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."
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. Same thing said by all the other ignorant people who are blissfully unaware that the immune system reacts so hard and fast it causes extreme rates of inflammation in the lungs, and you die. The better your immune system, the harder that response and inflammation. The elderly, young and those with compromised immune systems are going to be better off than you.
> That's one of the reason we didn't see a Ebola pandemia
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Actually, the reason we don't see an Ebola epidemic is because ebola is spread by contact with blood and/or secretions of an infected person. I'm sure you're aware that flus spread easier than that. The one thing ebola had going for it was the fact it caused people to bleed. Other than that, it's not much more virulent than AIDS.
I'd also point-out something else: the Black Death killed very quickly - most people died four to seven days after infection, which is about the same amount of time that H5N1 takes to kill a person. Your "whole family drops dead the same evening" scenario is not realistic given what we already know about H5N1.
The Black Death is believed to be carried by fleas on rats. The rats (along with lots of other mammals) were dying from the Black Death as well. So, your "if a flu virus like H5N1 can both cross infect birds, but is almost harmless to them, and humans, and is highly lethal," scenario doesn't need to be true in order for H5N1 to be a big problem.
So, the Black Death was killing its hosts and doing it quickly, but that didn't stop it from wiping out a third of europe's population within a few years. In many cities, it wiped out 50-60% of the population. So, the Black Death had the attributes (according to you) would've caused it to burn itself out too quickly to be a real problem. Yet, it killed 1/3rd of europe's population.
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.
I don't think this is the danger. We're talking about the possibility of millions of deaths, which is less severe that your "everyone drops suddenly dead scenario", but also more likely to happen.