Slashdot Mirror
A Flu Pandemic?
Pedrito writes "Scientific American is running a story in this month's issue about preparing for a flu pandemic. What this article tries to convey is that a pandemic is definitely coming. Whether it's from the H5N1 strain (which would likely cause hundreds of millions of deaths) or another strain a few years down the road. There have been 3 other flu pandemics in the past 100 years. The 1918 strain being the worst, with 40 million killed. The reason H5N1 is being followed so closely is because it's already spread to people and because it's incredibly lethal (a roughly 50% fatality rate at th moment). Even if the fatality rate dropped to 5% when and if it mutates into an easily communicable form, it would be twice as deadly as the 1918 virus."
Randall Flagg is cackling with glee right now. His plan as almost borne fruit. I'm stocking up on Nozz-a-la and heading for the hills. Who's with me?
Whilst this sort of thing has happened before saying it's definitely going to mutate is an overstatement. The same kind of sensationalist journalism not to long ago likened mad cow disease to a new sort of plague with predictions of obscene death rates when in reality it was statistically low. It could end up the same for this with a few hundred people dieing over several years ... nothing huge is definitely going to happen.
Yep, this is definitely the way to keep the public feeling safe. Tell them something is definitely coming to kill 40 million or more, only 50% of people infected will survive and that there is no cure yet.
I can see the same panic buying of the drugs that can help just like the panic buying of gas masks which happened when someone said that terrorists would use bio/chem weaps.
...means more sick & thus more dead. This doesn't make the coming pandemic more deadly.
Here is a one-page, ad-free version of the article. Seriously, when articles are formatted like this, submitters should use the "printer friendly" version of the article as the submission.
Make sure those bastards get infected.
As I've been living in a cave with a sneezing chicken. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Slashdot.
The Discovery Channel will be having a special on about this at 10:00pm EST, it was on last night and I believe it was nearly a 60% fatality rate. In Holland they had to slaughter nearly 30 million birds (mostly chickens) because the disease spread there. The most cases and deaths have been reported in Vietnam, 41 deaths out of the total of 62. You might want to watch this special, it even talks about how they found out the 1918 flu was originally a complete avian strain, much like how this new one is.
Fear the turtle farming ninja!
Am I the only one, having a somewhat strong immune system, that is not in the least bit worried about a pandemic?
On a side note:
Cue the tinfoil wearers saying that the possible pandemic is a vast right-wing conspiracy (tm)(c) to convince people that evolution and survival of the fittest is BAD.
Think of the millions of children (possibly) dying!
Such are the hassles of packing 6.5 billion of us into a single planet; If as many of us died as nature probably intended, proximity, and thus the spread of such diseases, wouldn't be such an issue.
Come on, you have to have realized we're nearing "maximum density" here; something's gotta change, quick.
I'm still waiting for SARS to get me, cos that's what I was told was going to kill me before. And then there was West Nile Virus. And we can't forget those killer bees that'll be here any day now. Shouldn't we all be dead from ebola by now, too? Or how about monkey pox?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Scientific American used to be a fine magazine with level-headed articles, which presented difficult scientific topics in language that a well-read lay person could understand and appreciate. In the last few years, however, it has increasingly moved toward the sensationalistic article which predicts that doom "could happen any day now." It's bad journalism and it's bad science but it does sell subscriptions. For some reason, I still have mine.
This Boston Globe article is interesting... it's essentially a summary of a new book by Mike Davis.
It puts pandemics into their political and social context. The article says that if flu does develop into a planetwide scourge, it "will be a largely man-made disaster" caused by "overseas tourism, wetland destruction, a corporate 'Livestock Revolution,' and Third World urbanization.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
And we've already been sold the "official party line"!
Now, where's my tinfoil hat?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sounds like in "Things to Worry About", Asteroid Impact and Global Warming is OUT, and Flu Pandemic is IN. You have to know what the latest popular intellectual fashion is!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I've read an article somewhere that stated that the 1918 flu was so bad because of horrid war conditions, such as sick soldiers being sent back into battle and shipped around in crowded trains and boats.
Such flus are allegedly only that deadly when there are secondary conditions to boost them. Still, a flu that kills tens of thousands is possible and scarry.
(Iraq is not that desparate..........yet.)
I'll see if I can find the link.
Table-ized A.I.
slightly altered:
Carter: We have just received a threat on the planet. We ask if you please exit as soon as possible and please do not panic.
Carter: Did you hear what I just said? Get your shit and go out the door!!
Better save up some sick days. Wish I hadn't already 'had the flu' twice this year.
Here is an article on "Bird Flu's Environmental Components", for those interested in the ecological side of it.
One thing that bothers me about all this sudden talk of pandemics, how much cause for concern is there for the average American citizen? This flu strain is apparently more dangerous than SARS, yet it has recieved nowhere near the amount of press that SARS did, and SARS primarily affected the elderly and people with poor immune systems (there were exceptions, though, back off).
In my case, I haven't been sick enough to need antibiotics in more than a year and a half. I'm a full time college student living in a thirty year old dorm in western Pennsylvania. I regularly have contact with over 1000 people on any given weekday. At any given moment, there is at least 5 people in my hall who are sick.
Is this pandemic something that American college students at small schools should worry about? Obviously, there is a much higher chance at a university or much larger school (like Penn State with ~45,000 students from all over the world).
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
"The reason H5N1 is being followed so closely is because it's already spread to people and because it's incredibly lethal (a roughly 50% fatality rate at th moment)." ...maybe.
So far, fewer than 150 people worldwide have been infected with HN51. Many of those people were old and poor, and didn't have regular access to modern medical treatment. Estimating a human mortality rate from these cases is virtually impossible.
It's one thing to say that a flu pandemic is inevitable. But then, so are earthquakes, volcano eruptions, giant asteroids, and the heat death of the universe....
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Jeez-us enough with inane fear mongering already. Comparing now to WW1 is incredibly inept, a lot of people who died in 1918 were soldiers who sat in muddy trenches and were malnourished. If a disease is too lethal it will kill off its host before it has time to spread significantly, and if its not eventually nature (which inlcudes us) just deals with it. Were all going to die of aids, or sars, or whatever the media is predicting. If a virus realy was going to wipe us out Ebola would have killed off everyone long ago. Maybe we'll have a realy bad flu season, but the Andromeda strain this is not.
I keep seeing these 50+% mortality figures being thrown around, which seems slightly misleading to me. Imagine if 100 people get a disease. 30 might get it asymptomatically. 60 might get the disease to such an extent that they're "sick" (feeling flu-ish, missing work, etc). 10 might get it to the extent that they wind up in the hospital. If 5 of those 10 die, what's the mortality of the disease? It might seem like 50% to a doctor treating these patients, but the actual number would be 5 percent.
Because we can only report mortality of cases which we actually see, health officials are already biased towards observing the most severe forms of the disease. With something like, say, HIV, or ebola, it might be safe to say that all reported cases = ALL cases. But with something like a strain of the flu, which people suffer to varying degrees, I'd guess there's some much larger number of cases that are simply never seen in hospitals.
50% of what? Of people who got sick enough to go to a doctor. Where do the people who never showed up at a hospital fit into this statistic?
Tune in for an hours worth of "public information broadcast", or why I like to call "it's been a few years from CJD so we need a new overblown threat to hype".
Focusing on a specific strain, which isn't causing humans problems (if it mutates, it's a different strain) is idiotic.
If we're really worried about this, then we just need to subsidise even more PUBLIC (*NOT* private) medical research..
Fud, if it's good enough for US Corporations, it's good enough for the [current] US Gubernment. Afterall, privatization is much more efficient (except when it comes to FBI, Policing, Military, etc.)
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Right now the US pharmaceutical industry makes most of its money with drugs the reduce symptoms and doesn't cure anything. Right now the flu symptom fixing drugs is about a 10 billion dollar a year industry. The common cold industry has a number of of drugs that make you feel much better but you end up being more contagious for longer so you can spread your cold to even more coworkers.
This is in sharp contrast to the pharmaceutical research done in other countries that are more interested in finding real cures.
I'm not at all worried about this whole bird-flu thing. The administration is exploiting the bird-flu threat a means to soften up the public to the idea of martial law for quarantining. Less than 70 people have died, it does not spread between humans and is not even here in the US. Once I see people in the US dropping left and right from this then I'll be worried, but right now I'll just wait and see, this will probably turn out to be like that whole y2k flop.
Its no exaggeration to say this is the most significant threat we have faced in decade - orders of magnitude more important than a few terrorists. Yet there still is a sleepwalking feel to people's reaction.
So how are you prepared?
I wonder how accurate either of those percentages is. Can we really know who has gotten either disease? Or is it a SWAG both ways? Isn't it possible that people are getting the current bird flu, and recovering without ever knowing they had bird flu? Maybe an epidemiologist could explain the statistical methodology.
(BTW, those specials about pandemics were great. Scary and compelling.)
While I don't doubt that it could eventually get that bad, it seems like a lot of ifs have to happen. As it is, I think what a few hunderd people have been killed by the current version (not exactly a pandemic or communicable). I think scientists should continue keeping an eye on it, but we don't seem to be at the "sky is falling" stage we get from the media. At this point, one of the worst aspects to all of this must be the destruction (or possible destruction) of so many birds and the environmental impact that has.
Klein bottle for rent - inquire within.
West Nile and mad cow disease were also going to be crises, as I recall.
Whats with all the flu coverage lately? If we didn't have a vaccine, this wouldn't have even been covered.
I think its silly that people fuss about not being able to get the flu vaccine when 10 years ago they couldn't anyways. I'd tell them to start running or get in shape so that they'd better be able to combat the virus.
Nation Scaring Time!!!
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Being somwhat affiliated with a few online pharmacies, I know, that Tamiflu (possibly a cure, or at least a good suport medicine to avoid getting any flu) has been withdrawn form public pharmacies and are stocked by the government.
.....
Why is that happening ?
Is this flu propaganda for the drug companies, and fear mongerin ?
These questions came up almost every day looking at searches for that medication, and many claim that this flue, when getting ins a country with decent medical practices/health services has a very small fatality rate. Most people get it in developing countries, and get it in agricultural professions (e.g. farmers being exposed to chickens)....
Before you start trolling on online pharmacies, I never send spam, or sell dangerous meds such as hydrocodone, so don't bother.
Anyway I am exposed to medication news because it became part of my revenue, and dunno what to think anymore about that flu panic....
Most people I know say, that it is just a panic by the drug mob to boost sales, but the stocking of flu meds by governments send me a different message....
Highly lethal viruses tend to not spread terribly far if they incubate quickly for the simple reason that those who are infected die before they can infect many others. This is one of the reasons why Ebola tends to be limited to individual communities - nobody lives long enough to get it to the next community.
A 5% fatal virus will leave 95% of those infected to act as carriers - and because of the low fatality rate, some percentage of those won't realize that they're sick and will take it on planes, etc. without being diagnosed.
Step 1 - Shock viewers
... because these 'new studies' are a good way to get people to keep tuning in when there really is no news...
Step 2 - Increase viewership
Step 3 - PROFIT!
===
It sounds like a bunch of FUD to me, the same stuff you hear advertised about the 10 o'clock news... about 'your next drink of milk could be your last' or 'decapitated head found in newly purchased toilet'...
Sensationalism sells... heck, why do you think eggs are good, bad, then good, then bad again, etc...
Hey, at least it beats starting wars for viewership, I'll give 'em that...
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
I'm seeing this more and more, also on slashdot. "The reason is because ..." is strange and redundant. Please use "The reason is that ..." (more info)
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
I for one welcome our new H5N1 overlords.
You probably need to have pretty bad symptoms and seek treatment to be diagnosed in the first place. Plenty of people are likely to only suffer a (nasty) flu.
Every so often one of these very lethal soon-to-be almost-upon-us epidemics is explained (at least in the popular media) to be a great worldwide risk, because it is highly lethal, and those who contact the disease frequently die within a short period.
This does not make sense. To create a proper epidemic, what you really need is sick people walking around for weeks, coughing, sneezing, or otherwise transmitting their contagious disease. If they die shortly after becoming ill, the personal tragedy remains the same, but they have less chance to pass it on...
Please remember that this is 50% mortality among REPORTED cases. There may be plenty of people out there who get sick with mild or moderate symptoms and treat it like the regular flu, stay home, take lots of liquids, etc. The mortality rate is among people who are admitted to the hospital, and this is probably only people already showing severe symptoms.
The influenza virus in the 1957 influenza epidemic may have actually been considerably worse than that in the 1918 epidemic.
What made a difference was the incredible advances in medicine between the epidemics.
As for the avian influenza, there is little indication that the virus is being spread between humans and no indication that it spreads easily between humans. If and when the virus mutates and that becomes possible, the mutation may also change the severity of the resulting illness.
Prepare for the worst and be thankful for the best.
We all know that the news cycle runs on hype, and that there are always charlatans, snake-oil salesmen, and fear mongers waiting to pounce when danger threatens.
However, immediately dismissing pandemic warnings is foolish. It makes sense to develop a vaccine and work on contingency plans.
That said:
There are a lot of differences between 1918 and 2005, and 1963 and 2005.
Diabetes and obesity epidemic aside, people are a lot healthier:
* Vitamin deficiences and plain malnutrition are rareities.
* Lice, bedbugs, intestinal worms and such, while not unknown and on the rise in certain populations, are very, very rare on the whole.
* The vast majority of people sleep in their own beds, in warm bedrooms.
* Simple palliative medicines like aspirin, decongestants, anti-diarrheals, and re-hydration drinks can turn what in 1918 were deadly menaces into something merely serious.
* Most people take hot soapy showers every day; soap and hot running water are available in restaurants and workplaces.
