The Latest in the Flu Wars

Sasha is still in a coma, on life support. Three days now. His heart continues to work but the rest of his body has pretty much shut down. If I understood right, the ran his blood through a dialysis machine. His ex-wife shelled out 4500 UAH for his treatment yesterday in spite of Yulia Timoshenko's promise that all treatments would be free. Anyone who believed that...

According to MIGNews (again) there are two types of seasonal flu virus as well as A/H1N1 that they are dealing with. Death toll is up to 95 now, mostly the "usual suspects) and while Ukraine has an epidemic in terms of people becoming ill, mortality is well below epidemic levels.

Of course the politicians are loving every minute of it. Yulia Timoshenko had a huge rally in Independence Square a week or 10 days ago and since then the flu has swept Kyiv. Victor Yushchenko said " I told you guys in April to get your act together and you did nothing". Etc.

However there is more to this than we are being told officially. In an earlier blog I mentioned that they were referring to an unknown virus in Ivano-Frankivsk as "pneumonic plague".

PNEUMONIC PLAGUE has an acute course than other forms, over and is accompanied by a very high mortality rate. The incubation period of primary pneumonic plague rarely exceeds more than 1-4 days. It begins, as a rule, suddenly - with shivering, fever, headache, myalgia, weakness, nausea. The symptoms of pneumonia - cough with phlegm, chest pain, shortness of breath - usually appear on the second day of the disease. Blood spitting, growing respiratory disorders, heart failure, respiratory failure, shock are being observed. In primary pneumonic plague phlegm usually is watery or mucinous, foamy, with blood or visibly bloody.

A secondary pneumonic plague occurs as interstitial pneumonia. Phlegm is scanty and more dense and viscous than in primary pulmonary plague. It is believed that in this regard, patients are less contagious.

However if the government knows anything about it it is keeping a lid on it.

The Kyiv city state administration asked law enforcement authorities to prevent the spread of misinformation in the capital of Ukraine of leaflets about the situation with the epidemic of influenza. This is stated in the protocol instructions of city emergency anti-epidemic commission from the City Hall on November 4.

One reason for this treatment was the appearance in the city of leaflets allegedly on the letterheads of the General Directorate of Health and medical care of the Kyiv City State Administration that there are cases of pneumonic plague in the city. First Deputy Chairman of Kyiv City State Administration Irena Kilchytska informed. She stressed that the information on the identification of pneumonic plague in Kyiv does not correspond to reality.

There are more rumours going around which I will try to confirm in the next day or two. Tanya just read a news item that stated China had an outbreak of Pneumonic Plague in Qinhai in August 2009. This will get worse before it gets better.