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#241110 - 09/30/06 06:49 PM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
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As could only be expected, and as predicted, H5N1 is mutating quickly. While there is no way to know when it will become easily transmissable between humans, it seems to me that such is inevitable. And do recall: NOBODY has any resistance to this. It's never been around before, and none have had the opportunity to develop natural antibodies. Even though it's been moving more slowly than I thought it would, it still seems to me that we have a real problem.
*********
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092800910.html
WHO: Deadly Bird Flu Virus Mutating
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 28, 2006; 1:59 PM
GENEVA -- The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu which has killed at least 148 people is showing signs of being able to mutate and develop resistance to the most effective anti-viral drugs and any possible vaccines yet to be produced, a WHO scientist said Thursday.
The H5N1 virus is splitting into genetically different groups, said Mike Perdue, a team leader with WHO's influenza program who took part in a two-day bird flu conference earlier this week sponsored by the U.N. health body.
No vaccine for the H5N1 virus has been produced yet, but scientists are confident they will develop one in future.
However, the virus has now been shown to mutate like seasonal flu viruses that require new vaccines every year. "We are going to have to come to the realization that these viruses are genetically variable," Perdue said. "The vaccines that we have predicted to be protective today may not be protective a year from now."
The two most effective anti-viral drugs currently in use are also in danger of losing their potency, according to influenza experts.
"We know from surveillance studies and from hospital clinical studies that resistance to the two primary anti-viral drugs, the Tamiflu and Amantadine drugs, have already occurred," Perdue said.
_________________________
http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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#241454 - 10/22/06 01:22 PM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
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Just a little update to remind all that H5N1 is still out there. And, as said earlier, Alaska is on the "front lines" as it were. It is generally agreed that when - not if - Bird Flu arrives in the USA, it will appear in Alaska first. Oh, joy. 
Kipnuk is about 350 miles away, or so, almost due North of this island. And, while we do not get the immense numbers of birds through here as the Yukon Delta, we certainly see large numbers of avian migrants. Anyway, if it's any comfort to you, we'll likely die of Avian Flu first.
**********
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/...-home-headlines
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/...-home-headlines
Alaska villagers living in bird flu's flight path
What has brought the Eskimos sustenance for generations now may carry the deadly virus into North America
By JIA-RUI CHONG
Times Staff Writer
October 22, 2006
THE 800 YUP'IK ESKIMOS in this wet and lonely village knew the situation was serious when government scientists began swooping in on bush planes.
Except for a few doctors that fly in each year to give villagers checkups, outsiders rarely visited this outpost of scattered gray plywood homes and prefab structures plopped in the middle of the tundra.
Soon, latex gloves appeared on store shelves and Wild West-style posters started popping up around town: "Wanted: Birds of the Delta." Researchers camped out in the town's tribal council offices, preparing for trips to nearby Kwigluk Island with vials, swabs, nets and needles.
They came bearing a warning: The wild birds that the Yup'ik have hunted for millenniums may be carrying the first traces of the deadly bird flu virus from Asia into North America.
"It's kind of scary, you know," said resident Ronnie Peter, 39. "That's like, our food, you know."
The H5N1 avian influenza emerged in China 10 years ago and has since spread into Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Though the virus mainly infects fowl, since 2003 it has sickened 256 people and killed 151 around the world.
Kipnuk lies at the crossroads of an invisible freeway system linking migratory birds that journey along the East Asia-Australia flyway with those from the Pacific Americas flyway.
Tens of millions of birds flock every year to this seemingly endless expanse of soggy land in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge to feast on insects, grasses, worms and mussels before heading back south in the winter to Asia, Australia and other parts of the Americas.
"If it's going to show up in wild birds, Alaska is the most likely place where it's going to happen," said Brian McCaffery, a federal wildlife biologist who was camped a few miles down the coast from Kipnuk collecting bar-tailed godwit droppings for testing.
Federal officials have identified 29 bird species that are most likely to carry the deadly virus from Asia, and they have enlisted local hunters to help provide birds for testing.