A pandemic would certainly be bad news for people on the margins, especially the very poor, very old, and recent illegal immigrants crammed into shared housing. But on the whole, the factors listed above will work together to turn a life-threatening menace into something serious -- possibly temporarily debilitating -- but survivable for most people.
Stefan
P.S. Hey! You! Wash your goddamn hands after you use the bathroom and cover you mouth when you sneeze. Yeah, you!
You're right; I've seen at least one report of subsequent discovery of bird flu infections in people who weren't sick enough to seek medical treatment. Secondly it's common for epidemic bugs to become less lethal as they spread; killing the host is a bad way to reproduce yourself. So, as I understand it, a pandemic strain that kills 50% of the people it infects is pretty unlikely. But even a 1-2% mortality rate is going to make even the Indian Ocean tsunami look pretty trivial in terms of death toll.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Short subject line -- in the 1918 pandemic the young and healthy were often fine in the morning and dead by nightfall. Even in the more common situation where it took a few days to kill, it struck the young and healthy disproportionately harder.
The problem? An immune system has to be _reactive_. Your immune system has to develop sensitivity to the new virus and that takes some time. The usual flu strain isn't a problem since it's very similar to the strains we've already seen (in infection or innoculation) and our immune system can quickly respond. There's also a lot of natural selection going on over time -- a virus would rather see us miserable and contagious for a week than dead and non-contagious within a day.
But we have no natural immunity to an entirely new strain, and some can kill before our immune system can develop an effective response.
That's why older people faired better in 1918. They hadn't seen the same strain, but they had seen enough variety that they had a stronger initial response than their younger peers.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Highly lethal doesn't mean quickly lethal. AIDS is highly lethal, but it takes years or even decades to kill.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Asia has a population of, say 10x USA, so that's 6 people gonna die in the USA, unless it mutates.
A mutated virus does not get nailed by a vaccine. A mutation that causes the flu to move to humans is a serious mutation, so the existing vaccines are likely useless. So why the big scramble for them?
More and more this looks like a big money grab, as well as a bit fear mongering exercise. Scared people are easier to control.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
At least geeks in general dont really go out, so I think that this will pass us by.. (its a joke, read it that way)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
Ok. So what do you propose we do to prepare for the end of the world. So far I havn't seen much anything that the average person could do (go hide out in the woods, in my van down by the river?). I got to be honest, if there is absolutely nothing I can really do about something, then I'm not going to worry about it much. The "running around like a chicken with it's head cut off" thing just doesn't work for me.
Klein bottle for rent - inquire within.
What really gets me is that even if there's some pandemic that could potentially wipe out half of the human race, at the same time, there's also a company that's charging $100 per dose for the treatment of the disease because they hold the patent to the medication or technique and they can milk it for all its worth.
I wholeheartedly applaud governments that step in and invalidate such patents under these circumstances so that they can procure and administer the treatment to their people as they see fit. However, I still find it unfortunate that only the wealthier governments can do this (look at AIDS and Africa). The poorer governments still need to rely on complying with the treaties to the letter or risk becoming even poorer. Even then, not all governments, regardless of wealth, will do this.
I am, of course, specifically talking about the good ol' US of A. When this killer flu arrives in the US, we all know the government isn't going to step in like some of the Asian governments. So what'll end up happening is that the poor and needy who have no health care are completely devastated because they can't afford the treatment or the insurance to pay for the treatment, while the wealthy survive unscathed because they can afford to. And that's really what's most sad--that the wealthiest nation in the world isn't charitable enough to care for its own people. Public welfare be damned, so long as the pharmaceuticals can make back their research money.
As for those screaming that the patent holder will likely license the patent for making generics in such an event, I have two things to say:
1) Licensing takes care of supply, but still doesn't address the cost issue for low-income, medically uninsured people.
2) The way diseases can so quickly spread, by the time anyone recognizes the gravity of the situation, it'll be likely to be too little, too late. Again, supply will go up moderately, but demand will skyrocket.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The 50% most likely to survive this flu are young children and the elderly. The mortality rate for most geeks is closer to 90%. The healthier you are, the faster you die.
So far in the past week I've been polled by two major Canadian polling groups, at least partially on the Bird Flu in the news.
I tried my best to show I'm not as concerned as the media is about this threat, since I feel there are more important health measures we can be taking than preparing for a bug that doesn't exist, when there's so many that do exist we don't prepare for or wipe out while the technology exists for us to do it.
You'd think microbes must think the human economy is the only thing keeping polio, TB, Measles, and Chicken Pox from being wiped off the earth like Small Pox was.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window
And in-flu-enza.
Stolen from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/
can be found at Al-Qaeda Headquarters.
Remember: Be Patriotic: Deport The Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal To Iraq!!!!
Patriotically as always,
K. Trout, C.E.O.
after all, it it is a chicken disease we're talking about.
-
sig sig sputnik
Not. But a solid understanding of Evolution will allow us to *predict* how the lil' nasty evolved, or better yet *predict* how it will evolve in the future (emphasis on predict morans, i.e. a chance of failure, perhaps great, is implied). The theory of intelligent design allows us to predict nothing. Thanks Kansas.
The world population is at what, 6 billion and some change? When the previous outbreaks occured, world population was much smaller. This has significant epidemiological implications. The First and Third Worlds are now significantly more densely populated. IIRC, the First World, which suffered heavy casualties during the previous epidemics, was already densely populated and the bulk of casualties were in densely populated areas.
n et/SAsia/suchana/1028/C02_328.htm). Consider the public health infrastructures in India and the US. An outbreak of a highly contagious, highly lethal flu in a newly dense Third World would would wreak devistation on a scale the world has never seen. It would travel quickly and the infrastructure would not be able to respond. Mobility increases -- airports etc. -- would spread such a flu over the earth rapidly.
Now consider the dense population of the Third World. This is a recent phenomenon - see India's rapid growth (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/health
Here's hoping it doesn't become contagious!
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
The world is going to end... you are all going to die from birdflu!!! Unless of course, you decide to give the government billions to "fight" birdflu, you agree to give the government the power to impose martial law and put all resources under the control of the military for the duration of the "epidemic", and we lock up our borders and don't let those possibly infected foriegners in!
Geez, Bird Flue is like terrorism, or global warming, or all those other things that provide fodder to fearmonger people into giving the government more power
I don't see how anyone can say this with certainty. Furthermore, in 1918 we didn't have flu vaccines or antiviral drugs. All I hear is warning after warning about something that doesn't actually exist.
Since 9/11 the government has used fear to strip away our rights and greatly increase their power. "Terrorism" has been shouted so often we no longer hear it. The government needs something else for us to fear, and they've chosen "bird flu".
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Donald Rumsfeld is a shareholder of Gilead, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, so now you have the complete equation.
1) Tell them something is definitely coming to kill 40 million or more, only 50% of people infected will survive and that there is no cure yet
2) Create a Medicine for that
3) Profit!
Terrorism isn't working anymore.
On to the next "we need big government to protect us" fear.
If a disease is too lethal it will kill off its host before it has time to spread significantly
.. by which time the entire (or large segment) of the population would be infected. Sure this may result in the agent extincting itself along with humans, but remember viruses/bacteria don't have the intelligence to predict/figure that out (until it's too late). A mutation that effects delayed lethality followed by a mutation that improves virulence can happen that makes all this possible. Imagine the catastrophe that would happen if HIV was spread with the common cold vector (expect a 60% decline in population over 15 years). HIV, mad cow etc. .. none of these were detected until patients with symptoms showed up in clinics.
.. I care if it's a threat to me.
False. This is not always true. Virulence is not always tied to onslaught of symptoms. Ever heard of disease causing agents that don't kill the host until many years later, yet can spread prior to the symptomatic phase. An example of this would be mad cow disease and HIV. A more virulent form that spread as easily as say, the common cold would have decades to spread until detection
And besides, for me to be concerned about a virus, I don't care that it's not a threat to civilization
Please can we stop with this panicing about everying. It seems that there isn't a week that goes by with out something new that is going to kill us and million of other people. I gave up TV and news papers a long time ago because of this. I'm shocked everytime I go and stay with someone that partake of mass media (has a TV) just how much complete and utter scare-mongering crap is on. Yes there probably will be a flu pandemic. So what? It's not like we can do much about it. We might be able to make an antiviral after it's appeared in time to say a lot of people in the west. Do you really think the drug will make it to the third world though where the virus will hit hardest? Any way what I want to know is...
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Unless you spend your days working with poultry and you're in a country that is already dealing with infected bird populations, you have a better chance of getting struck by a meteor than you do of catching bird flu. If you're one of the aforementioned workers and you take the recommended precautions for maintaining a sanitary work environment, you've still got a better chance of getting hit by lightning.
If you're Joe Sixpack sitting at home in Ohio, your chances of contracting the disease are smaller still.
This whole "panic" is caused by manufactured news from the media. Instead of hoarding Tamiflu or Cipro, you're better off donating $10 to a charity that will spend the money immunizing children against diseases that are a genuine threat.
The whole avian influenza thing is a complete scam, at least in the US. It is designed purely to make money for the pharmaceutical companies and some individuals within the US government.
Read about how much difficulty the virus has spreading from birds to humans, before freaking out about it. It does not spread easily at all, which is also demonstrated by there having been less than 200 human cases of it worldwide.
SARS was a non-event...this will be too. Wait and see.
Of course another pandemic is coming. But so is another asteroid. Which will be first?
I hate these "the sky is going falling...eventually" predictions. Of course it will happen, but stop trying to scare everyone.
Let's see how much money it gets compared to the AIDS popu-demic.
Flu:
-(according to the scaremongers) WILL kill 50% of the victims, WILL kill 50 million etc.
- (truth): unknown
AIDS:
- (according to the scaremongers) WILL kill 100% of those contracting, and the disease will spread to bajillions (of course including heterosexuals)
- (truth) AIDS is an almost entirely PREVENTABLE disease, whose spread is limited really to people with (typically MANY) multiple sexual partners and intravenous drug users.
Yet AIDS is in the news nearly every day and consumes an estimated $18.4 billion this year.
-Styopa
But not too reactive. The suggestion has been made that the problem isn't that our immune systems don't react to H5N1, it's that it reacts too vigorously, as per, for example, this article, Bird Flu Triggers Immune System 'Storm'.
Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health is quoted in that article as saying that this might be why the young and healthy get stricken more severely (presumably he's referring to H5N1, but perhaps that happened with the 1918 flu as well):
From wikipedia:
* 1918-20 - Spanish Flu, 500 million ill, 50 to 100 million died (pandemic)
* 1957-58 - Asian Flu, 1 to 1.5 million died (epidemic)
* 1969-69 - Hong Kong Flu, 3/4 to 1 million died (epidemic)
If you do the math, its almost a purely exponential decay. Why? Either random,mutant flus are getting weaker, or medicing is getting better. Yes, its a tragedy when people die from this. Yes, its a tragedy, most of all, if I die from this. Will it sweep the planet, leaving Randall Flagg owning the world? No.
(Yes, I know the 2 later flus were not pandemics, but the point illustrates medicine's ability to react to the virus)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
e here. This avian flu has been in news for months.
Originally they said 150 million could die, then it was 7 million, then 200,000. Ask any european farmers about avian flu. It happens all the time. Though I shouldn't be surprised, this country only just discovered dental hygiene with baking soda something people have been doing for generations.
And now they say one from pigs is killing people.
Peak Oil, avian flu, what next your parents walking in on you during sex?
In my case, I haven't been sick enough to need antibiotics in more than a year and a half.
My assumption based on that entire comment is that the commenter believes he/she has a good immune system, or something. Myself, also a college student, but not living in a dorm, have only had a simple cold maybe 8 times in the last 5 years, and I had a stomach flu once. That's it.
I certainly haven't had any antibiotics in 7 or 8 years (I had swolen tonsils once in high school)... I haven't even been to a doctor in that long. If I had to get antibiotics every year and a half, I would think something was seriously wrong with me.
It's not such a simple thing because poorest countries don't have the infrastructure to deliver the drug even if they got it for free.
The Kansas Board of Education told me so.
Maybe read up on the Spanish flu. If the thing gets airborne, it doesn't need large incubation times, a day or so is enough. Estimates are that the Spanish flu of 1918 killed 2.5-5% of the global population. People went to bed healthy and never woke up.
Previous pandemics were slowed by the slower speed of travel in years gone, today it could be upon us before we realise.
The way this flu is reported is only to cause panic and get more money. Assuming the absoulte worse case senario of 100,000,000 (one hundred million deaths) the odds are 1 in 65 will be affected, given the current population of earth is ~ 6.5 billion. More realistically, a million deaths may happen, making the realistic odds 1 in 6,500.
My question to Slashdot, is can anyone offer odds of things happening as bad as this flu? Personally, I think dying from this flu would be much better than dying from an incurable form of bone cancer.
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Back in the early 1970's there was a similar situation with what was supposed to be the next big killer flu edidemic know as the "Swine Flu". Then president Jerry Ford made it a matter of national importance to develope a vacine that was supposed to ward off this impending killer. From what I can recall, the vacine was much more dangerous than that years flu.
During the 1918 pandemic, the mortality rate was highest among young men (aged 20 to 35 or so). Among the dead were some professional hockey players - stong, young, well nourished men. The older men were not dying at the same rate as the younger men, nor were females. This at least, from stories I've seen on the Discovery channel.
I'm not overly worried about the pandemic even though I'm in said demographic. I'm more worried about getting hit by a car. I also read (local paper today) that Sauerkraut, because of the high count of lactobacillus bacteria, maybe an effective way to counteract H5N1 and other flu viruses. Interesting, if true.
Sure, if there really is such a thing as a new strain. Everyone knows that the current administration has placed a ban on evolution. Without evolution, there can be no new strains of the flue. Without new strains, there can be no pandemic.
See? The Bush administration is protecting us from the pandemic!
