Posted on 10/11/2005 7:37:43 AM PDT by InDissent
No piece of mainstream journalism has flatly said bird flu is a third world problem, but it’s there if you read between the lines. From as Associated Press report on Monday, dateline Bangkok: “Leading a multinational team of medical experts to mobilize Southeast Asian nations against bird flu, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said … the likelihood of a flu pandemic in the future is ‘very high.’ Leavitt, accompanied by the director of the World Health Organization and other top professionals, is visiting Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to seek their collaboration in preparing for the anticipated public health emergency. In the past 2 ½ years, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has swept through poultry populations in Southeast Asia, infecting humans and killing at least 65 people.” The emphasis is mine.
Same article: “Also Monday, Turkey and Romania slaughtered thousands of domestic fowl after both countries said they found the disease in birds …. In western Turkey, military police quarantined the area around two villages … in Balikesir province, as veterinarians killed thousands of poultry. Other fowl, including pigeons, and stray dogs also were to be killed as a precaution …. Preliminary tests detected bird flu at a farm in Turkey after some 1,800 birds died last week.” Again, the emphasis is mine.
Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control have recreated the virus responsible for the 1918 influenza pandemic, the deadliest in world history. Its press release on the subject quotes Dr. Julie Gerberding: “We need to know much more about pandemic influenza viruses. Research such as this helps us understand what makes some influenza viruses more harmful than others. It also provides us information that may help us identify, early on, influenza viruses that could cause a pandemic.”
Somewhere between 20 and 50 million people died as a result of the 1918 outbreak; 675,000 of those were Americans. Though the CDC does us a service by isolating and learning from the 1918 strain, it pays to compare and contrast public health standards between 1918 and the current day. In doing so you discover that even though 1918 may be repeatable in Southeast Asia, where those standards are often less than stellar, it’s much less likely to happen here, where the standards are so high they occasionally border on hyperactive. (Evidence of this comes with any study of the 1957 and 1968 pandemics; as our scientific knowledge grew, pandemic related deaths decreased significantly.)
Whereas today government would simply call upon certain drug companies to produce more of a certain vaccine or drug (GlaxoSmithKline produces an in-demand vaccine for bird flu), antiviral drugs didn’t exist in 1918. Public health officials were left to rely upon what were then modern standards. Stanford University maintains some brief, fine writings on the subject online; one notes that “[while] most of the measures were solidly grounded in the current scientific concepts, they could also be traced back to Medieval and even Classical times of plague and pestilence. The public health authorities in both the United States and Europe took up fundamental measures to control epidemics that dated back to Medieval times of the Bubonic Plague.” In other words, their modern concepts were rooted in the 1350s.
The point is that medical science in 2005 is decidedly rooted in 2005 (and beyond, it seems sometimes). More North Koreans will die from regime-fueled starvation on Tuesday than have died, worldwide, from bird flu in the last 2½ years, or that will ever die from it in the United States.
But in The People’s common defense, government will prepare itself as best it can for the worst. Having learned from last year’s flu vaccine mishaps, President Bush will soon tell us about the 200 million doses of bird flu vaccine that will be ready in about six months, not to forget the distribution plan the government will enact if things get hairy. They won’t, and this medicine will rot, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
You're very welcome - I appreciate your reading the column. I can't take over the world without readers ...
In the 1918 epidemic, healthy young people could die within 24 hours. Maybe not enough time for them to seek and obtain treatment.
The government will just tell drug makers to make more anti-virals? That would be nice, but there is such a thing as production capacity.
The Chinese produce a lot of antivirals. They give them to chickens and ducks.
Oh, you mean like the Great Heterosexual AIDS Pandemic that was supposed to produce AIDS in every family by about 1985?
Got it.
Not only production capacity but legal liability. If you inject 300 million people with ANYTHING, even a placebo, some will get sick and/or die, thus causing many lawsuits.
Ahhh...but the special interest groups did...and are still getting millions each year toward fighting "the Great AIDS Pandemic". My guess is that this scare mongering will be another case of "follow the money"...the special interest lobbies are probably lining up right now looking for cash for R&D, etc.
Could it be that our government is paving the way to bar travel to and from the countries afflicted with bird flu? Could it be that we might finally have a reason to prevent people from certain countries from coming here? What are the chance.
No; I said: "Whereas today government would simply call upon certain drug companies to produce more of a certain vaccine or drug ... antiviral drugs didn’t exist in 1918." The larger point was the lack of availability of antivirals then compared to now. There wasn't an effective treatment to seek, not like there would be today.
