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.
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.
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!
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.
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); }
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?
Am I the only one, having a somewhat strong immune system, that is not in the least bit worried about a pandemic?
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A string immune system is not garuntee that you will survive. The 1918 flu killed a lot of healthy people.
The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/
The 1918 virus sometimes killed completely healthy people in killed overnight.
"Some people would go to bed healthy and never wake up."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/flu/fluepidemic
This was one of the flus that worked so fast the immune system couldn't keep up.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Am I the only one, having a somewhat strong immune system, that is not in the least bit worried about a pandemic?
Start worrying. Many of the deaths from the 1918 pandemic and from H5N1 have been related to a "cytokine storm," resulting in an overly vigorous immune response. The typical "healthy young adult" is very much at risk.
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!
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/
Table-ized A.I.
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.
You should be more worried about it. H5N1, just like the 1918 flu, kills healthy people as easily, if not easier, than those with weakened immune systems. The virus causes a disastrous immune response in the lungs, damaging the tissues. The result is people with strong immune systems end up dead from pulmonary edema. Your strong immune system will drown you.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Am I the only one, having a somewhat strong immune system, that is not in the least bit worried about a pandemic?
Actually, this is to your disadvantage, as a strong immune system is probably what is going to kill you. Your immune system could trigger a Cytokine Storm which will basically dissolve your lungs through severe inflammation.
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."
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window
And in-flu-enza.
Stolen from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/
If it hits you're going to want to say away from others, since there won't be a vaccine and you won't get your hands on Tamiflu. Key factor in this is the supplies in your house.
That IS something you can do now. The other is to do what 90% of the population can't - research the facts and make up your own mind. Are you keeping up on the stories direct from South East Asia, rather than the little the US press lets through?
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.
"Look at the other posts. Not so tough now, are ya, bub?" :)
Indeed.
Just trying to put the idea out there, see if there's any information/discussion on it.
I guess it was a bit adolescent american of me..."what, me worry?" But at least now I know about "cytokine storms" and whatnot
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.
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 ]
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.
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".
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...
Ok. Am I the only one, having a somewhat weak immune system, that is not in the least bit worried about a pandemic? ....
Polio is a particularly good example because it's been flaring up again in isolated areas on a regular basis due to lack of political will - for instance in Kano province in Nigeria in 2003 after muslim leaders caused the immunisation programs to be suspended over paranoia that Western nations used the polio vaccines to distribute drugs to reduce fertility and spread HIV... Yes, you read that right.
As of this year Polio is still endemic (exists in the wild) in at least 5 countries. The other countries with significant Polio outbreaks have all been cases of it being imported from elsewhere.
The good news is that the Polio vaccine programs in Nigeria were reinstated, though despite that Nigeria alone have had about a third of all Polio outbreaks this year.
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.
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.
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 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 ]
---
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
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.
Read this http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/files/ComingPan demic.pdf. It tells you quite specifically what you can do.
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!"
Actually,
I've been reading some serious epidemiology journals for a class I am TA'ing, and they are pretty serious about this. I usually have my hype squelch turned up pretty high about this sort of thing, but those scientists don't seem to be joking around.
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!
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."
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.
Okay, fine. How about pharmaceutical companies that benefit from government funded research (at Universities, etc.) start paying for the value they get from that?
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.
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.
OTOH, we have better medical care and nutrition now. Rapid communication enables us to isolate outbreaks more effectively. They may or may not cancel out the factors you mentioned, but you can't just assume things will be worse.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
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
> 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).
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.