-JMP
http://video.lisarein.com/dailyshow/oct2005/10-06- 05/10-6-05-avianflu.mov
That's one way to fix the traffic problems in America.
Now if it could just get rid of the "global warming" whiners and people who don't like to eat meat.
This is similar to the vaccine theory, with two twists:
My guess is that this would be illegal, or at the very least, would outrage large numbers of people. As a result, I'm suggesting the black ops approach. I was contemplating mailing the CDC and the White House with the suggestion, but I appear to be too lazy.
Note that this would only work for flus. Most other diseases are not nearly contagious enough -- a flu, in contrast, hits basically 100% of the population (usually, not very severly).
Before people jump on my back saying I'm an evil heartless person... I'm just putting things in to perspective. I don't want a pandemic to break out, but I'm just looking at this with an objective eye.
I'm assuming that 'twice as deadly', as meaning killing twice the number of people.
Yes, the new flu virus may will kill twice as many people as the 1918 pandemic did, however our population has more than tripled since the beginning of last century.
Lets say that the numbers are true. 40 million people died in the 1918, with a world population of, say, 2 billion people. This would mean that there was a 2% death rate.
Now, say in 2005, 80 million people die, with a world population of say 6.45 billion. The death rate would be 1.2% of the total world population.
That's 0.8% lower, than it was in the past. Actual numbers will most likely be less, with better technology, better sanitation in many parts of the world, and an understanding of genetics.
The numbers are here to scare people, and sell headlines.
Money cannot buy happiness, but can buy something soo darn close, that you can't really tell the difference
What's the current mortality on the regular flu this year? I'd bet good money that it's killed a fuckton more than 60 people this year.
Sure a pandamie is coming. Nothing new here. Always has been, always will be.
American/Swiss pharma corps are going to make billions out of this hype -- good biz, to hell with the costs to your average Joe.
I believe there's something like 60 million people a year who die from Malaria, yet when was the last time you heard about that in the news? Aids has to be up there too...
There's no money to be made from poor people dying, hence its not *News* worthy. Millions of rich people dying though, is a potential gold mine! Hold the presses!!!! Get me on the line to our advertisers!!
Two posters comment on a thread about a SUPERFLU with direct references to a bestselling book about a SUPERFLU, and moderators rate both posts as offtopic?? Where are we getting moderators these days, the Republic of Illiteracia? FWIW, I thought both posts were quite topical AND funny. "M-O-O-N" indeed :))
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
There's a reason that would limit the lethality of new mutant :
...
- The point of a virus is not killing its host, but making copies of it self.
- The lethality of H5N1 is a bad secondary effect.
- If a new mutant kills its host to quickly, it'll run out of hosts and wont replicate anymore.
Example :
- If one catch a new über-mortal flu
- brings it home
- infect familiy member
- the über-mortal flu kills very quickly and the whole family drops dead the same evening
- The virus will be "stuck" and won't be able to infect anyone else.
-> That's one of the reason we didn't see a Ebola pandemia
But, if it is a slower virus,
and the people survive at least a few couple of weeks (or don't die at all),
they will have plenty of time to go to work the next days, and transmit the flu to all co-workers, etc...
The kind of pandemia you see in movies, when some (hibernating/comating patient wakes up / austronaute lands / whatever else) and see everyone dead is not very likely.
The danger will be if a flu virus like H5N1 can both cross infect birds, but is almost harmless to them, and humans, and is highly lethal, then there's some chance of such a "everyone drops suddenly dead" scenario.
To put it in more Slashdot-friendly terms :
Imagine an internet worm.
If the worm crashes Windows immediatly after infecting the PC, even before having time to replicate and send copies to the whole Outlook addresse book,there's no way it could become widespread.
A few PC will crashes and that's the whole story.
But if the virus, silently installs backdoors/trojans/spywares and silently begins replicating, THEN you'll have a lot of infected boxen.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What I read from your quote is that when the population of hosts does not have close contacts only the mild strains have a chance to reach the next host. Those that multiply too fast do not reach the next one. Imagine a sparsely populated world in which people do not meet with other people for days. The agressive strains take themselves out of the gene pool (together with their hosts).
OTOH when milions of people are packed together in a closed environment, the more virulent strains can prosper and take over the slow-movers. It's not that the mild strains "loose", they are still in the background but what we see is the activity of the quick-movers.
An interesting conclusion is that a rising world population living in megacities equals a dense environment, equals an improving environment for viri.
More people, => more pandemics, => less people, ad nauseam. What comes to mind is the concept of the self-regulating Gaia. Or Orson Scott Card's Lusitania.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
Are newspaparmen trat ar fabricating articals like this really care about health of people?
Stories about pandemies are most likely product of stock market game and not real concern for our health. AIDS is present for many decades, there are billions of dedeases in 3rd World countries but Fly that hits London, NYC, LA, HK... that is real problem... who cares about Arfica or other poor countries, they are far avay but FLY can come to my office OMG!!!! PANIC!
Quasiman will save us!
And do it with a vacant stare, and a line of drool hanging from his chin, and a good 30% of his brain phased into some other reality.
It seems that makes a much deadlier series of events than, for instance:
1. Weak human flu
2. Mutate to become more deadly
3. Pandemic!
Just because #2 is not likely. A parasite that finds a way to kill its host is not at a selective advantage. Whereas a parasite that is already deadly, but finds a *new* host, does have a selective advantage.
Of course this is merely wild speculation on my part.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
> ...a pandemic is definitely coming...
Is that because a newly created flu strain will be released on the masses shortly?
>a virus would rather see us miserable and contagious for a week than dead and non-contagious within a day.
Important point, but toss one more variable into the mix. How long can the virus survive outside the body? Cholera can survive in the water supply. If a strain of cholera kills people quickly with diarrhea, and if the result hits the village water supply, then that strain of cholera has an effective reproductive strategy.
If you want to improve your odds of staying healthy consider these points: more winter vitamin D for immune function http://www.knowledgeofhealth.com/report.asp?story= Why%20Flu%20Epidemics%20Occur%20in%20Winter
meaningful amounts of vitamin C for symptoms and depletion.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/ortho_c.html
A simple plan B in winter: several "megavitamin" tablets (lots of B, extra others) a day (caution: pregnant ladies watch the amount preformed vit A!) and several 1/2 to 1 gram C tablets/day, as little as $0.25/day. Lots of C at the first tickle. For me, sure beats spin-the-bottle with vaccine or $100 maybe antivirals with side effects. Last time I got "shot" I was sick for over a week. I am lots happier with "Plan B".
No, I just happen to be doctor and my speciality (bacteria genetics) is close this field.
By thank you for the book suggestion.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As one of those researchers, I've got to ask -- given that Taiwan is already breaking the Tamiflu patent, what makes you think my bosses are insane enough to invest that research money when the product is going to be confiscated?
Geniuses like you have already brought the development of new AIDS treatments to a near halt. Personally, I think this flu hysteria is nonsense anyway, but stopping the drug pipeline to grab the not-very-good drugs on the market right now seems counterproductive to me. Anyway, we'll go make our money elsewhere, and you'd better hope any future treatments can be produced out of Creative Commons drum 'n' bass tracks...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
oh yes. I always use iron free or low iron (1 to 4 mg Fe) multivitamin tablets. Unless you need the extra iron for anemia, iron is a big caution note, Ditto copper. A lot of men and older women actually need to pass on the extra iron. Monitor YOUR situation with an occasional/annual blood test with iron panels and medical help, prn. High or low is not good.
I mean FLU
damn, it's starting already!
Bird Flu Scam: Donald H. Rumsfeld - Former Chairman of Gilead Sciences
Related: Bird Flu "Pandemic" Antidote: Wash Hands
Related: Spain: Bird Flu Sparking Human Epidemic Is 'Science Fiction'
Related: STRATFOR on Bird Flu: Calm Down
It's well know that people close to a a field of research are poor at making judgements about it's wider impact. Many aircraft engineers refuse to fly or express surprise that aircraft fly reliably given what they have seen take place in their workplaces. And yet many millions of people fly happily every year. In any kind of situation where professionals assess risk they are likely to exaggerate the importance of risks in their own area. Yet if we were to add up all of the risk from all of the professionals predicting hazards in our lives we'd appear to be doomed to death every few minutes.
The WHO was warning about Avian Flu in 1997 and they were wrong. Last year, the WHO was warning about Avian Flu in 2004 and they were wrong. Now the WHO is warning about Avian Flu this year.
l
The Avian Flu is over-hyped according to former Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Ontario
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/05-06/nov05.htm
People who have a problem with evolution don't have a problem with mutation. They have a problem with mutations creating new things. A fly becoming a lizard or something like that (I know that is a crass simplification). Viruses becoming viruses is not an issue for them.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The experts recommended surgical masks for flu patients and health workers exposed to those patients. For the healthy, hand washing offers more protection than wearing masks in public, because people can be exposed to the virus at home, at work and by touching contaminated surfaces--including the surface of a mask.
I guess it's time to stock up on hand sanitizer...
Another thing:
In the U.S., where states have primary responsibility for their residents' health, the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) estimates that a "severe" pandemic virus sickening 25 percent of the population could translate into 4.7 million Americans needing hospitalization. The TFAH notes that the country currently has fewer than one million staffed hospital beds.
Yes, it sucks, but the country's population is about 300 million, so that's about 1.6 percent needing to go to the hospital. Not all of those will die. Even at the ~50% fatality rate that the article mentions, we'd "only" lose 0.8% of the U.S.
Worse than any single natural disaster, to be sure, but the odds for the individual wouldn't be too bad, it seems.
Let them die. No vaccine is going to work because the first thing that will happen in a large scale pandemic is infrastructure collapse. Very few people are going to be around to administer a vaccine, most will be at home looking out for their families. ."
The current bird-flu scaremongering is the best case of risk based marketing I have ever seen. In New Zealand the chemists' have been sold out of the vaccine for months, the goverment is securing huge amounts of it, and for what. It works on the current strain that isn't really a huge problem.
The Director of Public Health, Mark Jacobs said
"We have a formal arrangement with Australia's CSL Ltd - the only influenza vaccine manufacturer in the Southern Hemisphere - which gives us a guaranteed supply if we need a pandemic vaccine," director of public health Mark Jacobs said. "Under the arrangement it is anticipated that we will get access to a pandemic vaccine within four to six months of the World Health Organisation declaring the existence of a pandemic
Four to six months? Wow, thats going to help
How about this for an idea. Instead of goverments all over the world spending insane amounts of money on a risk, why not spend it on Hospitals. Why not save it so that in the case of a "Global Pandemic" you can afford to shut down travel in and out of the country and work your ass off to minimise the damage to your population instead of spending your money on maybe's and what if's.
The really sad thing is that all the countries in the world who the west has shown it really doesn't care about because it would mean dropping their living standards (eg; for the world to live with the same amenities and comfort of Canada would require four more planets (with current technology)) won't have to worry about it because they are more than likely mostly going to die and leave us vast ungaurded resources.
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
You sir are a short-sighted fool.
Had it not been for Roch's Tamiflu, would there be any others out there now?
You take away their right to profit, and they will not care to innovate. It's all about the money. But hey, you'd risk life over money right?
I for one, would rather pay $100 per dose, than no dose at all.
eTrade SUCKS
For me, this is another "don't worry, be happy" case, as there is only a very small probability for a danger to a big number of people. Remember the Y2K bug, remember Sadams WMD, remember SARS, remember the mad cow disease? (bonus question: which doesn't fit?) None of these things ever caused real trouble to a major part of the world's population, but on all occasions, people got scared real easy. In fact, people were worried about just everything all through history, back to hiding from fire like scared animals.
Looking at some facts, there is a number of good reasons not to worry about this.
* Until today, only about 100 people died from H5N1
* they were all in contact with birds
* the virus doesn't spread from human to human (yes, it may sometime, but then again it may not - who knows)
* even if you get the virus, you have a good chance of surviving
* concerning the spanish flu: it killed something below 50 mio people worldwide. This is a lot, but with a total population of 2 billions, it also means that more than 97.5% survived
* we got a lot more knowlege about hygiene and biology now
* our body's own immune system is quite sophisticated and very strong against viri - after all it went through a million years of evolutionary development. At least it was good enough for our parents to survive long enough and have children, and also for our 4 grandparents, our 8 grand-grandparents and our $REALBIGNUM other ancestors.
* the media likes to keep us scared, so we keep watching. don't trust them
* the corporate world also likes to keep us scared, so we keep buying their crap. don't trust them either
* don't forget, some companies make real big money from selling medecine to imaginary threats (and I'm not only talking about viri here - think about how many "psychological disorders" that didn't even have a name a decade ago now can be cured with $fancydrug)
And if all else isn't good enough, there is still the top reason for not worring ever at all:
* Yes, we are all going to die someday, but when the time has come, overhasty worries won't save you, or even help you just a little bit. In fact, since death is inevitable, it might be much better to spend the time beeing with something useful, instead of beeing scared all the time.
Of course not worrying doesn't mean not taking precautions, when there is a valid reason for concern, but "valid concern" certainly doesn't apply here. If you're going to panic, please consider looking about ten posts down at an article that says something about Climate Warming.
No one is saying that this avian flu is going to become a pandemic. What is being said that there WILL BE another pandemic sometime soon based on statistics and if it happens to be this strain of avian flu it could kill a LOT of people.
"... nothing huge is definitely going to happen."
Wrong. Something huge IS definitely going to happen. If not now soon. If not the avian flu then something else. Pandemics by definition cause a huge amount of death. It may not be the avian flu but there will always be pandemics and there are things we could be doing but aren't to lessen the consequences.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
NPR's Science Friday recently had an hour on the subject. You can get the podcast of the broadcast here.