In the old days, the Yup'ik Eskimos felled the uqsuqaq, metraq and kanguq with bows and throw sticks tipped with sharpened walrus ivory.
Now, the men use 12-gauge shotguns and reach remote hunting spots in motorboats.
Little else has changed — until now.
"Oh Lord, what are we going to eat? Store-bought food?" thought Steven Mann, who oversees tribal operations in town, when he first started receiving faxes on bird flu safety in the spring.
The nervousness has waned through the summer, said the 58-year-old ex-Army sergeant, but still, "We don't joke about what we eat here."
Mann's son, Danny, a lanky 27-year-old who used to work as a bilingual parent liaison for the school, took on the job of bird flu testing manager in Kipnuk for the tribal health agency, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. He gets $15 for every bird he samples.
At the tribal council offices, he was on the phone, checking in with hunters. "Got any birds?" he asked Peter, who goes hunting just about every day except Sunday.
"How many?" Danny Mann asked. "Can I come over and check them?"
Mann threw on a jacket, grabbed a blue Nike duffel bag and headed out. As a light drizzle enveloped the village, he strode across the boardwalks that lie across the marshiest parts of town. The hollow sound of his steps echoed in the still afternoon.
The residents of Kipnuk, which means "bend in the river" in Yup'ik, are a little bewildered that their speck of a village has been drawn into the battle against the bird flu virus.
No roads lead here. The closest Wal-Mart is nearly 500 miles away. The flatland that spreads out between the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers is so riddled with lakes and creeks that it looks like Swiss cheese from the air. The slate-gray Bering Sea is only a few miles away.
The coastal location is one reason health officials chose Kipnuk as one of 10 villages for testing. The other main reason is the vigor of its hunters.
Kipnuk villagers hunt intensely through the summer, stocking up on birds, which they usually roast into a crispy meal or boil into a soup made with onions, rice and macaroni. Peter keeps two freezers stuffed with various birds — some plucked, some not.
Mann climbed up the steps to Peter's porch and dug into a pile of common eiders, pintail ducks, a shoveler and a Canada goose.
Mann snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and started filling out a form on the birds.
He peeled the paper packaging around a long swab and inserted it into an eider through its cloaca, a combination genital, intestinal and urinary tract. Mann put the swab, now covered in a greenish-white goop, into a vial.
As Peter's 4-year-old son, Quentin, danced around with a plastic light-saber, Mann repeated the procedure for the other birds.
Mann headed back to his mother's house, where he crept under the front staircase and lifted the lid of a white canister filled with liquid nitrogen. As cold white vapors curled out, he dropped in his handful of vials, which he would send away for analysis.
Mann said he swabbed as many as 300 birds in the first round of sampling in May. In September, he collected about 50 samples. To get more hunters involved, the health agency raffled off a 55-gallon drum of gasoline for each round of testing, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the summer. Villagers got one raffle ticket for each bird they turned in.
So far, government inspectors have taken 18,000 samples from birds all over Alaska. They have found no bird flu.
Still, Mann said, there are so many birds from so many places that pass through this forbidding terrain that detecting the virus is "not a matter of if, but when."
"Whenever I see birds, I always think what birds will be the first to get bird flu around here," he said.
The health corporation began preparing residents in the spring with a newsletter outlining some of the dangers of bird flu.
The newsletter's advice was simple: Don't eat, drink or smoke when cleaning birds, and cook the meat thoroughly.
This has caused some problems.
One of the delicacies of tundra life is half-cooked eider. "The reason why we eat them half-cooked is we won't get hungry for hours and hours," explained Andrew Dock, 39, who won the barrel-of-gas raffle after collecting more than 100 tickets.
He still eats his eider half-cooked.
Steven Mann explained the thinking in Kipnuk this way: "I like to compare the flu to Al Qaeda. They're clear on the other side of the world. We hear about them, but we're not scared."
After thousands of years, it's hard to bend traditions.
