aggressive strain of influenza. From what I've seen, it seems to spread much the same way and has some of the same symptoms.

People forget how dangerous the flu can be, I think. Look up the 1918 flu pandemic .. that killed many millions of people quickly and often caused massive bleeding in the lungs which I guess perhaps could have blackened them like they see in the Ukraine.

Well then, I need to invest more time in Resident Evil 4 so I can hone my zombie slaying skills.

*Heads to Wal-Mart to buy shotgun and chainsaw*

Maybe some Slayer music will help too.

Well that's old news actually.

On it's own the swine flu isn't much worse than the regular flu, but unlike the seasonal flu it's gonna stick around for a while and so casualties will surely go up. But I assume it's still mostly people with weak immune systems, mainly children and the elderly. We can only hope it dosen't mutate into something worse, though I can see that happening because of all the vaccines being taken, sometimes all that sh*t does is make it worse, seriously.

But yeah, it's a good thing I don't get out that much, I'd suggest some of ya'll do the same depending on how the situation is where you live.