I remember my grandfather telling me about the 1918 flu hitting Philadelphia. Said it was the most frightening period of his childhood. His father would give the entire family a glass of red wine each night to fend off the disease ... an old Italian superstition, but none of them caught the illness.
"the immune system has to be reactive"
..
... ohh no, you are the guy who never takes antibiotics .... so take this and this (not antibiotivs) and that if you do not get better in a week, take this and that (antibiotics) " :) haha .... :)
hmm that makes me wonder if I have a better start as I never received a FLU shot (refused it), and refuse antibiotics unless absolutely necessary
my doctor always started " take XXX
he really respected that, and it always turned out that I could fight all the crap wist just something that kills fewer, and vitamise other than flu shots and antibiotics
Spanish Flu virus.
According to the World Health Organization 34.3 million people in the world have the AIDS virus
24.5 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Nearly 19 million have died from AIDS, 3.8 million of them children under the age 15.
5.4 million new AIDS cases in 1999, 4 million of them in Africa.
2.8 million died of AIDS IN 1999, 2.4 million of them in Africa.
13.2 million children orphaned by AIDS, 12.1 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Reduced life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 59yrs to 45yrs between 2005 and 2010, and in Zimbabwe from 61yrs to 33yrs.
More than 500,000 babies infected in 1999 by their mothers most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
The more you know, the less you understand.
If it's a strong immune response that kills the "young and healthy" then is the solution to suppress the immune system when infected?
The bird flu virus is not capable of human transmission currently so you have to catch it from birds in order to die of it.
This means that everybody who comes into contact with birds currently needs to be very vigilent about the health of the birds they come into contact with. The Chinese for example are culling all birds in an area where an outbreak occurs in order to reduce the likelyhood of it spreading. This is working fairly well as it is not clear whether transmission is occuring through the wild bird vector - migration or through transport of livestock. There is some evidence that it is appearing in places where the likelyhood is that it arrived in livestock because it is along railway routes and not bird migration paths. In addition the effect on birds is so virrulent that they are most likely killed before they can move a great distance. So far so good.
However if the outbreaks become more widespread then special measures may be taken to try and stop the spread. This may involve preventing birds bred for food from comming into contact with wild birds and the usual hygene precautions of reducing transportation of live livestock, cleaning vehicles that visit bird food production sites etc. No one knows how effective such a campaign would be against this particular virus would be but such measures have worked well in other animal disease senareos - foot and mouth, BSE etc.
Another useful measure would be to reduce the number of people who catch common human flu. This would help because one method by which H5N1 could become human transmissable would be by antigenic shift - essentialy a person who has bird flu and easily transmissable human flue could inadvertantly become a factory for the creation of a sort of cross stain of the two kinds of flu. The other kind of natural mutation antigenic drift is the slow mutation of H5N1 into something that is human transmissable isnt anything we can do much about but you could say that its been around for a few years now and it hasnt discovered that route - so it may be many more before drift makes it more dangerous.
If a leathal human transmissable strain does appear then the spread can be lessened by washing hands before touching food, or your eyes or mouth as this is a very common vector for viruses to spread. Also anyone who catches it should go into isolation. This is all good stuff which we have all probably got a bit lax about with a plethora of modern treatments for illnesses - there is hardly anything around these days that could kill you from touching a door handle so we dont bother so much with the hand washing thing. Expect a resergance of telephone sanitisers and the smell of bleach.
Incidentally bleach is not likely to encourage a superbug, its a chemical equivalent of running a blowlamp over things and anything that mutates into a form that can live in bleach is more likely to be a chlorine breathing monster of super human intelligence from the planet tharg - a virus just aint going to change enough to survive and even if it did it wouldnt be able to live in people anyway.
So to summarise
Look out for piles of dead birds in the wild and let the vetinary service know if you see any. (currently unlikely unless you live in the far east and one dead bird is not H5N1 so dont overeact if you find one your cat killed)
(Also dont buy illeagaly imported birds from anywhere that have not gone through proper quarrantine)
If you work on a chicken farm then find out what the standard containment procedures are for any bird illnesses, if H5N1 comes to your country then you will be using them.
As a matter of course learn how to clean your hands and practise doing it now, that way you might go a lifetime without catching any kind of flu, never mind bird flu. And one last thing stop picking your nose for goodness sake, one day it might kill you!!!
Thats my take on what we do to prepare for bird flu, corrections and ammendments welcome.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
You've got to look at this from the viewpoint of the pharmeceutical companies.
For one, although most people cite the fact that individual pills cost VERY little to produce, the R&D costs and FDA approval fees are astronomical. Thanks to the FDA, dangerous medications almost never make it to the market -- did I mention that these R&D & Approval fees still apply to drugs that get rejected? It's very difficult to be profitable in the pharmeceutical business. Go look it up.
If governments are going to step in and invalidate patents on drugs that are needed to fight AIDS and other diseases rare in the US, this is only going to further deter pharmeceutical companies from producing drugs to combat these diseases.
And I genuinely believe that if we could discover an AIDS vaccine, the sheer volume of demand would make up for the extremely low profit margin.
If there's nobody making it worthwhile to produce vaccines for these diseases, it's not going to happen!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Here's my question. The outbreak and spread of a pandemic is easy enough to understand (on at least a superficial level). What I don't understand is how these things stop. Is everyone exposed, and only the immune survive? Are the mutations so volatile that the thing just disappears? I don't get it. Where do these pandemic viruses go? Are they still around but they don't bother us anymore? Could a grave robber dig up a pandemic and get it going again?
You only have to avoid eating the chicken RAW.
Unlike the mad cow disease (which is caused by [very rare] self-replicating proteins, not virii),
the flu virus (like other chicken disease, lysteria, and so one) doesn't survive cooking.
So if cook your chicken soup well, or roast correctly your roasted chicken, you're safe, at least from virii and bacteria.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't know if I should even engage in an argument about which sick person is more at "fault" (how about all those flu sufferers-- can't they just wash their hands???) but you are forgetting that many, many AIDS victims are women who are married to men who have multiple partners. More importantly, do you have the slightest clue what's going on in Africa wrt AIDS? And where on earth did you get that $18.4 billion figure? That's the approximate size of the entire US foreign aid budget. AIDS is getting something less than 3 billion for the coming fiscal year. Which is NOTHING. That money is also used to fight TB and other diseases that tend to attack AIDS sufferers. Yes, AIDS is very preventable. This requires education, which costs money. AIDS is most certainly NOT "in the news every day" -- you and your ignorance are living proof.
Alright, suppose I take the concerns that there my be a flu pandemic in the next few years seriously...
What the FUCK am I supposed to do about it? Huh? I've heard various non-woo-woo sources warn me of the potential for major hell, but thus far, no one I've heard has indicated how I might better prepare myself.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Did you know if is part of the world life?
Did you know GNU's Not Unix?!?!?!!!
The fifty percent mortality rate that everyone is citing with regards to the H5N1 strain is skewed, because, to my knowledge, there hasn't been a case of the H5N1 strain in a place with a modern medical system. I don't mean to disparage Southeast Asia, but we have to look at the facts: the cases of this disease tend to occur in rural areas, far away from developed hospitals. I would like to see the mortality rate of this strain of bird flu compared to the mortality rate from a normal flu in the same area. Just like SARS, I think that this disease, although dangerous, will produce far less than 50% mortality if allowed to spread in the developed world.
So the cure is AIDS? =P
The 1918 Flu started in the USA, in army camps, it was related to the present bird flue genetically we now know, it killed more US citizens that ALL the wars this century combined, amazing things happened, coffins were so short supply undertakers had armed guards for them.
The 1918 flu mainly killed those between 20 and 29 years of age, we do not know if this is because their immune systems cooked them or if it was because the older people had been exposed to similar flu strains 30+ years before.
The UK reckons it will have enough doses of "Tamiflu" (which might not work anyway) for half the population by September 2006, a year away, heigh ho.
If you want drugs you could do worse than stocking up on "Nurofen", it's got a pretty powerful anti inflammatory which may protect your lungs long enough for you to develop resistance, or it may not.
1918 Flu killed an ___estimated___ 40 million people, nobody knows the true numbers, there was a world war and much of the world didn't have a census.
The 1918 Flu had widely varying mortality rates, in some indonesian islands fatality rates were as high as 98%
World population today is FAR higher than in 1918, if the next one has the same 3% mortality rate 194 million people will die.
World population mobility is far higher today that in 1918, people will circle the planet before the incubation period is over and symptoms start to show, so WHEN it comes you WILL be exposed to it.
___IF___ mortality rate is 15%, which is between a third and a quarter of what it has been so far, a BILLION people will die.
Survivability is likely to have more to do with your genetic heritage and exposure than where you live, what you do, or what treatment you have available.
It's too big to freak out about, it is coming, sooner or later, and either your number is up or it isn't, by the time you know you'll probably have literally a few hours from feeling unwell to being bedridden.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
You do know that the pandemic would be caused by a bird flu strain that has mutated to transmit between humans, don'y you.....
Interesting, and potentially humerous, comment in a local news paper here recently... "Bird Flu will likely arrive in New Zealand via aircraft".
If you're not one of the typical flu victims (elderly, very young or compromised immune system from other causes), you'll have an excellent chance to shrug it off, even if it does spread.
It's wrong.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
birdflu.boardtracker.com
You can move the situation along by investing in a company that might have a solution:/ 10/news/special/2a6faf69b9cd57ee872570ac005c05b8.t xt
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2005/11
i.e. Vical has already been contracted by the US government to run trials of DNA vaccines.
So, do your part, help the government out as well and invest in companies that are working towards a solution.
Follow the ultimate geek, Bill Gates, in his example. Money talks!!!!
He's trying to stamp out malaria. What's your favorite bug that needs squashing????
Like pneumonia. Remember this was in the days for antibiotics. The mortality rate of the 1918 FLU was 5-10% maximum then, today it would be in the 1-3% range.
I found this article on WebMd particularly insightful into the "imminent" pandemic. I'm sure that you will agree that all of the publicity surrounding bird flu is an attempt to create a climate of fear in the United States. Please read what the doctors say in "Bird Flu: 10 Questions, 10 Answers": http://www.webmd.com/content/article/113/110741.ht m
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Everyone I know that actually deals with disease for a living, ... is scared, and takes bird flu VERY seriously
I was in the hospital last week for routine blood tests, chatting with my favorite nurse, and she was telling me about all the new plans they have in place for dealing with the coming pandemic. The top health authorities in each country have reviewed the actual hard data on what is coming, and getting ready for various worse case scenarios. They just aren't certain which winter it will hit, probably not this year, but almost certainly one of the next three winters.
The hospital had just reviewed and practiced for a "plan blanc" (white plan) of being overwhelmed with large numbers of highly contagious patients. The plan blanc was mostly aimed at preventing infection of the hospital staff, and how to isolate the sick and keep visitors from circulating and possibly spreading the disease. Next week they are reviewing their "plan noir", to deal with huge numbers of dead, and the disposal of highly contagious bodies and medical waste. The hospital never really had a plan noir tested before, what once was a short couple pages of suggestions is now a whole large book. In my town of 40k population, the hospital was looking for a place to store up to 1000 bodies, with 200-400 deaths per week over a 10 week period, and only being able to dispose of 100 per week. Scary shit, indeed.
The town authorities are preparing for a 50% worst case mortality rate, with all the subsequent recovery problems; no more younger school age children for years, half of the tax revenue generating population dead, food shortages if the borders are closed, longterm drop in tourism, local exports blockaded, and no financial aid from any direction because the devastation may be all around Europe.
All the hospitals in the Benelux, France and Germany are preparing for the worst, and its not in response to some poorly written articles in the mainstream press. They have the experts looking at the data and are getting very, very nervous.
I just got my flu shots, something I've never felt the need before.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
It's more like a plan to distract us from actual problems in the world. You know, like activists being overwhelmingly sued for libel, and other big corporations beating down on the little guys. C'mon, get real.
To those who say, what can I do before and if the pandemic strikes, read this excellent monogram by a physician who wrote it for his patients. By far the best thing I have seen to date. It also answers a lot of questions about the virulence, mortality rate, and estimates of expected deaths. Pretty much straight facts, no sensationalism, just damned useful information: http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPan demic.pdf
Same thing happened in WoW.
;)
the newbies got killed off first, but the stronger dudes lasted just long enough to keep it spreading, as they went to town to get healed/etc. plus an infected pet running through town doesnt help either
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
Hmm, this just seems a little odd to me. I was talking to my mother last weekend, and she just happens to be the head of Infection Control at my local hospital. The very odd thing is that her exact words were that this virus was only comparable to the flu of 1918, the various other facts mentioned here. Just seems a little odd that the flu of 1918 was mentioned by her. Just saying that from speaking with a medical woman with a Masters and also knowing her very well that this could be very big. I'm not running into the streets shouting the end of the world, but it is good to be informed about this. So far there is no way to stop it and that fact that the Chinese are feeding the vaccine to the chickens only makes harder to control the virus after it mutates in response to the vaccine. Now, go look for information about the 1918 flu and see a the little simmilarities. ja
You have obviously never read anything about how the "Spanish Flu" killed people. It has nothing to do with diarrhea, decongestants, bed rest, worms, or anything. The flu was so deadly because it specifically turned the young and healthiest people's lungs into hard red sponge within 24 hours. It is not like the flu you get and go to bed achy for a few days.
Modern medicine also won't be much use because the hospitals will be totally overwhelmed, and there will be 100 to 1 ratio of people wanting to use ICU vs beds.
No, the healthy and young were effected more in 1918 because their immune systems over-reacted and flooded their lungs with defensive white blood cells. RTFA.
or else!
Yeah, and all those computers that crashed on Y2K.
The obvious fallacy to this attitude is that it completely ignores the effect of preventative measures. Did you ever think that maybe the high media exposure played a part in preventing all those things from being really big problems? Do you think if nobody talked about SARS it might have been far worse?