Peter, an affable, goateed man who served in the Army National Guard for 19 years, goes hunting in a dark green jacket spotted with droppings, one of the primary carriers of the virus.
He seeks out feces. It is an ancient technique to find birds.
"I've been around it all my life," Peter said, explaining that the elders always told him to "look for more bird poop."
As the wind whipped around him, Peter and his hunting buddy, James Active III, whom everyone calls Big Boy, stalked across a meadow looking for dinner. Peter held his shotgun low in one hand. The only sound was the babbling of geese and Peter's calls to them: "Luk, luk, luk."
He scrambled over spongy tufts of lichen and crowberry and waded through the sedge-lined marsh, the smell of rotten eggs rising from his footprints.
As a chill set in, he disemboweled his birds in the traditional style: hooking one finger into the cloaca and tearing out the intestines with one motion.
He wiped his hand on the damp grass.
Peter said he was worried, but not that worried, yet. "Nobody's gotten sick," he said.
A few minutes later, he dug his fingers into a container of agutak, a dessert known as Eskimo ice cream, made of tundra berries, sugar and Crisco.
Still a bit hungry, he shook a helping of trail mix into his soiled hands and poured it into his mouth.
jia-rui.chong@latimes.com
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http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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#241516 - 10/24/06 03:54 PM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
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Well, maybe we dodged the bullet - this time.
..."The one absolutely requirement for this is that we have to get prepared."...
No $#!+, Sherlock!
Found through http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
*********
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/24/news/UN_GEN_UN_Bird_Flu.php
Bird flu take an increasing toll but the world escaped an immediate influenza pandemic, U.N. bird flu chief says
The Associated Press
Published: October 23, 2006
UNITED NATIONS More than 30 countries reported outbreaks of bird flu this year and the number of people dying every month is increasing, but the world escaped an immediate influenza pandemic possibly because of the energetic global response to warnings a year ago, the U.N. bird flu chief said Monday.
Dr. David Nabarro said his warning last year that a mutation of the virulent H5N1 virus which has ravaged poultry stocks since late 2003 could appear anytime and cause an influenza pandemic in humans that kills millions of people was not "overblown."
"There will be an influenza pandemic one day. I don't know — you don't know — when it will be. When it does come along, it will have really major economic and social consequences," he said.
"The one absolutely requirement for this is that we have to get prepared."
The H5N1 virus has affected poultry all over the world except the Western hemisphere and has killed tens of millions of chickens, ducks, geese and other birds, Nabarro told a news conference.
"In 2006, we did see more than 30 countries reporting outbreaks," he said. "Unfortunately, the virus continues to affect humans — with 256 people known to be affected and 151 dying" since 2003.
"The trendline is that the number of deaths per month seems to be increasing at the momnt globally ... and that is primarily because of quite a lot of human death in Indonesia," he said.
Nabarro estimated that the H5N1 avian influenza virus will remain a major animal health issue for most of the world for at least five years, and perhaps 10 years, because it is very virulent but at the same time can survive in certain communities of birds without symptons for long periods.
Article continues.
_________________________
http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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#242858 - 01/05/07 04:46 AM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
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Well, I'd thought that H5N1 was fading out as a possible cause of a pandemic. Apparently, once again, I was wrong. It ain't dead yet.
The following results from checking a few bookmarked sites after reading the BBC feed I get.
***********
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6232849.stm
"WHO chief issues bird flu warning
The new chief of the World Health Organization has taken office, warning that bird flu remains a global threat.
Margaret Chan, a bird flu expert from Hong Kong, is the first Chinese citizen to become the head of a UN agency.
She said reports of bird flu had started to surface in recent weeks after a lull and that the danger was particularly severe in poor countries."...
..."Dr Chan said the number of bird flu cases had been increasing in recent weeks.
The WHO is particularly concerned about an outbreak on a poultry farm in Vietnam, the first in that country in almost a year."...
