According to the Sri Lanka Sunday Observer, though, India sees no cause for alarm over an avian flu epidemic. "So far there has been no human-to-human transmission of the virus."
At Bayosphere, blogger Dan Gilmore isn't so sanguine. He blames the Bush administration for failing to get in line for supplies of flu vaccine sooner, and says,
Here's what a more competent and less ideological administration would do. It would say there's an emergency, and launch an emergency effort to get American pharmaceutical companies will make this drug, paying a royalty to Roche. And if Roche balked, we'd do what developing nations are doing in the case of hyper-expensive AIDS drugs: Make them anyway. Meanwhile, we'd be embarking on a crash vaccine program, one designed so we were not dependent on the same drug industry that left the US without nearly enough flu shots last year...
The Freedom Rider seems more worried about a military response to a flu epidemic in the US than he is about the disease itself. "In case of a bird flu outbreak, President Bush says that he would have to call in the troops, here on US soil, to keep us all safe. Somehow the thought doesn't make me feel any safer."
Don't worry, chandrasutra tells us—according to experts, "information is key to fighting flu pandemics." The post cites a number of excellent resources in the battle, including the WHO Avian flu site, and a BBC Avian Flu Q&A.
And at Junkyard Blog, B. Preston notes that the Democrats' plan to create the "next great genocidal smear campaign... will shamelessly use the coming bird flu threat to orchestrate it." Preston points out that the Bush Administration has spent a year building a plan to deal with a pandemic, and notes
Bush literally can't win with them--especially when the failures in New Orleans had "Democrat" written all over them. The closer to failure the Democrats actually are, the more they blame Bush for it. [Avian] flu has been nagging at the edges since 1997. Last time I checked, that means the Clintonistas had a few years to start working on the problem. Did they? Did they?
The threat may be real, or it may be an inflated concern like the 1976 Swine Flu fiasco, when more people died from the vaccine for the flu than from the disease itself. H5N1 could be the next "Great Pandemic." Or it could be only another political football to justify spending our money and curtailing our freedoms.
Article comments
1 - RJ
Avian Flu is a killer virus, no question.
However, it has thus far only been transmitted to humans via infected birds. The virus, however, has been known to mutate (as all viruses do). So, perhaps we are not too far away from a mutation that allows human-to-human infection.
If this occurs, there will be millions killed globally, and many thousands dead in the US. And that is a rather conservative estimate...
2 - Bennett
Thanks DrPat, very informative.
3 - Rupert
There does appear to have been some very limited human-to-human transmission (one probable case in VietNam, where a doctor who had been treating a patient diagnosed with avian flu subsequently succumbed to it himself, and more recently familial clusters in Indonesia.)
If H5N1 does mutate into a form which is readily transmissible between humans and retains its mortality rate, then we do have a problem. Given that people travel further and more often than they did in 1918 and that an infected individual is likely to be shedding virus for some days before he/she exhibits flu symptoms, then a pandemic could develop rapidly and there would be few places likely to miss it.
The virus itself may kill many people, but the probable panic, together with the (partial) collapse of 'civilisation' (Trade, including food supplies and possibly power and other utilities could all be hit hard) may cause further deaths.
President Bush has already talked about quarantine areas enforced by martial law; it's difficult to see how that would be brought into force. - How many soldiers would you need to throw a cordon around New York City, for instance? - Would there be any point if the virus had entered through JFK, carried by a passenger who didn't know he was ill, had infected half the passengers on the aircraft and then flown on to Los Angeles? Would he then throw a military cordon around greater LA to impose a quarantine there? (I'm using those two cities as an example, not because I think NY is the likely entry point.)
If a pandemic does start, then meetings between large groups of people (schools, theaters, colleges, churches etc) may be inadvisable and indeed, schools, colleges and theaters may close 'for the duration.' Some factories may also close - which would be a 'double whammy' - people may not be paid and we may start to run out of necessities. It may not be a bad idea to hold a stock of 'vital' supplies sufficient to last a couple of weeks, so that in the event that there are shortages, people will be able to get by.
4 - DrPat
Currently there are far more human deaths from Ebola than from H5N1. The fear of avain flu seems to be generated from three factors:
A few years ago, the panic was over West Nile Virus encephalitis, which continues to spread through the bird and horse populations in the US, but for which we see diminishing numbers of human deaths.
Using the National Guard to help stem the effects of panic makes more sense than using them to "cordon off" a quarantined area. And to be fair, the President did NOT say that the plan was to cordon off cities and use the military to prevent people from escaping quarantined areas. His remarks were carefully quoted in the US press, a word or two at a time, to give that impression.
According to International Tribune Health/Science Wednesday:
5 - Cerulean
Thanks Pat. That seconded what I recalled on another thread about the Swine Flu vaccine doing more harm than good.
I look at all of this and it bothers me that more natural approaches, which I follow in my own life, are probably not going to be tried. For instance, I don't know if the unnaturally crowded conditions that we keep poultry in contribute to this, or if the hormones and antibiotics they are fed could be making this more likely, or if basic sanitation and hygiene are being ignored because of crowded conditions or factory farming. I know that when you fool with nature, and you create a climate for diseases to happen. The animals that I've seen that are fed really good diets are glossy and healthy.
6 - DrPat
I doubt there was much poultry-crowding or hormone-feeding in the early 1900s, yet we're now learning that the Great Pandemic of 1918 was probably an avian flu that jumped to humans.
Natural methods of fighting disease include, in my opinion, using the vaccines that have been developed to target the virus. You do know that there is a difference between bacteria/amoeba-sized disease sources and viruses, right?
Virus particles are super-tiny, and since they're technically not alive, killing them doesn't really help. We have to use technically-advanced methods to render them harmless, or to fight the symptoms until our bodies can purge them.
Even so, current viral theory is that "overcome" viruses linger in the body for the rest of our lives. They're down, but not out. Think of Herpes zoster, a virus which causes chicken pox in its first infection, then lies dormant until it re-emerges as shingles.
7 - Michael Craig
I have been following the flu virus for most of a year. Articles are informative, e.g., recent National Geographic lead story (Oct 2005). However, also look at sims on epidemic control. Ones I have read about indicate most effective strategy is forced quarrantine by military. That's why Bush floated it. Second, check the backorders on Tamiflu and nano face masks.
Both are backordered for months. Vaccines will take much longer to produce than the spread time (6 months worldwide) In short, if it hits, figure serious economic and political disruption and you will be on your own.
How many of us are prepared to feed our selfs, provide drinking water, and our own medical care over the year it may well take for this pandemic to burn out?
A brief study of what happened in NO is will be a good primer for what is to follow.
8 - Haluk Direskeneli
Bird Flue is nothing compared to what happened to a respcted President of a university at east end of Turkey.
President of "The University of 100th Aniversary" is an exceptional personality. It is at the east end corner of Turkey, next to Lake Van, in the city of Van. He collected local archeological artifacts and secured in the university. However he was in confict with the existing government in ruling the university. The Ministry of Education is MP of Van. So this week Security officials arrested and interrogated the President of 100.Anniversary VAN University for 10 hours while standing presumably due to unreasonable local political issues. They collected the archeological artifacts, while demolishing most of them while the purpose was to protect. After observing the upcoming latest local news in VAN, I feel that the population in city of VAN does not deserve to have an university in their home city, and hence it is much better that the university is to be relocated to somewhere else such as to Sirnak or Bingol so that their people does appreciate what it means to have a university, academicians and an extraordinary president, Prof.Dr. Yücel Aşkın. We all watch carefully.