I'm dead against scaremongering, but legitimate threats should be covered by the media.
The Spanish Flu (1918) killed young healthy people very quickly, it turned their lungs into sponge rubber. It was not at all like the "flu" that we are used to. People who blithely confuse the yearly 'achy go to bed for a few days' flu with the killer flu should read the books written during that period about what it was like. People were dying all over the place, sometimes within 24 hours of contracting the disease.
Well I would worry a lot more about AIDS if I were determined to join the mile high club on an airplane with random strangers.
But because I'm able to keep it in my pants so to speak, my chances of being infected with AIDS are about the same as getting hit with a meteor. Those are odds I can live with.
With some kind of bad flu strain around, any plane trip could be like Russian roulette in terms of your odds of coming through alive after a month.
Posted anon because some idiot will think this is an anti-homosexual diatribe. Not at all, I also have some homosexual friends who are quite monogamous with stable partners and not in any danger of getting AIDS either. Basically anyone who considers hooking up at every opportunity with a perilous disease on the loose is just as stupid as someone who sticks their face next to a flu vicitm and says "cough please".
From my perspective, season's over - call me earlier next year and we'll talk. Try telling that to a virus who won't take no. Carried on every which way - tried everything from tears, bribing me, to threatening me but when the season's booked, it's booked pal. To top it off, from what I hear on the street, next year's hot virus may just be swine flu but you know fow fickle virus fashions can be so there's just no telling.
Actually, nothing is a problem from them. When you make *&$# up you can say whatever you want, choose whatever theories you want, highlight whatever problems you want, redirect whatever arguements you want... doesn't matter because if you're a member of camps like ID you're not interested in testing the robustness of your claims, you're just interested in making them. Yawn. Micro-evolution ok, "macro" evolution not. Boring- heard that in the monkey trials years ago. Come-on ID camp, tell me something new. Give me something to sink my teeth into. Something that hasn't been said by evolutionary theory to-date. Frankly, when it comes down to it, ID is boring, and that's why it'll never take. Zzzzzz....
The Dueseberg chassis sold for $9500 the rest was spent on coachwork. Prices were typically around $20,000 to $25,000. Of course this was in the twenties when a ford was like $600 new and a caddilac was somethig like $2500. A duesenberg was the Mcclaran F1 or Ferrari Enzo of its day.
Right now, they're basing the scary stuff on the behavior of the flu in the not-quite-first-world parts of East Asia. Poultry - animal husbandry in general - techniques are a little different there compared to the US. We don't tend to ship large numbers of live birds in crates through the markets that are right on the main drags in larger cities.
The spread of the avian strains are also based on migrating birds, which are far greater intra-continental than across the two big oceans.
Remember that health care, treatment conditions and general living conditions are very different in no-quite-first-world places and were very different in 1918.
From the accounts I read, they also didn't have a clue it was coming.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Last week, I suggested to my manager and manager/manager that we should start preparing for this. As I put in the e-mail, now is the time, not when it hits.
Since this is a test group, I suggested that we get everybody from having 2 desktop systems to 1 desktop/1 laptop. In addition, we currently have group meetings every other week, where a few will call in. I suggested that we start testing various video/voip/whiteboard packages and see what works well. Once we have that working on all the laptops, then if hit, we simply have everybody work from home.
Too be honest, if it does not hit, then all that has happened is that they group can now handle working from home better.
If it does hit and we are not ready, then at the least, there will be a mad rush to move to laptops, in addition to testing configs, fighting the various set-ups. In the worse situation, somebody does bring it in, and spreads it, then we have major problems and/or lose of life.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Trust me, they're there, and the government WANTS them to pass. They looooove to protect you.
I'm skeptical. I'm not exactly kosher with the idea of the government jabbing a needle into me For My Own good when there's like, what, 80 people that have died from this thing across the world?
Look, I could afford the thing quite easily. I'm not taking it. No way, no how.
Unfortunately that compete waste of human life Michael Brown will still be on the list ahead of you.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And it's not like the federal government (err, the American peopl) fund any of that research, right?
>It's wrong.
:-)
Wow. All those caps, a long quote and then a two word opinion. Try giving us some proof; otherwise, you're just another crackpot spouting his opinion.
p.s. Yes, it's a tad ironic that I'm doing almost exactly what I'm telling you not to do.
p.s.s. Don't use ALL-CAPS subjects. It's like yelling!!!
If you've ever eaten there, you'll know what I mean. Their Cooked chicken is basically raw to anyone from the West.
You can't get immunized against the flu because no one knows what it will look like... Well, let's do a backtrack search of all possible mutations, get the 1000 most likely to happen and that could produce a pandemy, make a vaccine for each one of them, have this cocktail.
\u262D = \u5350
When the shit hits the fan and people start dying en masse you can take your patents and shove them up your ass. If you don't like what's happening when people come before profits you should go to work at McD's.. seriously. I know quite a few underemployed Phd's in the field who would love to have a job.
I can see a patent being honored on Rogaine or on drugs where the affliction is non-life threatening.. but when you're talking about taking entire chunks out of a population in a very short period of time the shareholders don't look all that important. Who will fund the development the next generation of drugs? Most likely the government. They really won't have a choice since as you said "your bosses won't be insane enough."
I guess I better convert to Islam then.
Why do Americans always need something to get hysterical about?
The irony there seems to be an inversely proportional relationship between actual danger and hysteria levels. That is to say: the less dangerous something is actually proven to be the more hysterical people seem to get. The inverse seems aslo to hold true!
How many Americans have died because of terrorism, how many from smoking related illness? How many people relieve themselves from the constant, unrealistic fears that they seem to have by lighting up a soothing smoke?
Oh the irony...
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
many are of these have been in china and the only source for the statistics is chinese state news.
now call me cynical, but im not exactly sure i trust chinese state news for accurate reports on just how widespread a problem there might be.
-
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Lack of medical insurance / out of control medical costs
- Lack of interest from the medical and pharma mega-corporations
- Overall stupidity (with respect to all the above)
Speaking as a 'Merkin, these are going to do far more damage to our national security than a few hundred thousand dying of the flu in a year or two.
Your mileage may vary, especially in other countries.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
"What this article tries to convey is that a pandemic is definitely coming"
Horse pucky! Between global warming, the coming nuclear war, the FACT that
we're going to be hit by a meteor (comet, asteroid, whatever) I wonder why
we bother to get up in the morning. Oh, I know, so we can BUY OR PAY FOR OUR
FAVORITE NEWS OUTLET TO TELL US WHAT'S GOING TO KILL US NEXT!!!!!
Live today like it's your last and you'll be happier and a get a lot more
out of life.
"An influenza pandemic, by definition, occurs only when the influenza virus mutates into something dangerously unfamiliar to our immune systems and yet is able to jump from person to person through a sneeze, cough or touch."
I've always wondered if there was something inherently difficult in having the a virus with long latency like AIDS spread like the flu early in its lifecycle...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Wait! Wasn't the Internet supposed to have collapsed by now in a flurry of competition between the US and Europe? Wasn't there supposed to be a full-blown civil war in Iraq by now? Wasn't there supposed to have been a dirty bomb exploded somewhere in the US by now?
Or are these yet more examples of sensationalist journalism?
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
This reminds me of something I posted on my blog. Basically, they will be shipping the 1918 flu virus through commercial mail.
Back in 1918, I doubt there was a lot of running water and a high availability of soap - nor were mass communication systems in place. I think an outbreak would be somewhat mitigated if people were aware and practiced sound hygenic measures. I agree with StefanJ...wash your hands and cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough!
I remember back in the 90's taking some Amantadine to help fight the flu. And I wondered why the news keeps going on and on about Tamiflu. So I did a quick check and yes Amantadine is an antiviral drug, but thanks to the fucking Chinese they have made it useless to fight H5N1 because they'd been abusing it the way our ranchers abuse antibiotics. Amantadine costs a lot less but it doesn't matter. Now we have to use the much more expensive Tamiflu.
It gets better. One of the primary ingredients for making Tamiflu is something called Shikimic acid which is difficult to produce and is extracted from star anise that is only grown in four provinces in China. And their is a global shortage of star anise so that's why their's a global shortage of Tamiflu. Anyway it probably won't matter since H5N1 will probably develop a resistance to Tamiflu because of overuse. Anyway, we'll just have to wait and how the next pandemic evolves.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
According to National Geographic magazine, one of the potential estimates is that if H5N1 mutates into a human-to-human commuicable form the death toll could reach a frightening 360 million. That would be the equivalent of reducing the human population by 16.7%, assuming the current human population of just over 6 billion people.
However, I think people forget that when the Spanish flu swept throughout the world in 1918, there as a World War going on (which of course reduced the quality of sanitation conditions!) and the fact back then we didn't have the wide availability of modern over-counter medicines to reduce the effects of the flu. As such, with today's better sanitation and better medication, I think if H5N1 mutates into human-to-human transmissible form the effect would be more like the 1957 Asian flu, where the sick and death rates would be a bit high but not spectacularly so.
AIDS is highly lethal, but it takes years or even decades to kill.
Same with birth.
I see only two problems with moving research of this type into non-profit organizations (e.g. the government, since they're the ones funding the majority of research into obscure and rare diseases anyway, as no company would do it, since they can't make money on the treatments). The first is the usual inefficiency and waste associated with a lack of profit. But that is countered by the life-saving purpose of the research, which is more of a drive for the majority of the researchers than any monetary return. The importance of the research more than makes up for the lack of a year-end bonus. The second is that though there's knowledge, there won't be anyone or any resources to materialize the knowledge. That's where companies come in--to turn the knowledge into a product that the average layman can use. And that's what they should only be allowed to make money doing.
But what happens when there's simply no interest in the knowledge and hence no funding. Well, even for the most obscure disorders and illnesses (like the genetic disorder where children physically mature many times faster than natural whose name I forget), there's someone working on it. It may be slow, but research is still happening. As for a lack of interest by companies in producing actual pills or machines that deliver the treatment, well, that would be true whether companies have patented the science to the treatment or not. Companies should still be able to donate their resources in such situations.
To use the example you cite, there's still plenty of AIDS research going on. Just today, there's news about someone who appears to have fought off the virus, and there's a great amount of public interest in that person. The interest and subsequent research is just not in the private sector. So no one manufactures the deliverable product if they can't control the formula (who would want to compete when they can have a monopoly?). But forcing pharmaceuticals to only be able to make money from manufacturing treatments solves this particular problem, since companies then have no choice but to use public domain knowledge to make their products (or they don't make products, go bankrupt, and someone else jumps in). In addition, AIDS research has also slowed down because though AIDS isn't cureable, it is treatable, and even better, preventable. If AIDS turned airborne (which is very unlikely right now), you'd better believe that people will jump to find a vaccine or cure, money or no money.
As for this avian flu, I'm certain if the Tamiflu was never created (because no one saw that it could make money), there'd still be researchers looking for a cure, likely in the academic world. And once one's found, at least one company will try to produce a product from it. By now, there'd be a dozen companies jumping onto it with their own version of the medicine, and there wouldn't be any problems. On top of that, the death rate by now would likely be much lower, since those who actually sought treatment would be able to afford it too.
Generally speaking, I'm of the opinion that all scientific research should be in the public domain. What should be patentable is the engineering end, which covers methods and applications--like a new method of delivering the treatment. Patenting science will only result in the halting of progress in any civilization (imagine if Newton patented calculus). If knowledge is horded like some kind of treasure, then only the dragons will be wealthy and everyone else impoverished, not to mention at the mercy of said dragons (major companies, in case you don't get the metaphor).
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Tamiflu isn't being "withdrawn" as much as it is selling out and Roche/Gilead cannot make it fast enough. The plants that the active ingredient is derived from, grow mostly in China, so a large increase in the supply would take over a year to happen. The US waited too long to order a large supply, and as a result missed out on the available supply until the next harvest.
Why are so many countries stocking up? H5N1 has a fatality rate over 60%. The 1918 flu had a fatality rate under 25%. One scenario: a single person becomes infected with H5N1 while also being infected with a human flu strain; it is likely that in at least 1 cell, the 2 viruses will blend DNA. The nightmare portion of that scenario is that H5N1 picks up human transmisiblity and loses no lethality. As the article mentions, if it has only 5% fatality rate, more than double the number of people will die from it than died in the 1918 pandemic. H5N1 is limited mostly to direct contact with birds: you work with them.
The 1918 flu pandemic had many reports of people going home sick on Tuesday, only to be dead Thursday. That flu only had a 25% mortality rate.
As for your analogy, you forget the Slammer worm. That took about a couple of hours to infect almost every SQL Server and MSDE connected to the internet.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the best examples of corporate breach-of-ethics in recent history. Money money money money money. People are disposable, once they run out of money for their meds. R&D expenses? Nonsense. You gotta pay off the advertising bills! It's great you can give men boners for hours on end and make people believe they've licked their allergies. Very fufilling, I'm sure.
The drug of choice touted for this is Tamiflu. It's available in a couple of forms, the most consumer-friendly one being the capsule. Roche can't satisfy demand. A couple of countries, notably Taiwan, have said they will break patents to manufacture the drug if they can't license production.
The cost of the drug to governments is around USD13 to USD25. It's prescription-only in the areas I'm aware of, and the consumer cost is between USD 50 and USD 150. Usage should start within 48 hours of infection. It's also suggested one tablet per day if there is risk of infection.
Japan accounts for 60% or more of worldwide consumption. Some of the side effects listed in that market include hallucinations.
I'm posting AC because I have supplies for me and those near me. I figure if this is all a media scare without substance, then I'm an idiot for wasting money. If it turns from scare to substance, then I'd be an idiot to let people know I have tablets.