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/bird-flu/bird-flu-news.php/
Latest Avian / Bird Flu News
People's Daily Online - 2007-01-05
Dead bird tested positive for H5 virus in Hong Kong
HONG KONG - Hong Kong health authority announced Thursday that one of six bird carcasses found on Dec. 31, 2006, was tested positive for the avian influenza H5 virus, raising the fears of possible outbreaks in the city.
The Hindustan Times - 2007-01-05
Hong Kong once again on avian flu radar
HONG KONG - Hong Kong was on bird flu alert on Friday after a wild bird found in a busy shopping area was tested positive for the avian flu virus.
Environment News Service - 2007-01-04
Bird Flu Leaves Three People Dead in Egypt
CAIRO - Three members of an extended family have died after being infected with H5N1 avian influenza, bringing the human toll in that nation to 18 cases and 10 deaths since February, when the disease was first reported in Egypt. The worldwide total since the latest outbreak began in December 2003 now stands at 261 human cases and 157 deaths.
Vietnam Net - 2007-01-03
Bird flu hits 25 communes in Mekong Delta provinces
VIET NAM - Bird flu has to date stricken 25 communes in 11 districts in the southern provinces of Ca Mau, Bac Lieu and Hau Giang, resulting in the bury of nearly 24,000 poultry
The Hindu - 2007-01-04
New avian flu vaccine for poultry developed
INDIA - In what proves to be a significant step in developing a vaccine for poultry in the event of a bird flu outbreak, an Auburn University veterinary professor in collaboration with researchers at Vaxin Inc. of Birmingham has developed the first in ovo, or egg-injected vaccine.
http://www.recombinomics.com/whats_new.html
H5N1 Cluster in Gharbiya Egypt Cause Concern (12/30/06)
Suspect H5N1 Clusters in Mekong Delta Vietnam (12/30/06)
Third H5N1 Fatality in Gharbiyah Cluster in Nile Delta (12/27/06)
Additional Suspect H5N1 Patients in Northern Egypt (12/26/06)
*********
So, H5N1 remains a danger, after all. Still, there is hope, as Indian researchers are developing a vaccine for birds, the primary vector to humans. This story, which I once thought ended, is in fact far from over. We'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, it would be wise for all to prepare for hard times. Stock at least a week's food and water, have an effective firearm, plan an escape route and haven, etc. Should (when) a pandemic hit, who knows how bad the social unrest might be? We just can't predict that sort of panic and its effects.
Better to be prepared and thought foolish or paranoid than be caught with no alternatives.
_________________________
http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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#242959 - 01/19/07 06:17 AM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
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Well; this tale drags on. First, we have a resurgence of Bird Flu in humans, and then a possible cure from - of all things - cod fish guts! Who'd a thunk it?
*********
http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP214392.htm?=amp&_lite_=1
Bird flu spreads in Asia, jump in Indonesia cases
15 Jan 2007 17:50:44 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Mita Valina Liem
JAKARTA, Jan 15 (Reuters) - An Indonesian hospital was on Monday overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms while the virus spread further among flocks in Vietnam and flared anew in Thailand.
A recent spurt of human infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, which re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has alarmed health officials.
Four Indonesians have died this year after a six-week lull in cases, taking the number of people killed by bird flu in the country to 61, the highest in the world.
At Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, where doctors were treating 9 people with bird flu symptoms, including a 5-year-old girl in intensive care, its isolation wards were overwhelmed.
"If we get more patients, we will send them to Sulianti Saroso," Muchtar Ichsan, the head of the bird flu ward, told Reuters, referring the country's main bird flu treatment centre in North Jakarta.
The patients included the son and husband of a woman who died of bird flu last week. The 18-year-old son has been confirmed to have the disease, although tests so far on the husband show he does not have the virus.
In a bid to stem the spread of the virus, Indonesia plans to prohibit people from keeping backyard fowl in three high-risk provinces.
Adding to regional worries, a senior Thai agriculture official said on Monday that 1,900 ducks had been culled in the northern province of Phitsanulok after some of the birds had tested positive for H5N1.
The case is Thailand's first in birds since last July. The last human death -- the country's 17th -- occurred in August.
Experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that could spread easily between people, but there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus so far in the latest cases.
The World Health Organisation says bird flu has infected 267 people and killed 161 of them since 2003.
EMERGENCY LEVELS
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the spike in cases in the northern hemisphere winter follows a similar pattern to that seen over the past three years and was to be expected.
But it was encouraging that outbreaks were being quickly reported and dealt with, a senior WHO official said.
"It is not surprising that we are seeing an increase (in cases) ... but we are seeing much more effective responses than we were a few years ago," Keiji Fukuda, WHO's coordinator for the global influenza programme, told journalists.
In Vietnam, where bird flu has killed 42 of the 93 people infected since 2003, the virus appeared to be spreading fast among fowl in the country's southern Mekong Delta, threatening to engulf the major rice-growing region.
The Animal Health Department said in a report seen on Monday that tests showed H5N1 had killed ducks in the province of Soc Trang, just a day after bird flu was found in the neighbouring province of Tra Vinh.
The Agriculture Ministry has ordered an additional poultry vaccination campaign in the Mekong Delta area and requested reinforcement of animal health teams to contain the spread.
Farm ministry officials in Japan said there was no evidence of the disease spreading there following confirmation at the weekend of a bird flu outbreak at a poultry farm in the southwest in which 3,800 chickens died. (Additional reporting by Yoga Rusmana in Jakarta, Nguyen Nhat Lam in Hanoi, Panarat Thepgumpanat in Bangkok, Miho Yoshikawa in Tokyo and Richard Waddington in Geneva) (Writing by Karen Iley, editing by Keith Weir; karen.iley@reuters.com; +65 6870 3815)
*********
And the possible cure.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/17/2334208
Jon Golden writes ( http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16539&ew_0_a_id=257558 )
"An Icelandic cod enzyme might be the cure for bird flu. A recent experiment, which the Icelandic company Ensímtaekni hf. took part in, indicates that in five minutes, the isolated fish enzyme killed 99 percent of H5N1 viruses. The killer enzyme, called penzim, was extracted from the intestines of cod by Ensímtaekni and is currently being developed for beauty products and various types of medicine. The experiment on the H5N1 virus was conducted in London. CEO of Ensímtaekni and biochemist Jón Bragi Bjarnason said he is very excited about the results of the bird flu experiment. "People have feared that the bird flu virus will change into a human flu virus and now we have a likely cure in case that happens." Bjarnason also believes that penzim might prove a cure for common flu and cold, eczema in children and arthritis."
_________________________
http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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#243198 - 02/07/07 03:07 PM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
|
Well, H5N1 has been causing recent problems all over the planet. Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Hungary, the USA, all over. But, for this post, I won't get into that. What follows is a news report as to how American companies are taking this all pretty seriously and planning for the worst.
It may very well not happen ...with H5N1 ... this time ... but one of these days, ....
And, there's always that Tuberculosis in South Africa that kills in TWO WEEKS!
**********
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenew...&src=rss&rpc=23
U.S. companies prepare for bird flu pandemic
Tue Feb 6, 2007 8:24 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Exxon plans to keep some refinery workers living in the plants to keep them going. A small Southern grocery chain is thinking about drive-through pickup of soup and bread.
The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration urged employers to develop plans to cope with a possible flu pandemic on Tuesday, suggesting letting employees work from home and encouraging sick workers to stay home without reprisals.
But a few international companies and small regional firms were already making bird flu planning a full-time job, and said on Tuesday they have had to prepare for the unthinkable.
Jay Schwartz, vice president of information systems at North Carolina-based Alex Lee Inc., is worried about what will happen when food supplies begin to get scarce as people become ill, stay home to care for children when schools close or tend to ill relatives.
"Security is a huge issue," Schwartz, whose company owns a chain of grocery stores and an institutional food supplier, told a conference in Orlando.
Big food trucks may be targeted by bandits. "Maybe we'll have someone riding shotgun for added security," Schwartz told the Business Preparedness for Pandemic Influenza summit, sponsored by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Experts almost universally agree that the world is ripe for a pandemic of some infectious disease. The H5N1 avian influenza virus is considered the leading candidate to cause one.
