We had a local outbreak of the H3N2v or Swine Flu Variant recently. In itself, that is some incredible news since there had been only 13 confirmed US cases of this virus so far. BUT….the real issue here is the 11 days that it took for a confirmation of the virus! Here’s a news story from July 13th when the problem was first noticed:

“Coates and other kids at the LaPorte County Fair were forced to improvise Friday morning because 41 pigs with fevers left all 283 swine that were supposed to go through the auction in their pens. 

“There’s this disease in the barn, and so they don’t want other pigs going into here and getting all the other pigs sick,” Coates added. 

Pigs coming down with an illness in that type of environment is not all uncommon, said Dr. Tom Troxel, a LaPorte County veterinarian who examined some of the sick animals, who also suffered from an upper respiratory illness.”

Veterinarians in the area insisted that there was no correlation between the pigs’ illness and the kids becoming ill. The same article went on to say:

“One father who did not want to be identified because he was afraid speaking out would adversely affect his family’s farming business became emotional when he told WSBT three of his pigs and his three daughters were all sick. He said an ambulance rushed his 11-year-old daughter from the fairgrounds to a local hospital after she passed out Thursday. There, he said an emergency room doctor wore a face mask while he examined the girl before sending her home with prescribed antibiotics. The man said he was upset he wasn’t getting more answers.”

Yesterday, local residents were told that this virus was H3N2v :

The Indiana State Department of Health, Centers for Disease Control and the USDA National Veterinary Services laboratory in Iowa found 4 people and all 12 randomly selected pigs from the LaPorte County Fair swine barn had what’s called influenza A (H3N2)v – a strain of influenza in the same family as swine flu.

However, that strain is so rare that before the recent LaPorte County outbreak, a release from ISDH to all Indiana health departments said only 13 reported cases of the strain have been reported in the United States in the past two years. But some LaPorte County parents whose children were sick are upset about how the local outbreak was handled.

After the pigs went ill and the children went to the ER, neither the fairgrounds nor the barns were quarantined.

The state and LaPorte County Health Departments said they are still investigating, trying to find out if more people were sick.  State Health Department Epidemiologist Pam Pontones declined to tell WSBT how many humans had been tested for the H3N2v virus.

And what bugs ME the most about this is the obvious way they try to downplay it:

St. Joseph County Health Officer Dr. Thomas Felger said H3N2v is a relatively new strain of influenza health officials are still trying to learn about.

“This is extremely rare,” Felger said.  “That’s why there’s not a lot of answers because there’s not a lot of data.”

Felger stressed that humans have a very low risk of getting sick from it.  “It’s impossible to say that there’s no risk, but again it’s extremely low and again, 13 cases in 2 years means it’s not very contagious,” he added.

How can this be considered “not very contagious”?   Ask the kids that were infected how contagious it is.

One father who did not want to be identified because he was afraid speaking out would adversely affect his family’s farming business became emotional when he told WSBT three of his pigs and his three daughters were all sick. He said an ambulance rushed his 11-year-old daughter from the fairgrounds to a local hospital after she passed out Thursday. There, he said an emergency room doctor wore a face mask while he examined the girl before sending her home with prescribed antibiotics. The man said he was upset he wasn’t getting more answers. “Something’s going on in this barn and it’s not right,” he told WSBT.

This was bungled, big-time… and it shows a glaring hole in Emergency Management. It also shows what would happen in the first few hours and days of an outbreak. The news media knew that something was going on before our State Board of Health did. The ER doctor must have suspected something.

You can read more about this incident in the article posted HERE. Be sure to read the older associated articles.

by