The World Health organization gave out not long ago a report (and some member commented it as evaluating the number of death between 2 million and 360 million). I do not really call W.H.O. a sensationalist organisation. Do you ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
what makes you think my bosses are insane enough to invest that research money when the product is going to be confiscated?
When large numbers of people start dying, and your bosses face the possibility of contracting the disease and facing death themselves, I think you'll find that they'll suddenly develop a motivation to invest research money into cures.
Declare birds as the equivalent to terrorists, and kill them all.
Great new book on Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
OK, someone says "doozy" with an implication of ridiculousness.
Next cultural hermit says "I thot that was a good thing"
Now we get the etymological source. For which, thanks. It was interesting, although I'd never have wondered about it. If someone ever asks, I can pop up as the "Cliffy" of the day.
My tuppence: I'm hard presssed to recall a time when 'doozy' was used without a strong dose of sarcasm. Thus, it's usually derogatory.
I've written an article at SciScoop titled Facts About the Bird Flu. It discusses flu pandemics in general and the bird flu in particular. It also contains some good links for additional information. Any comments are welcome.
Check out Chad's News
Okay, fine. How about pharmaceutical companies that benefit from government funded research (at Universities, etc.) start paying for the value they get from that?
Vitamin deficiencies are not as rare as one might think; while scurvy is no longer common, most people in the civilized world consume processed foods, which generally lack vital nutrients. As such, their body mass is maintained or expanded, but the gains made in nutritional science have not, as a whole, trickled down very far into the general population.
So... which vital nutrients is the average American short on? And I don't mean a bit short on, I mean deficient in. Does this deficiency affect the average multi-vitamin popping American?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
to have this flu. The reason it killed so many was the same reason that small pox killed so many indians, yet only a small, to low-moderate amount of Europeans who had small-pox. Basically, the people who did survive the 1918 flu had kids, and those kids had kids, with each generation passing on some immunity. It very well could be the same 'achy go to bed for a few days' virus that turned people's lungs into sponge in 1918.
You very well could spread small-pox among Native Americans now and, yeah some of them would die, but it would be more in line with the death rate for the rest of the population now, rather than the horrible death rate of the first ones exposed to it. Why? Built up immunity.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
There is a lot of speculation in this thread, and very little of it seems to be from public health practitioners. Every major health organisation in the world has actually thought about this problem, so you could go and google their FAQs and advice pages if you want, but let me summarise.
1. H5N1 is not a pandemic virus. The scary thing is a mutation of H5N1. Forget about the statistical wrangling over 50%. The morbidity (deatharifficness) of the human cases is based on small numbers, and a human-to-human strain could have different characteristics in any case. Just accept that the current concern is real and that random computer programmers do not "know better".
2. PLEASE don't try and buy up Tamiflu. You don't know what to do with it, you don't know how to diagnose flu properly and it's needed elsewhere. If you think you, or someone else has something which you think should be treated with Tamiflu GET TO A FRICKING HOSPITAL. If it's the correct treatment they will have it.
3. IMPORTANT: If you are "at risk" of initial infection of H5N1 (professional chicken-kisser etc etc) or you are a high-risk flu group (old, asthma, child etc) then GET A FLU JAB for seasonal influenza.
Note: This will not do anything to stop you getting H5N1 (sorry), although it may (unproven) help you survive. The idea is that if you don't get "normal" flu in the first place then there is less chance of you getting H5N1 _at the same time_, which could result in in-cell reassortment (genetic mutation) of the virus. In other words, H5N1 could cross with whatever flu you got to make a new flu. That could then result in you being patient zero for the killer-flu we're all scared of. (which would suck)
4. If you want to be ultra-paranoid, you could postpone non-essential travel to, eg, SE Asia or put off your "All Eastern Europe Cockfighting" tour. Your call.
5. Frankly, for the majority here I doubt that there is anything in particular you should be doing differently right now. BUT just keep a weather eye on the news - if ever the pandemic hits then these recommendations will instantly be out the window and people will be talking about masks, quarantine and emergency plans.
The sky is NOT currently falling. It is fair odds that unless you happen to indulge in "the love that dare not speak its name" with poultry or enjoy fresh duck's blood soup then there's not much you can do - the sky will fall or it won't. However, the reason health agencies are making a lot of noise is that _were_ the sky to fall, right now, global preparedness is not as good as it could be.
Thanks.
So the issue here is not just the pandemic, but the panic it creates.
More than mere navel gazing.
Your are citing concern as a cause for further concern. If they handed out a 200 page manual about what to do in case of an imminent attack by flying monkeys, people would be concerned.
Someone asked for a couple of worst-case scenarios, and an "expert" provided them. They handed it to the people who would be first affected. It's an alarming read, as most worst-case scenarios are. So far, what you're telling me is facts about the panic, not about the disease.
The fact that the administrators of a town of 40,000 people are preparing for the lack of school age children and tax income tells me they are pretty unsophisticated. This sounds like something they tell the local press, so they look like they are doing their jobs. I'd ask them what they would do if bored anarchist kids and the economically disadvantaged start setting fire to cars in the dead of night, something a little more likely.
The fact that a bunch of hospitals have received emergency training, and have been alarmed by it, is not necessarily significant. Did they receive similar materials in light of SARS and West Nile? How about a dirty bomb or chemical weapons attack? Earthquake? Asteroid? They're all scary, and they're all "possible."
If the top 100 epidemiologists in the world came out and said: "This strain of flu can be easily spread between humans, has a 50% mortality rate, and has no vaccine or treatment" then I would be concerned, but telling me your nurse is shocked because she's been told to read a manual about how they are going to run out of storage space for the bodies, well, that's not scientifically relevant. Even if she is a healthcare provider.
The vulnerability of healthy young people to cytokine storm death is the same age group who I presume are recruited by extremist Islamic groups for suicide bombers.
The article is a flashing alarm light that will trigger a thousand entrepreneurial projects. Everything from fancy face masks to genuine medical developments.
One thing we need now is a 2 second test for the h5n1 virus. Something like a tagged antibody and an analyzer driven by an led laser operating on a 1 micrometer nasal droplet. (Make a proton magnetometer with some 1/4" neodymium magnets?)
Another thing we need is a medicine for dealing with the cytokine storm secondary cause of death.
There is quite likely to be a whole spectrum of instrumentation and medicine created in response to this potential epidemic.
Now, as these instruments and medicines are developed, many of these creations will fall under the patent and copyright system.
The problem is the patent and copyright system under a guise of law makes it easy to price lifesaving medicines and instruments instantly out of the reach of low income people.
Note, there is already a problem with patented Aids medications and copyrighted medical information being over priced for some AFrican countries.
So, the United States (and other countries) might get in the position of having the technology for saving lives patented, copyrighted and offered for sale, The price will typically be all the market will bear, as seen by diners eating breakfast on the 86th floor of the World Trade Center. Uhh whoops, on the second floor of some conference room in Palo Alto.
A global epidemic may provide a basis for the most intense finding of moral and religious condemnation against all of Western society that adheres to the patent and copyright system as it is without any component of mercy and local reasonableness in price and availability of patented and copyright materials.
Or else, the patent and copyright system should be immediately ammended to allow ideas and innovations to push out and propagte freely.
That's the only thing that wakes governments up... a major threat to the revenue stream...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Call me a jerk, a nutjob, or a freak. But I personally think that maybe a pandemic might be a good thing as far as darwinism is concerned. =)
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
No Slashdot user is likely to catch bird flu.
When was the last time any of this lot shagged any birds?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
"I just got my flu shots, something I've never felt the need before." - unfortunately this is unlikely to protect you. Health literature I received in the last few days asking 'at risk' groups to get their flu jabs, specifically states it will not protect against pandemic flu.
I read from some sources, that you should not use raw or soft boiled eggs in food preparation that will not be cooked - the bird flu virus can survive in cold temperatures so freezing and refrigeration, apparently, will not kill the virus. I wonder how mayonnaise, tiramisu etc. fits into all this.
It seems that one of the biggest problems we'll be facing in the future is that people in general will react to a pandemic before it comes, and in their panic buy out supplies that would aid with the disease.
For example, in Guernsey, flu vaccine has run out due to unprecedented demand.
From what I've seen in the media, many countries are dealing with the problem. That site also contains, amongst other things, mentions of clinical trials of a pre-pandemic vaccine in france, prototype vaccine that should be ready in a few weeks in Germany, and plans for enough vaccine in the UK to innoculate the entire UK population.
In any case, pandemic or not, it seems that the best thing you can do is to leave the worrying to people who're in the health services, or governments. It seems to me that many governments are already well on their way to dealing with the problem.
Of course, would they have acted so pre-emptively if the public wasn't so worried? I don't know. In any case, try not to act on your worries - we'll surely run into trouble if a billion people panic and demand antivirals, or even antibiotics.
[sidenote to the handful of people who don't yet know: antibiotics are for bacteria. Flu is a virus, antibiotics won't protect you against it. If you take antibiotics for viruses, you make your bacteria tougher to kill, "superbugs". Don't get antibiotics for the flu.]
Given that the cause was probably unknown for a while and information was probably not being shared between the affected countries, it could very well be that the mortality rate will fall as more people get infected.
Cambodia - 4 reported cases : 4 deaths (100%)
Indonesia - 9 reported cases : 5 deaths (56%)
Thailand - 20 reported cases : 13 deaths (65%)
Vietnam - 91 reported cases : 41 deaths (45%)
These figures don't show the mortality rate to be rising or falling - just that worldwide, in the last 2 years there have only been 124 cases leading to 63 deaths spread over 4 essentially third world countries. I think throwing the word pandemic around is a bit premature, and yes, sensationalist.
Source figures.
Yah, yah... I need to quit smoking cigarettes.
But since I continue to, would that be a 'benefit' here in a H5N1 pandemic? If it is killing people with STRONG immune systems, would my obviously weakened one actually be helpful?
Smoke 'em if ya got 'em?
Panic! Panic! Fucking Panic!
This year's thing thats going to kill us all, next year it'll be something from space.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Actually, minimizing the spread of the existing human-borne flu variants might be a way to delay the "humanization" of H5N1. It would reduce the odds of someone catching both, allowing the viruses to exchange genetic material. Of course, it's not going to help in impoverished countries, where flu immunization campaigns might be difficult to set up for all sorts of reasons.
FWIW; I did not just make this up but I can't quite remember where I read it.
Think a flu pandemic is bad?! You guys ain't recognizing the HALF of it. What happens when the flu bugs and bird buggymen catch all these people who are taking Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin and the rest of those psychoactive meds? Those people -ALL LAID BACK- are going to find out their Immune System is -ALL LAID BACK- TOO. The weak-minded taking psychotropic meds are going to flake off FIRST. Some of em will die of shock before the flu bugs even reach em. Immune systems on those drugs are like having no immune system at all. In fact, anyone taking Lithium Carbonate or any of those mind candy drugs is going to find out their immune system runs off like a scalded cat. How can an immune system react to airborne disease germs when people are taking drugs that suppresses their immune system? Dream on; it isn't going to happen. Want to know why? Of course you do if you've read this far! I'll tell you a secret I discovered after taking Lithium etc. for 12+ years my friends. Those psyche meds convince you you're feeling fine all th' time when such is NOT the case. All those drugs are MANMADE, made in a laboratory. Manmade drugs are hard for the human body to handle, so in order to handle them the human body has to consume large amounts of oxygen. This causes a depletion of oxygen in a person's body, and brain, just at the time they need all the oxygen they can get to fight off the pandemic germs! Ready for the rest?! The body's Immune System needs extra oxygen to work properly; oxygen is like fuel for the body's immune system, but since so many people are taking these oxygen-depleting manmade drugs the immune system doesn't have the reinforcing oxygen stores it needs in a time of disease infiltration via the lungs. To fight off the airborne pandemic germs! So what you have in real terms here is a double whammy effect of lowered oxygen. Like I said, a lot of people taking these psychotropic drugs are going to be falling like flies. Courtesy of Spiderman? Nope. Courtesy of the A.merican M.edical A.ssociation & the C.enter for D.isease C.ontrol. Now, you ready for the rest? hahaha You thought that was ALL?! Nope. A lowered oxygen condition in the body leaves the human body open to ALL DISEASE because inside the body there isn't much sunlight & its DAMP, making everyone taking those psychoactive drugs/meds ripe for all manner of anaerobic disease (and pandemic) germs. Psyche meds makes the human body a disease-growing MECCA to Muhammed bacilli, Lyme Disease spirochete infestations of all kinds, a farmed, furrowed & ready germ-farm plantation. I can tell you more. The meds dumb down the immune system; so while you're thinking you're feeling fine, you're not fine at all. By poisoning your brain -which is what & how psyche meds work anyway by poisoning down the brain's neurochemicals (brain chemical imbalance)- you the patient are prepared just as much as a sacrificial lamb to Molech. Death will come quickly to many. I took those drugs for 12+ years. By 2002 I was so physically weak I could barely stand from my chair. My shoulder was dislocated & I didn't even know it. I was a Xanax kind of guy, happy, so happy an feeling well that I wasn't feeling any need atall to work out, exercise, walk. The meds had me convinced I was feeling just fine and healthy. Darn stuff nearly killed me. I started having the shakes, Parkinson's-like tremors of my weakened hand and arm muscles, muscle spasms and jerking. Then I had an Alzheimer's-like memory blackout, couldn't remember where my doctor's office was 2 miles from arriving there, next to the biggest hospital in this area (Lewis Gale Hospital in Salem Virginia). After living here most my life, taking Mom to her many cancer treatments over a 2 year period, there I was sitting at the red light when it dawned on me I couldn't remember where the damn hospital was! The Lithium Carbonate had been slowly destroying, killing off my brain cells. Look it up in the encyclopedias! It says there in plain readable print that the LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS IS NOT KNOWN. Damn the e
Then there is the people who died from H5N1 whos families never reported them being dead either in those small asian villages. They certainly dont know what H5N1 is...they just bury their dead family members. Nothing about that gets reported either.