It can sometimes infect people and has sickened at least 271, killing 166 of them, according to the latest World Health Organization count.
If the virus mutated in just the right way, it could easily begin spreading like common respiratory infections -- only with much more deadly effect. WHO predicts the outcome would be devastating.
"During a pandemic, workplaces can likely experience high absenteeism -- probably as much as 40 percent of the workforce," OSHA official Amanda Edens told reporters.
LEARNING BY TRIAL AND ERROR
"What we are trying to find are the few who have those critical first-step plans that are going to help others," said Mike Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious disease expert who arranged the conference.
One big concern -- how to keep employees on the job if schools close and people begin to fear big gatherings. In a pandemic, the biggest danger may be the person next to you.
"We don't have the option of shutting facilities down. We have the obligation of providing energy," said James McEnery, deputy vice-president for human resources at Exxon Mobil Corp.
"We are going to ask some employees to come in and live in the facility," McEnery told the conference.
Food suppliers also feel an obligation, Schwartz said.
His stores may switch to products that people can stock, such as canned stew. They may arrange for drive-through pickup to avoid person-to-person contact. But this presents its own problems.
"What do you do if a guy pulls up in a pickup truck and wants to buy all the soup?" Schwartz asked.
Other companies feel well set up to make use of teleworkers.
"Everybody has got a laptop," said James Wall, global managing director of human resources for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. "Our plans assume that people would have to shelter in place and stay where they are."
Some companies plan to offer moral support, too.
"We employ approximately 200 chaplains of many faiths," said Ken Kimbro, a vice president at Tyson Foods Inc. "We rely very heavily upon this group in times of stress."
(With additional reporting by Will Dunham in Washington)
*********
So, as you can see, whether or not you are taking this seriously, a lot of sane and serious folks are. This thing just won't go away, and only two amino acids need to mutate for it to be easily communicable between humans.
None can predict the future, but you better be ready for it. 
_________________________
http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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#243303 - 02/15/07 04:16 AM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
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..."the bird flu virus is as dangerous and unpredictable as ever"...
..."they don't know what is happening"... Now, THAT bothers me!
Yep; this just keeps dragging on. It's not over yet, and we're not out of the woods yet. Just an update, here.
*********
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=4595221
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Last winter, as the deadly bird flu virus marched out of Asia, across Europe and down into Africa, public health experts warned of the potential for a catastrophic pandemic like the Spanish flu of 1918.
This year, by contrast, bird flu seems all but forgotten, mentioned occasionally when it claims another life or when it causes an outbreak in, say, a British turkey farm. With flu season reaching its peak, the question for many people now is whether the threat they are facing is not Spanish flu but swine flu — another widely advertised menace that never materialized.
But that is premature, scientists say, warning that the bird flu virus is as dangerous and unpredictable as ever. It killed more people in 2006 than it did in 2005 or 2004, and its fatality rate is rising — 61 percent now, up from 43 percent in 2005.
More worrisome, they said, is that the disease is out of control in birds in more locations than ever, including places like the Nile Delta and Nigeria, where public health mechanisms are weak to nonexistent. That increases the chances of a mutation in the virus that would allow human-to-human transmission.
"I've gotten at least 10 media calls in the last few months asking me to deliver the death sentence for avian flu," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "But at any conference, if you get a group of virologists at the bar, after the fourth beer, they let their hair down and admit it — they don't know what is happening. They've been incredibly humbled by this virus."
Since viruses with very high fatality rates, like Ebola, tend to burn themselves out by killing victims faster than they can pass it on, the increasing fatality rate — which is still unexplained — may be a silver lining of sorts.
But the virus has plenty of mutational wiggle room — the 1918 virus had a 2 percent fatality rate and still it killed 50 million to 100 million because it was so transmissible. That is why health experts remain cautious, warning that the pandemic could begin at any time, and that February is a particularly risky month.