When government wants more flu vaccine, it doesn't make it itself, it approaches companies, just like I suggested in the hypothetical, just like it would if push came to shove with this overblown bird flu.
Production capacity? Covered at the end of the column; Bush might say 200 million doses would be available in six months, which they could be. Companies wouldn't be making them for free, of course ... more of a motive to produce than anything I can imagine. We are all in the wrong businesses, my friend.
Exactly.
It's a nice thought but so far it's pretty much the wrong countries. There are no jihadis in Viet Nam. If we can get the stuff wholesale into Pakistan and Morrocco and etc, well, then you can make the right travel bans.
No American died of SARS last year. None, zilch, nada, zip.
But the way the media was covering it, and the number of quarantined air-travelers inconvenienced, you would think that it was the end of the world.
Careful reading is what separates the informed from the gullible...
I was waiting for the "Swine Flu" as well and even made a Porky Pig outfit to wear in honor of catching flu from pigs - never happened.
Bump.
well, it sounds like Indonesia will be one of the countries hardest hit and we all know it is very Muslim. One can only hope.
Very nice article, I'm in complete agreement. The panic crowd is really annoying, the annual "worst flu ever" stories, West Nile psychosis, SARS hysteria, now Avian Flu silliness. Don't these people ever get tired of being scared out of their wits.
You need to do more research, my friend. So far the H5N1 virus has not mutated into a human-to-human contact virus. (It has only met 5 of the 10 mutations) There are two ways it could mutate- 1) meet the 10 stages on its own or 2) attach itself to another virus. At this stage we have no vaccine because we do not know what the DNA make-up will be when it reaches human to human transmission. (At that stage it will take 6 months to develope a vaccine) Since we do not know the DNA makeup of the virus, we will not know it's virolence.
Mutation 1 - could be the worse, yet it could weaken with the mutation. We don't know.
Mutation 2- would be the best worst case scenerio as the virus would be severely weakened and have a more recognizabe DNA.Thus we could have a vaccine quicker.
The major problem we are in at this time is that we don't know how it will mutate and how long it will take to mutate.
In 1918, there were very few elderly. Today we have millions of frail elderly that will not survive. If there is a pandemic, the antivirals will not be available and will be will probably be rationed. The older meds will not be effective because of China use of amantidine treatment of fowl. A pandemic will spread before drug companies have a chance to ramp up production of newer meds like tamaflu.
I am a physician boarded by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. I'm not saying panic but there is very real reason to have deep concern. If we are lucky, when(not if)the mutation occurrs, it will be timed at the end of flu season allowing ramp up of an effective vaccine for the next year and/or it is not a virulent as we expect.
If a perfect storm of timing, drug resistence and virulence develops, we will see millions dead. Or it could just be a moderately bad bug. Time will tell.
You leave out all the bad news. You forgot to note that it took 7-10 DAYS for a ship to cross the Atlantic and almost a month to get to parts of Asia. Today it takes under 24 hours. You forget to note that most of america was rural in 1918, today its urban. You forget to note that there is no vacine for avian flue, that it has a long incubation period so people can travel anywhere in the world infected before anyone knows, and that it kills in days, not the months necessary to produce the tens of millions of doses of any drug that is found to be effective.
You forget that people cannot live in their homes for weeks at a time, as most could and did in the fall of 1918. Then you have to factor in the barbarian. How will Americans react if told to stray home for weeks and they begin to run out of food or have sick or dead in their homes? I suspect not well.
Now add in wide open borders and a wealth of liberal activist lawyers who will immediately try to undermine all effective meansures in court and you have the potential for a worse outbreak.
You make some good points. true the USA will not be impacted as much by the bird flu as the rest of the world in terms of deaths. Our health system is first rate but can it withstand an onslaught of millions of cases? We do not have the ventilators nor the beds to care for them. Also most of our goods (thanks to the shortsighted CEO's of the world.) come from those very 3rd world nations that will be impacted the most. Our inventories will be stretched and our standard of living will decrease for a time. Will America be able to have patience during the flu season? What happens if the Bird flu runs very hot in the Middle east and the wells stop pumping or in South America, Africa, Russia? Oil at $100 a barrel?. Then also you have millions of illegal Aliens streaming across the border each one coming from a very poor health care system. These people would come seeking help in our hospitals and at the same time carrying the virus. But like you said we should not panic but we should prepare. This goes for governments (federal/state/and local),companies (meet labor req./shipping and production problems and families (enough food/gas/medication/disinfecting etc).
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