The numbers put out by the WHO are correct and proven in a lab. They do an investigation of and have to test any area and the people in them to see if they are/were infected. They dont include any numbers until they can prove scientifically that those people contracted/died from the virus. As of right now it has a 50% mortality rate based on WHO investigations.
Technically it could be a higher percentage or a lot lower. If it mutates into human form it could be a lot higher or a lot less. The deadly 1918 virus was roughly 2.5-5%...no one knows for certain as there wasn't any reliable census data from that time. Most likely it will be a lot less. Only your DNA will determine if you live or die.
Pandemics are self-limited in their mechanism. If the germ propagates too fast, it kills too many hosts to propagate very far, if it kills too slowly, it will eventually mutate to a less deadly form or the hosts will develop immunity.
Global warming, OTOH, is self-limiting only in geological time scales. The excess CO2 will eventually be transformed into carbonate rocks, but that would take millions of years.
So, if we are depending only on educated guesses, I would bet on global warming being more deadly than any pandemic. How many people died in the last years from droughts, floods, and other effects of climate change? That trend is likely to keep increasing for the next decades.
There is no city, no state and certainly no entire country that can currently handle a disease with the ability to spread itself as easily as the yearly flu virus and has 5% fatality. 5% fatality means almost everyone that GETS it will want advanced medical treatment. Most of said treatment will just head-patting, but with a high fatality rate comes a high care requirement; many will need respirators, oxygen, iron lung, fluids etc, just to keep the lethality rate as low as possible.
Anyone that tells you that they are prepared for the coming pandemic is lying or stupid.
Until the POPULACE is involved, they aren't planning for shit. They are making people (mostly themselves) feel 'better, safer, happier'.
If you involve the general population and say 'hey everybody, here is your free emergency radio. If we hear about something bad about to happen, it will wake up and tell you stuff. Oh, and if we have a pandemic, stay the fuck in your house and don't even think about going to work, school or the grocery store.'
Because it will take a massive work stoppage, transportation shutdown, and generally complete economic destruction in the short term, to SLOW the spread of the disease long enough that the hospitals have a _chance_ at decreasing the fatality rate. Slow the spread long enough to study the disease itself. Maybe a vaccine can be developed -- or at worst you give yourself time to develop a targeted treatment regime and actually implement it on a slower rush of victoms.
I remember having heard on the TV that there was controversy about the temperature at which the protein food are cooked.
When I studied prions, I remember heaving read that it may infect pigs (not sure, it was 2-3 years ago). As far as I remember, this kind of disease could cross species barrier (the protein is related in mamals), but is slower to start infection (you can sometime have several years before starting of symptoms - in fact the humans started to develop Crotzfeld-Jacob symptoms several years after the Mad Cow outbreaks)
Mmmmm... bwain ? Someone's infected with T-Virus...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If people heard that there was a pandemic, would you trust them with all those bottles of Tamiflu (what a horrible name, by the way)? I bet many people would just take as much of it as they could before there even was a pandemic and render it useless.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Flu isn't the only pathogen that survives in your fridge. ...)
:-P
(You can find listeria, salmonella,
And eggs are a very good medium to grow stuff on it.
You should *definitly* cook your eggs.
About mayo : Do you think they still put genuine eggs (as in the original french recipe) in the tubes they sell in stores ?
Last time I check the composition on the back, there was only a bunch of E-numbers
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If this does break out, I hope they do the sensible thing and stopp all air-traffic in the affected regions. We already have quarantine for pets travelling across borders, its just stupid that we don't have the same thing for humans. As a species, we need to learn to travel alot less.
-Filik
People who have died from H5N1 have been eating cooked chicken.
They also happen
to raise chickens,
to live very close to chicken,
to be in constant contact with,
almost to sleep with chicken....
And I'm sure some of them didn't eat chicken at all.
A vegan famer who raises chicken may catch H5N1.
But, believe-me no known virus can survive cooking.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Assuming that this flu pandemic kills 1 person in 100, that'd get rid of 600,000 people in the UK, which will probably bring over 100,000 houses onto the market (i.e., all occupants die). Likewise if you like buying second-hand furniture, there should be a glut on the market once this pandemic finally strikes.
... can you trust them not to 'delay' expensive and essential treatment because on the balance sheet, letting a lot of (mostly money-drain) people die is actually a sensible thing to do?
Sometimes you don't want the health service tightly coupled with government control
A deadly global pandemic would solve a lot of problems, and cut the pension payments significantly (if half the people who die are old, that'd be 300,000 less pensions to pay each week, which is around £1b a year before costs like housing, health-care, etc.
Of course, I wouldn't want it to happen at all, but hey, you've gotta look on the bright side of life, whatever happens!
Me? I don't think that this will ever turn into a pandemic. Then again us Brits were meant to be dying left-right-and-centre by now from mad cow disease - which by the above logic was the previous government's attempt to thin out the population...
You write as though this is a long time. It depends very much on how quickly doctors prescribe antibiotics. Personally I can not remember the last time that I had antibiotics prescribed, I guess it must have been some 15-20 years ago. Usually antibiotics don't cure anything that your own body can't cure. Of course in special cases antibiotics are very helpful. But it's not something that a healthy person would need every other year.
The trouble with the easy prescription of antibiotics in many countries is that bacteria build immunity to it. Why do you think that there is so much more MRSA in the USA
So how do you know the average American is short on "vital nutrients"? That sounds way, way poorly defined to be actual science. Is this that wacky pseudoscience where there are magical chemicals that we can't detect but that enhance our auras, gee gosh really?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
We have anti-viral drugs now. We didn't in 1918. We have research doctors at the CDC, WHO and other places developing vacines and methods to reduce the effects of pandemic disease. Technology will make any flu pandemic much more managable than in the past. In 1918, how many people knew what a virus was? Look at how technology and education/research has advanced our knowledge of these things. Knowledge is power. And humans are much more dangerous than some dumb virus. IMO, it should be the virus that's afraid.
"Complete sentences, please." is not a complete sentence either, cunt ass.
At the risk of not being PC enough, the only reason HIV/AIDS is spreading around so rapidly is the rampant sex. Admittedly, in Africa, you've got the issue of local legends of having sex with young virgins (and by young, we're talking way pre-pubescent...) curing AIDS, which leads to unwilling infections, but for the most part, HIV is being spread among people who know exactly what they're doing. I think labeling it as a pandemic would be similar to designating lung cancer from smoking as a pandemic.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Just thought I'd toss out some information on Ebola Reston, since it's fairly relevant here and something I've read up on. It actually was not limited to Reston, VA -- there were outbreaks in imported primates in Texas and Pennsylvania as well.
But EBOR is some scary stuff: all the fun of Ebola, but airborne; its saving grace was that it was seems to be restricted to monkeys. The evidence for this is that monkeys from one shipment were held in one room, connected to other rooms only by a shared air supply, and eventually other shipments' monkeys started dying. It infects humans -- several people who were exposed had seroconverted -- but is asymptomatic.
The thing which has always kept me intrigued about Ebola is that we honestly don't know what its natural reservoir is, or where the different strains have come from. There are several different human strains with different lethalities, plus Reston which is airborne but only kills monkeys (and came from the Philippines), and at the end of the day nobody really has a good idea of what the common thread is. Other than that it's probably something in the jungle in Africa, and almost certainly something which doesn't experience any of the symptoms of Ebola that primates or humans do.
I don't have the background to say whether Ebola is more or less of a risk of starting an epidemic than influenza (or Soviet weaponized smallpox, or SARS, any other disease-of-the-week), but I certainly think it's something that we should try to keep not too far back from the front of our collective consiousness, if for no other reason than as a reminder that we haven't figured it all out yet.
Personally the best part of the whole Ebola Reston story: According to Wikipedia, "After the sanitation of the monkey house [in Reston, VA] it was turned into a daycare center."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yeah I was kinda wondering about that, too...
I guess everyone has their personal end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it theory.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The flu shot was just for the three most likely influenza strains predicted for this winter in Northern Europe. Nothing in it to counter h5n1 or the other pandemic threats. Health authorities are waiting until there is a clear threat, and then an effective vaccine.
I caught the nasty flu that went around in the winter of 2003-04, and it left me in pretty bad shape ever since.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Yes, but you have to ask yourself, why did it kill so many people in 1918? People had been having the "achy go to bed for a few days" flu for generations then as well, and it didn't help them when the new version of the virus started to spread.
The problem with influenza is that it mutates like crazy -- what other things do you need to get a new vaccination for every year? Most of the time the mutations are small and relatively insignificant, so that if you contract it your body isn't too far behind in catching up and beating it, but every once in a while you get a really significant mutation and a lot of people are SOL.
The reason people are concerned now, is not because they think the 1918 virus strain will come back (it's probably still around, somewhere) because if it did you're right, most of us would probably be just fine, but that some new strain will come out which will hit us in the same way that people in 1918 got hit by their strain. The immunity we developed in past generations stops helping us after a certain period, and the question is whether we're at that point yet.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You had millions of troops returning home after spending years in the worst possible health environment. They returned a world that was unaware of what they were returning with.
If you study the 1918 pandemic you will see that it immediately spiked and then disappeared very quickly.
The 1918 pandemic was a collision of multiple historical factors that are not in play today.
Today we have early warning nets, intense media scrutiny, government awareness and rapid action.
We will not see this flu pandemic soon, its all fear-mongering designed to achieve more funding.
I am not saying we should not fight to make sure it DOESN'T happen but its far from 'assured' that it will.
I know you were being humorous, but it's worth pointing out that the number of troops in Iraq is so small as to be insignificant compared to the population moving around as a result of World War One. Both in terms of sheer numbers (there were battles in WWI that involved more people than the total number of combat troops in Iraq, leading me to wonder if we've relaxed the criteria for a "war" recently, but that's a different issue) and of the percentage of the global travelling population at the time. In 1918, if half a million people went from one place to another it was a huge event; today it's routine.
The problem is really the civilian travellers, because they're much harder to control and track, short of just shutting down the air routes completely and freezing every one in place. At least with the military you can pretty much verify where John Doe came from and was going to and who he might have been with -- good luck doing that with some random passenger off of a 747 going from Tokyo to LAX.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Which make up a small percentage of the world population. Specifically, your comment on plain malnutrition being rarities is largely mistaken on the global scale. I will need to dig up the report from UN, but trust me, it is no rarity. The statistics introduced by it are just staggering. 1 in 4 goes to bed hungry every day, and the percentage of malnourished people is quite large (i will refrain from quoting any number because i don't remember at present).
Lice and bed bugs, while not so common in well developed countries (excluding unsanitary conditions) are still widely spread in central/latin america. It is significant enough even here in Canada that I stumbled upon a leaflet in doctor's office on how to spot bed bugs and how to clean your place from them, even lice. The leaflet has 2005 as the year printed.
* The vast majority of people sleep in their own beds, in warm bedrooms.
The vast majority of where, again? Worldwide, there is a huge housing crisis. In some countries people who are fortunate enough to have a bed still go to sleep in COLD bedrooms because their heating is turned off in -20 degree weather. Former USSR is just one examples of hoarding communities like that.
A significant percentage of world populace goes to sleep hungry in a shoebox.
* Most people take hot soapy showers every day; soap and hot running water are available in restaurants and workplaces.
Unfortunately, soap is not simply a right, it's a luxury in various places around the world still. The good news is that you do not need crystal clear and pure water to wash yourself, you can do it in a local river near a village with a bar of soap.
I did not disagree with your point of view, but it was rather limited to a civilized, developed world. And just a small percentage of world population has access to all the items you listed, while majority don't to at least some of them.
Considering my town has effectively been wiped off the map by at least 4 wars and a couple of plagues in the last 600 years, and the two pandemics last century left the town struggling for years afterwards, the town councilors have a lot of data to go on. They've even employed a couple of historiens to dig up summaries of the recoveries for the last 2 centuries of disasters. A couple of people with actual degrees in history that I always knew as either barmen or system administrators. I never thought a degree in history was worth much, but history has ways of proving me wrong. I haven't seen anything in the local press, I get my information first hand from town council meetings, a necessary evil in my line of work.
/. in complete denial that there might be a pandemic coming. The 100 epidemioligists are sounding the alarm, starting last year, and now with human transmissible h5n1 cases and new strains being found in birds in Europe, the alarm has gone out. They have scheduled to drop by your house next week with all of their raw and cooked data to help convince you, personally, that the risk has jumped way higher than some random asteroid.
The hospitals started reworking their disaster plans at least two years ago, probably in response to SARS or some other event which freaked the powers that be.
What bothers me is the large percentage of people posting on
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
After observing the earth film war of the worlds the space chickens of krankor in a cruel and ironic twist will kill us with a (to them) harmless cold!
Run to the hills! Loot! eat your neighbours! it is the end time!
atleast I think that is the message the media is sending, I could of course be wrong.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Drink lots of scotch when you catch the flu and depress your immune system. That's my plan.
...when it's a prescription drug that is normally administered by a physician in a clinical setting?
...the survival rate for everyone drops down to zero.
Given the recent history of predictable and preventable deaths due to hurricanes in New Orleans, we can now confidently predict that three or four years from now, when the flu pandemic hits the U.S., the administration of the day will:
a) completely mishandle the response
b) claim loudly and repeatedly that "No one could have predicted this."
This will happen regardless of the party affiliation of the administration, because to screw up completely really does require years of bipartisan co-operation across multiple levels of government, as it did in New Orleans.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
they are at this moment infecting a person with regular flu, and when well, then expose the person to avian flu. From there, they then expose a 2'nd person to the first (basically a mixing bowl). Once that person is infected, they check for the mutated flu. Do it enough times, until they have created the human-human transmission. At that point, they take a quantity of serum from the target to USA and Israel, infect about a dozen operatives and have them walk in airports and train stations as a carrier.
