Afghanistan reacts to Swine Flu:
Afghanistan’s only known pig has been locked in a room, away from visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats, because people are worried it could infect them with the virus popularly known as swine flu.
The pig is a curiosity in Muslim Afghanistan, where pork and pig products are illegal because they are considered irreligious, and has been in quarantine since Sunday after visitors expressed alarm it could spread the new flu strain.
“For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza,” Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters. “We’ve done this because people are worried about getting the flu.”
Geez.
This, however, seems a more reasoned response:
The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday it decided not to send a warship on a planned humanitarian mission to the South Pacific after one crew member fell ill with the H1N1 virus and 49 others developed symptoms.
The San Diego-based USS Dubuque had been scheduled to sail on June 1 to begin a four-month mission to deliver medical, dental, veterinary and engineering assistance to Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. Navy Lt. Sean Robertson said ailing crew aboard the 16,900-ton (15,300-tonne) amphibious vessel were put on a five-day course of Tamiflu on April 30. The remaining 370 crew members and staff began a 10-day prophylaxis course on May 3.
I was aboard an aircraft carrier at sea when some poor soul brought back a gastrointestinal bug from Singapore. It raced through the cramped ship like wildfire, decimating watch crews. I had sailors actually convulsing on the deck of one of my departmental berthing spaces that slept over a hundred sailors.
It burnt out in time, with the medical department fully engaged, everyone scrubbing their hands obsessively and carrying little squeeze bottles of disinfectant. But it was a close-run thing, and concern had trended towards alarm for a while there.
A warship at sea is no place for infectious disease. Never has been.
Bainbridge (the old BillyB, CGN-25), Midway and a frigate were the first on Gonzo Station for the Iran-Hostage crisis. Steamed around for some three months, never saw civilization until pulling back into Pearl. Off I flew on emergency leave, and upon picking up the boss and brand-new son, headed by car back to fly-over land. Got sicker’n a dog second night out, and hit warn’t no food poison either.
I never asked the corpsman or doc when we got back, but I wonder if there wasn’t a mini outbreak of flu/cold/other viruses having been isolated for such a long time… Wouldn’t have been surprised if there had been.
Back when I was riding the KH in the early 90′s, we picked up some Hong Kong crud on deployment. Wasn’t quite that bad, but the CAPT and Chief Medical Officer decided to nip it in the bud by making everyone wash their hands after using the head. It went so far as to require a ‘head watch’ where some unlucky soul spent several hours ensuring everyone’s compliance.
As the 1st LT for my squadron, I let my ‘head watch’ guys take some liberties with the whole idea. Before long they had set up a table with music, magazines, a log book for visitors to sign, and other items to make their experience more relaxing. Our XO started getting nervous as word spread and he heard the Big XO was coming to see for himself, and made us take it down.
Lex, just curious, but if they weren’t scheduled to sail until June 1, won’t this be cleared up by then?
Is this SOP?
Huh. Sounds like an NBC practice. Lets test the response if we infect ONE individual and monitor the spread through a closed environment. HEY! Lex has a new study for his next course.
Similar deal coming out of Alexandria, Egypt port visit. As one of the few aircrew who wasn’t toilet – er – bed ridden,thought it initially was a good deal flight- time wise. Later – not so much…
- SJS
Same thing happened on Coral Sea coming out of Alexandria. It was so bad they had to cut the airplan in half-because they did not have enough crews to make a full airplan day.
Lucky for me-I had left Alexandria the very first day to go to Turkey to set up an exercise-so I missed the fun and games.
Good to see you back Skippy. On the way to Japan, Bali and Singapore in May. Eat your liberal heart out. Just kidding. Boss.
SJS — we drew lots for the Alexandria Officer’s Mess reciprocal dinner. Winners got corn syrup, AKA hemiglobin, in pre-visit doses in the hind quarters.
Worst I’ve seen was a DDG after a port visit to beautiful Karachi, Pakistan. Dolt CHENG took on potable water inport. Even though they double chlorinated it, every swinging Richard (was still a single gender crew) got some kind of crud. I lost 12 pounds in 8 hours of expelling from both exits. It got so bad, the Bosn’s Mate of the Watch had the deck and the con for one point during the mid watch.
We once spent a month in beautiful Karachi with the consulate delivering 1200 gals of potable water/day which was cut in half when the DDG pulled in. We might have suffered the same horrible fate but we kinda prepped our ship before arrival and we distilled potable water to a large number of recently flushed and cleaned/treated ballast tanks. As I recall I did my best to help out our friends on the Robison with some grungy beer we had left over from D’Gar. I sold it to them for $30.00 a case.
You know, as I read this it suddenly occurs to me that we might have bent several rules….hmm. We left safe on 24 December and never looked back till we were well off shore and ballasted down to recover the assault boats.
I have to say that the hospitality of our hosts could not be beat. Everywhere we went we were welcomed with open arms.
The New Miracle Diet!
I was on a Westpac on the USS Wahoo (SS-565) in early 1970′s. On a week long op out of Yokosuka we took our ration of riders out to get their sub pay for the month. Among them was a RM with a bad case of the flu (or so it seemed). He got worse and worse as the week progressed and on the transit back in port the CO was giving serious consideration to doing a helo medivac. It was decided that he would get to medical care sooner if we just kept him; he was first off the brow (on a stretcher) and died about an hour later of meningicoccal meningitis.
They kept up in port for an extra week and had the entire crew on prophylactic penicillin. It was amazing being in a bar at about 8:oopm when a third of the patrons pulled out their pills to take them. The ever present bar girls just disappeared into the woodwork, it was like a magical act.
Despite some hypochondria, especially among the radio gang who was hot-racking with him, no one else suffered ill effects. But the effects of disease on ships, especially submarines, remains a worry.
Dean
Lex,
The carrier’s never came down with 1/3 – 1/2 the crew catching pink eye in the PI?
Worst case I ever had was in Senegal back in December 2004. Laid me up for two days – could hardly move from my bed except for emergency evac. As Navig8r said, it was “expelling from both exits.” Not sure that I experienced the same dramatic weight loss, but all I would even try to eat were bananas – for the same reason that Lex has expounded on in previous posts.
My apologies if this is TMI (too much information) for anyone…
Sending a ship full of possibly infectious sailors to a country might defeat the purpose of their humanitarian mission. Not to mention make the locals a little angry too.