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H1N1 viral outbreak, Global pandemics

Coming soon… Viral Pandemic



H1N1 VirusON or about Saturday morning, 25 April 2009, the first indications of an H1N1 viral outbreak were being reported as print media headlines and broadcast media talking heads appeared to be vacillating from breathless, fearful stammering to clarion calls about something wicked this way comes from South of the Border. To this very minute, ten days later on the 5th of May/Cinco de Mayo, the reporting continues to vacillate from it's much ado about nothing, to the threat is not as great as we first thought, to a W.H.O. Phase 6 pandemic is still a distinct possibility.

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The initial reports were replete with phrases like: W.H.O. declares swine flu emergency, pandemic alert, serious situation, unable to be contained, public health emergency. Within a single day the crisis went from Mexico City to New York City and beyond. Such is the nature of virus propagation in an age of non-stop intercontinental commercial air traffic. Mexico City today, Madrid in mere hours, Melbourne and Christchurch by midnight tomorrow. America was concerned because the threat reporting was as urgent as anything we've seen in recent years. On 26 April the White House announced they were looking into it as President Barack Hussein Obama was probably somewhere on a back nine of The Courses golf course at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. This was about a week after Obama's own scare having been the guest of famed Mexican archaeologist Felipe Solis in Mexico City on 16 April. Mexican newspapers reported that Felipe contracted the H1N1 virus the next day and died a week later. Perhaps this explains why the American media went gaga - their Obamessiah came just that close to contracting and potentially croaking from the pig flu? Well, to be honest, I'm not really sure about that because as quickly as that story was circulated it was pooh-poohed and denied as false. Ay caramba! So it went and so I watched this event unfold for the next couple of days, ever mindful that in Matthew 24 Jesus foretold of such pestilences, among other dire events such as wars, famines and earthquakes, occurring all over the world with ever increasing frequency and severity in these last days, as signs preceding His second coming. Jesus' description of these pestilences was clearly to global, pandemic-type outbreaks of disease. Since we're in the "season" of His coming, let's take a look at relatively recent history through some research I have conducted.
  • In 1918-19 there was the so-called Spanish Flu which killed tens of millions of otherwise healthy people, primarily young adults to mature adults in mid-life. The victims were said to report feeling ill in the morning and were dead by nightfall.
  • Then there was the Asian Flu outbreak which began in the Far East during February 1957, quickly became a global, two-wave pandemic, and did not fully subside until March 1958. In the United States alone nearly 70,000 people were killed by this virus or medical complications arising from it.
  • Ten years later, in early 1968, the Hong Kong Flu, a genetic relative of the Asian Flu, erupted and became a pandemic and thereafter continued on in small contagion waves through to 1972. Nearly 34,000 died.
  • And just over ten years ago, in 1997 and then in 1999, in came the Avian Flu, more commonly known as Bird Flu. This outbreak consisted of, respectively, two novel strains: the H5N1 and the H9N2. A global pandemic did not ensue but this particular virus remains feared by epidemiologists the world over due to its ability to infect human beings and ability to morph (i.e. reassortment/recombination of its genetic composition) into other lethal viral strains.
Note that the period after WWI through to the post-WWII era there was no great viral pandemic. Humanity was forced into the business of slaughtering itself (50 million+) during those years on a scale which puts the deaths caused by viral pandemics to shame. This, again according to the Bible, is "par for the course," so to speak. Wars have killed and will yet kill more human beings than all pestilences, earthquakes, and famines combined, even though famines and pestilences usually follow in very short order behind a war. It also appears that following the end of WWII a global pandemic, or threat of a pandemic began to occur just about every ten years, increasing in frequency of late to a near permanent state of a viral outbreak or some other disease grabbing global headlines. Think about recent reports on HIV, AIDS, SARS, bubonic plague, hantavirus, never before seen strains of encephalitis, all manner of infectious diseases. We, as a species, are sick and getting sicker. So, as I continue to track this new H1N1 strain, I will continue to be ever mindful that the next great war (and the rumor of an even greater war following it) appears poised to erupt in the Middle East with little or no further warning, thereby grabbing the headlines and the talking heads attention as this current pandemic continues its march through the population, and with the epidemiologists of the world uncertain whether it will subside or come back in a more deadly wave of contagion. One thing is for certain, all of the viral strains of the 20th Century are alive and well in the 21st Century, and this latest H1N1 has some facet of the genetic code of each of its predecessors within it. You may now proceed on your merry way or you can stop for a moment this evening and talk to the Father about these things. Listen to what He has to say, it will save your life for all eternity.


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Sean Osborne -- Bio and Archives

Sean Osborne, is the Associate Director, Military Affairs, Northeast Intelligence Network.

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