Yeah, they may have lost 100 ppl trying to get the flu to mix, but now, they are infecting 100's of thousand or millions of us before we know (or accept) what hit us.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's why older people faired better in 1918. They hadn't seen the same strain, but they had seen enough variety that they had a stronger initial response than their younger peers.
This is inaccurate. The believed cause of twenty and thirty year-olds dying in larger numbers is because of dead tissue buildup in the lungs. This tissue buildup, believed to have happened quickly because their immune systems were stronger, prevented them from breathing, and they died. But even this isn't certain. And the young and old didn't fare especially well here:
Actually, according to the Kansas educational system, life forms can change. However, they only do so upon the will of the Intelligent Designer; whom as you well know has told us through visions that abortion, gays, pre-marital sex (but surprisingly not war, violence, unkindness, and torture) are evil and will be punished. So, if a new Flu does emerge that kills people (like the AIDS virus) you can be certain it will only happen to sinners who deserve to be punished anyway. This is why the Intelligent Designer doesn't make illnesses 100% fatal; those who survive are chosen by him to continue life because they please him -- those with whom the disease is fatal have obviously done something wrong and were punished.
It's that simple. No need to panic, or even continue science or medicine studies. God will make sure those who are good Christians live, and those Pagans (and secret un-believers)die. Praise be to God!
Great - AS I READ this story a company wide email came across saying that the flu shot clinics scheduled for today and thursday are postponed indefinately due to a shortage at our supplier. Wonderful.
Addlepated - punk & metal
Cicpro disappeared from drugstores nearly overnight too during the 2001 anthrax problem. Everybody from businesses to panicky public was hording the stuff.
And the panic mongers are just that.
AID's hasn't killed anyone. Other diseases kill a person with AIDs.
Also, life has a 100% fatality rate.
AIDS is a symptom of HIV..
HIV can kill on it's own, it causes some severe neural and muscle atrophy in millions of people. So a small percent actually die from HIV induced heart failure.
of course saying that AIDS hasnt killed anyone is like saying the unabomber hasnt killed anyone. what a croc.
It's not that they are waiting for there to be a clear threat from h5n1, because with all the publicity they probably would include it in the vaccine if they could, even though at the moment the threat is unclear. The problem is, since flu vaccine is grown in incubating bird eggs, and h5n1 is bird flu, the eggs die. There is no method today to grow bird flu vaccine. Nor is there any way to grow flu vaccine quickly, or in large quantities (you can't double your production without acquiring double the amount of eggs, and I assume that the eggs are super sterile and not something you can acquire at your local poultry farm).
Remember, the reaction of humans to the virus is also a selection process, and we will select very, VERY strongly against highly lethal strains.
Yes. By dying.
The survivors will mostly have some genetic predisposition to survive the disease. Many of the others will be dead. We cannot, as a society, protect against a highly-contagious, highly fatal disease with a pre-symptomatic period of a few days. That's one of the reasons many are so frightened of the ebola virus; if it were to spread to a highly-developed country like the US or England, air travel would allow it to spread elsewhere before anyone even had a clue it wasn't confined to some small African village.
We have many things working for us-- decent health care (except for the 45 million Americans without health insurance), decent living conditions (except for the 38 million Americans living in poverty), and awareness of contagion vectors and other disease-related stuff.
We also have many things working against us: high population densities, especially among those living below the median income; a dependence on fast, efficient mass transportation like trains and airplanes; and a medical system that is not prepared for a pandemic.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Either you have been smoking cannabis or living under a rock most your life. Either way there are stones involved.
Even been to a doctors to get a prescription or have you neve been ill?
> As one of those researchers, I've got to ask -- given that Taiwan is already breaking
> the Tamiflu patent, what makes you think my bosses are insane enough to invest that
> research money when the product is going to be confiscated?
Because even if they are, it's not causing Roche and everyone down the royalty chain to lose any actual money. Roche is already producing at 100% capacity, selling 100% of its output at its chosen price point, and refuses to license manufacturing rights to anyone else. As long as Roche is still selling 100% of its chosen capacity at its chosen price point, it has no right to bitch.
Personally, I take immense comfort from the high likelihood that right now, multiple factories in mainland China are almost certainly working around the clock, secretly cranking out pirated Tamiflu as fast as they possibly can, quietly filling warehouses with it, under the direction of one or more government officials motivated mainly by the thought of making billions of dollars and euros selling it to Americans and Europeans on eBay (or direct) for, say, a thousand dollars/euros for a 3-month twice-daily supply, when/if a real, honest to god pandemic strikes and the rights of Tamiflu's IP owners fall off the bottom of their list of concerns.
Think about it... the Chinese have little regard for IP anyway, they're faced with a potential future domestic crisis whose sole possible cure -- Tamiflu -- is already being rationed and suffering from limited availability. Does ANYONE *seriously* think they're going to sit back with their hands neatly folded, obediently refraining from violating Roche's IP and settling for the crumbs Roche might allocate to them at some outrageous, inflated price? And of course, if they DO make lots and lots of it, and demand far outstrips supply worldwide, the fact that they'll have to build a few new skyscrapers just to warehouse the money they'll make selling it abroad just seals the deal.
The genuine danger is that if no pandemic emerges within 5 years or so, some "bright" government official in China will decide to keep it from going to waste (since they won't be able to sell it, or even admit it exists, under any conditions besides an outright pandemic) and order it ground up and added to chicken feed. THAT would be a Very, Very Bad Thing(TM).
The great plague of our times is cowardice. People are afraid of terrorists (who kill fewer people than alcoholism) and bird flu (which has killed what, 61 people?) and are lining up to have Big Mama Government take away their right to assemble, their right to fair trial, even their right to vote.
Because that's what this is really all about, it's about control. Giving up the right to control your own destiny, because of basic cowardice, and letting somebody else control every aspect of your life. Line up here for your Soylent Green! Nobody has any higher chance of dying of flu today than they did at this time last year, look up the Gambler's Fallacy.
If you aren't afraid of death, you are free.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude
greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace.
We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand
that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity
forget that ye were our countrymen. --Samuel Adams, 1722-1803
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051114/ts_nm/birdflu_ dc
a serious new mutation has taken place in the avian flu virus. To quote the article,
In Vietnam, scientists at the Ho Chi Minh Pasteur Institute who have been studying the genetic make up of H5N1 samples taken from people and poultry said it had undergone several mutations. "There has been a mutation allowing the virus to (replicate) effectively in mammal tissue and become highly virulent," the institute said on its Web site at www.pasteur-hcm.org.vn. The WHO said it had not yet seen the detailed results from the Pasteur. It noted that influenza viruses were prone to mutation and that differences had been seen before in genetic sequences of H5N1 strains.
I haven't read all the comments, but I think some things are being missed here.
There is a technological difference between 1918 and today.
-We have instant global communication and the computing power to have a central outbreak database to coordinate a master quarantine plan. As long as countries are willing and able to impose travel restrictions, the technology is there to provide effective quarantining. Quarantines are the only effective solution to this problem. Drugs are not the magic bullet in the case of a virus that mutates so quickly. If this doesn't work then it is really a problem with incompetent coordination and diplomacy more than anything else. But the tools are there to do the job. We should be leveraging any work that has already been done to prepare for terrorist biological attacks.
-We have the internet which allows people in certain industries (like programmers) to telecommute. I expect an explosion in telecommuting in the case of an outbreak which will help blunt the spread of the disease and its effect on the economy. I think businesses should take the initiative to create and enhance the infrastructure necessary to have a telecommuting workforce to minimize the disruption. I also think there could be some great business opportunities for companies who try to enhance the utility and ease of telecommuting, which I think has stagnated for some time.
Can the disease be transmitted through eggs? I know a lot of people who like their eggs pretty raw and I understand that if someone with a regular flu gets the avian flu virus, the avian flu might mutate and start to jump from person to person.
Yes, because all of those research scientists enjoy working for free, investors should give away their money, and we should stop all drug research because of profits.
Go look up the history of the soviet union, and see how well the great communist experiment worked there. Pay special attention to the part of people willing to die to get out of the workers paradise.
Sorry to spring this on everyone, but here's the only thing we can be sure of:
Worldwide mortality is always 100%, or, everybody dies.
Live life to the fullest, live healthy and try to prolong things, but sooner or later, your time is going to come.
Don't bring in the blame on gender card. There are men who slept around, caught AIDS and gave it to their unsuspecting wives. There are women who slept around, caught AIDS, and gave it to their unsuspecting husbands. There are men and women who took drugs with a dirty needle, caught AIDS, and gave it to their unsuspecting spouses.
There is nothing gender specific. Women sleep around - no man could sleep around if there were not women willing to join the act. (ignoring homosexual relationships which are also a significant factor, but a minority compared to all the other adultery that happens)
Telecomute friendly companies could concievably fare better against this sort of issue? If you're sick, but you can work, work from home. Don't bring it to the office.
If saving energy isn't reason enough to let people work remotely, then how about saving lives?
I worked for a health insurance company for five years. The whole time, 80% of the work was on systems at least two states away. But the company wouldn't let me work from home, unless it was oncall work. Add in the fact that their time off policy equated vacation to sick time, and I would rather go to the office while ill than use up my vacation time.
Unless this kind of stupidness costs someone money, policies aren't going to change.
President Bush has asked for significant funding to deal with bird flu.
Course since Bush came up with the idea most people will call it wasted money if nothing comes of this, or too little if something happens. Can't give Bush credit for being a leader you know.
Better to prepare for panic, than to panic because you weren't prepared. Which doesn't mean you need to get all paranoid about it, nor that people should live in fear of imminent disaster. Rather, that when there is a known issue on the horizon, you should delineate the steps you'll take when and if cause for panic arrives (and when a certain percentage of the populace will indeed act like headless chickens). That way you can deal with it rather than being buried by it.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
softly moved by wings
autumn leaves gently waft down
with avian flu
What bothers me is the large percentage of people posting on /. in complete denial that there might be a pandemic coming.
One man's denial is another's dose of skepticism. If this turns out to kill 40m people, then I will gladly admit my error, if I'm still around. I just don't see it happening like that.
Even if this strain mutates significantly and grows exponentially, the level of scrutiny is high; a single infected bird leads to the destruction of tens of thousands of potentially infected animals. This was not the case in the last two pandemics. Every human case is under the microscope, so to speak. As soon as a lethal easily-communicable human-to-human strain is identified, a targeted vaccine will be developed (maybe in the space of several months) and deployed in different ways. Will it kill? Almost certainly. Maybe hundreds (like SARS) or thousands, but 40 million? Again, I'm not in denial, just skeptical. A hell of a lot has changed in the world (and in medicine) since 1918.
"I just got my flu shots, something I've never felt the need before."
:( So if it does start rampaging through the world, there won't be a vaccine for it, unless it decides to be nice enough to wait a few years.
The sad thing is that this flu shot won't help you against the avian flu that's the problem.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Your mistake is that you think that "research" is an interchangeable commodity. There are different types of research, and the type that makes real-world drugs is insanely expensive, largely unpublishable and, despite what uninformed people constantly say, simply does not exist outside of companies. There simply is no way to drop half a billion dollars on taking a drug to market and expect to be able to recoup those costs from manufacturing patents.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The problem isn't the money Roche loses. (You don't think they could scale up if this avian flu pandemic horseshit actually happened?) The problem is that this sort of short-sighted, self-righteous greed has already made developing new AIDS treatments a liability. At best you lose your R&D investment; at worst you get something that works and your troubles are just starting!
Arguably AIDS drugs were stolen from their makers at a point that maximized the saving of lives. (Although if a new resistant strain comes along, God help the victims because no one else will.) But Tamiflu and the rest of the current flu treatments suck. Like I said, I don't believe in this "pandemic" hysteria, but to the degree that people do, this is a really stupid point to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
*shrug* I disagree, but I respect your right to disagree with me. A person in a monogamous faithful relationship... but I know that's rare these days. Meh, if sex is equivalent to talking, your analogy fits. *wry grin* Then again, it might not be too far off. I remember a long conversation with a friend in middle school which came down to her realizing that she'd had sex with a lot of guys that she wouldn't kiss, that she saw a kiss as a more significiant act.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
^_^ Honestly, I've had some of the more militaristic vegans imply as much except that they were quoting higher cancer rates and the like.
As for HIV/AIDS not being such a pandemic, I guess that my point was that it's a disease that's fairly easily contained and controlled. Something like a flu epidemic sweeps through a nation like wildfire because by the time we realize its existence, it's too late to do too much to guard ourselves against it, plus it's related to many largely unconscious reactions. In comparison, HIV/AIDS is something which generally requires an act of fair significance to the average person which one is not likely to be doing with multiple people in the same week. (Or maybe not... I'm told I'm rather old-fashioned about such things.) And, despite people clamoring over the "AIDS epidemic," it's really not spreading all that quickly outside of places like Africa, wherein it's partly due to overpopulation and partly due to some ignorance in the area.
Yes, there is no real morality to a disease, but I think I would argue that the method of spreading a disease can indeed be linked to morality of some sort. Much of religion is rooted in practicality. Now whether it becomes an actual matter of morality at that point versus common sense is a debate for the philosophers and theologians. *shrug* And I, bearing the biases that I do, feel that there is an issue of morality in the spread of these STDs.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
We could be better prepared for a flu pandemic if pharmacos didn't ignore vaccines because they're not profitable enough.
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make install -not war
"My kids are small (under 6) and I have hand edited music files to remove curse words, so they can listen to decent music without growing their vocabularies in unsavory ways (hint: not damn or hell)."
Huh? What the...geez...I can't beli... you're american, aren't you? Nobody else can come up with such tight-assed-morality crap.