Robert Webster, a virologist at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, ended a talk with a slide of three animals in a reference to Asia. "We've survived the Year of the Chicken and the Year of the Dog," he said. "Will we survive the Year of the Pig?"
The Year of the Pig begins Sunday, and the Lunar New Year celebrations in China and Vietnam have become associated with flu outbreaks because so much poultry for family feasts is on the move. "My take-home message," Webster added, "is don't become complacent. Don't trust this one."
Poultry outbreaks in England and Hungary were not particularly worrisome, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said. They may have been linked to shipments of raw turkey between plants in both countries, investigators said.
The British are very proficient at eliminating veterinary diseases by killing and incinerating animals, officials said, noting that more than 160,000 birds were swiftly killed to contain the British outbreak and that the Hungarians are believed capable of the same sort of response.
But the virus is out of control in poultry in three countries — Indonesia, Nigeria and Egypt — with combined populations of 447 million people. A year ago, it was out of control only in Indonesia, and Thailand and Vietnam had stifled outbreaks, although the virus returned. China remains a mystery — despite official denials, there is evidence that it is circulating there.
Most alarming to the experts, although it got relatively less attention, was the death last month of a 22-year-old Nigerian woman, an accountant who lived in the crowded financial capital, Lagos.
Officially, only one death from H5N1 was confirmed, but Nigerian newspapers said the woman's mother died with similar symptoms two weeks earlier, and a female relative was sick but recovered. If true, that suggests a cluster of cases with possible human-to-human transmission. Tests on them were negative, but human H5N1 tests are best done on fresh samples from deep in the lungs, which are hard to obtain, and false negatives are common.
In Nigeria, despite the culling of 700,000 birds, the flu has been found in 19 of 36 states, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Oyedele Oyediji, president of a Nigerian veterinarians' association, told local newspapers that bans on poultry movement and culling orders were simply not being enforced. "If you go to the markets in Lagos now," he said, "you would notice that poultry products like guinea fowl, ducks, turkey and chicken from the northern part of the country are still available."
Nigerian farmers have complained that government cullers pay them only $2 for chickens that cost them $5 to $7 to raise. But payments, supported by the World Bank, seem to be made fairly promptly through local police stations.
Indonesia, by contrast, provides farmers with $1 vouchers that may not be cashed for three or four months, said Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, the country's chief veterinarian. "It's our weakest implementation," she admitted. "It should be treated as an emergency, but we still follow routine budget mechanisms."
Eighty percent of all Indonesian households keep poultry, she said, the flu is in 30 of 33 provinces and still few take the threat seriously enough. "Farmers say dying chickens are normal in life," she said. "And you must realize that 62 dead people in one and a half years? That's not very much in Indonesia. Three hundred thousand die from TB, from dengue. People in the villages don't grab what is a pandemic."
The picture is not entirely bleak. Despite serious problems in Nigeria, Indonesia and Egypt's Nile Delta, Joseph Domenech, the chief veterinarian of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said he thinks the prospects for controlling the spread in birds are "a lot better than three years ago or even one year ago."
For unknown reasons, possibly weather patterns and better poultry vaccination in northern China, not as many migrating swans and geese carried the virus up to Siberia, across Western Europe and down into Africa this winter as did last winter. The main culprit now in spreading the virus seems to be illegal or improper trade in poultry, health officials said.
Also, Domenech said, more poor countries have become alert to outbreaks, and either snuff them out or ask for outside help. For example, he said, the virus was found last year in spots from the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso to Niger and Cameroon, a 1,600-kilometer, or 1,000-mile, stretch of west Africa, in countries with "very weak animal health prevention." Despite nominal customs bans, Nigeria exports poultry throughout the region, he said.
"But we did not have any explosive outbreak," he said. "If it is explosive, you cannot miss it."
The virus has also been found in cats. That is not new; one of the most startling outbreaks killed 103 tigers in a Thai zoo in 2004. But no human has been known to have been infected by a cat.
World Health Organization reports almost always link human cases to proximity to dead poultry, but Naipospos, the Indonesian flu expert, released data at a flu conference in Washington on Feb. 1 calling that into question. In the 82 human cases studied, she said, only 45 percent of victims had direct exposure to sick poultry.
An additional 35 percent had "indirect" exposure, which meant sick birds in the neighborhood, and 20 percent were "inconclusive." "Unlike in Thailand and Vietnam," she said, "our risk factors are not clear." Virologists believe that the situation that must be avoided at all costs is to have humans with seasonal flu catch H5N1, too, because the viruses could mix.
Indonesia's best prevention against that, Naipospos said, is the "Tamiflu blanket." "We learned that in Garut," she said of a cluster of cases last August in West Java. More than 20 people died or suffered serious symptoms.
The government quickly gave the antiviral drug to more than 2,000 people.
Ultimately, only three cases in the cluster were confirmed, but scientists suspected some were missed and the drug suppressed the virus to undetectable levels in others.ADVERTISER LINKS
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http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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#244019 - 05/03/07 04:50 AM
Re: The Coming Flu Pandemic
[Re: itdincor]
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itdincor
Member
Registered: 10/11/01
Posts: 1742
Loc: Sand Point, Alaska
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Well, the H5N1 scare has quieted down, but it's not out. Here follows a general statement on our inevitably suffering a major pandemic. Whether or not it's H5N1 is, to me, by now irrelevant. Some sort of flu WILL show up. And, of course, there's the Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis raging in South Africa, and apparently nations nearby. Some folks worry about HIV somehow "hitching a ride" on the tuberculosis bacilli, and thus creating an airborne HIV/TB. And, the XDRTB is already on record as having killed healthy folk in as little as two weeks!
Just thought I'd let you know. IMO, you've been getting too much sleep. 
**********
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/F...7788048688.html
Flu pandemic overdue and inevitable
Australia must brace itself for an influenza which can't be prevented, a visiting US official has warned.
Eric Hargan, the US Acting Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, said during a speech in Sydney that the world was overdue for a flu pandemic, and Australia must take heed.
"Never before have we been as overdue but under-prepared for a recurring natural disaster as we are now for a pandemic," Mr Hargan told the conservative think tank The Sydney Institute on Monday night.
He described an outbreak as having a `popcorn effect': "a pop here, then there, then several, and soon eruptions all over".
Such an event probably could not be prevented, no nation would be spared, and any community that was relying on a national-level government to offer a life line "will be tragically wrong", he said.
The latest bird flu, known the H5N1 virus, was the biggest and worrying current threat, and its spread to Australian birds was inevitable, Mr Hargan said.
"It has spread over migratory flyways from Southeast Asia to Central Asia, Europe, and the Middle East," he said.
"Given global flyway patterns, it is probably only a matter of time before it appears in Australia and North America."
This strain was particularly problematic because it mimicked the deadly 1918 pandemic virus more closely than others, and had proven a 50 per cent death rate among the 290 people so far infected.
"If the H5N1 strain were to develop into a human-to-human transmissible strain, no one would have immunity," said Mr Hargan, who will be meeting Australian officials to discuss the issue.
"And if it retained its terrible level of mortality, we could be facing a global catastrophe.
"If a pandemic strikes, it will come to the United States. It will come to Australia. It will come to communities all across the world."
Mr Hargan said the US was focusing on developing vaccines and monitoring disease to "quickly stomp out the spark" of a pandemic.
And while the nation was successfully stock-piling life-saving anti-viral drugs it had yet to perfect a distribution plan that would get medicine to the sick within 36 hours.
"Some people may think that our preparation is a waste and that we are being alarmist," he said.
"In reply, I can only say that these people are right - until they're wrong. And the consequences of them being wrong are greater than the consequences of us being wrong."
© 2007 AAP
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http://anysoldier.com I am what I am and that's all what I am - Popeye the Sailor Man From simplicity make not complexity without necessity - John of Ockham Proven liquid water and fossilized life on Mars are SERIOUS BUSINESS
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