Posted on 07/06/2006 12:57:55 AM PDT by Lurker
July 05, Nature — Multiple introductions of H5N1 in Nigeria. Phylogenetic analysis reveals that this deadly virus first arrived in Africa from different sources.
As the avian influenza virus H5N1 swept from Asia across Russia to Europe, Nigeria was the first country in Africa to report the emergence of this highly pathogenic virus.
Researchers analyzed H5N1 sequences in poultry from two different farms in Lagos state and found that three H5N1 lineages were independently introduced through routes that coincide with the flight paths of migratory birds, although independent trade imports cannot be excluded.
It's not just you.
L
In some cases, even the perception of a shortage can create one as people make a run on selected items.
Around here a few years back there was a rumor of a toilet paper shortage. Some people went out and bought a years supply, enough so, there wasn't a roll of TP to be found in town.
In reality, there was no overall shortage, supplies were normal, but local demand spiked because of the perception of a shortage and created one.
While this was regarded as humorous within a week, it illustrated (at least to me) how perceptions can control the adequacy of local inventories.
A few more people buying a little more whatever will increased demand, and cause increased ordering, but not be severe enough to encourage price increases, much less scalping.
A lot more demand, with constant backordering, could easily lead to increased prices, and in extremis, in the absence of 'normal' governmental and supply conditions, the sky is the limit.
So far, I do not believe this has occurred to anywhere near the extent it could.
Ultimately, all commodity prices are volatile if the factors affecting their availability are unstable or deteriorating.
Current dry weather (reducing forage) over the range areas up here have led to a drop in beef prices here, and we are loading the freezer. If things look really bad, we'll be canning a lot of beef for the long haul.
Thanks.
I've seen many strange things around here before and after a hurricane.
We do have some gouging laws that kick in at some point when a state of emergency (or some such) is declared. They were vigorously pursued after Katrina in this area. I'm a two hour drive @70mph from New Orleans.
One things for sure you'll never look at a crowd the same way. I avoid them. After all a crowd is just one panic attack away from being a mob.
And mobs are scary things.
L
Speaking of mobs, OT from Avian Influenza, [if it's too far out of line, please ask it be pulled] unless we have to deal with hungry mobs, or gangs roaming the streets looking for something to steal because all law enforcement are dead, afraid to venture out, taking care of a sick loved one, or too ill to do their jobs.
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- The craze for "flash mobs" -- where jokers gather en masse at a moment's notice, perform an inane activity and then disperse quickly -- is spreading across Europe. Arranged via Web sites and e-mails, they partake in a silly and harmless activity and then disperse at a given time.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/04/flash.mob/
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In recent weeks, New Yorkers have been using forwarded e-mails to coordinate "flash mobs," or not-so-random crowds that appear and dissipate within a matter of minutes.
To protect the planned serendipity of each event, participants aren't told exactly what the mob is supposed to do until just before the event happens. For the most recent New York happening on July 2, participants passed around an e-mail telling them to assemble at the food court in Grand Central Station, where organizers (identifiable by the copies of the New York Review of Books they were holding) then gave mobbers printed instructions regarding what to do next.
The result: Shortly after 7 p.m., about 200 people suddenly assembled on the mezzanine level of the Grand Hyatt Hotel next to Grand Central Station,
applauded loudly for 15 seconds, then left.
http://www.wordspy.com/words/flashmob.asp
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Anarchy rules! Flash mobs -- big crowds that celebrate organized chaos -- are fast growing around the world. Their mission: to have fun. Their message: There isn't one.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/11/DD115584.DTL
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There are Flash Mobs, Lynch Mobs, Riot Mobs, Rent-a-Mobs, which is a full time job for some; as a 'fill in,' a street person can be bought for the price of a meal or bottle of booze, all they have to do is show up for a few hours.[ Who's paying Cindy Sheehan and her entourage?]
Newspaper photos show the same Rent-a-Mobs show up at the G-8 Summit, which is held in a different Nation every year.
Right after hurricane Katrina, a Rent-a-Mob showed up at the White House, to protest the way the President was handling the situation. They didn't care about hurricane survivors; their goal was to cause political chaos.
Authentically displaced persons need care and comfort, they are frightened, disoriented, and unable to organize themselves into a mob.
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`Rent-a-Mobs' Descend on D.C - protesters at George W. Bush inauguration in Washington D.C
The throngs of demonstrators at Bush inaugural events were not just students or young adults, but seasoned professionals who make protesting their full-time jobs.
While the U.S. Secret Service was setting up sniper posts and checkpoints along Pennsylvania Avenue, xxx ( they'd want their name mentioned) was making posters and arranging housing for the waves of protesters expected to sweep over Washington to harass the inauguration of George W. Bush.
xxx, a 50-year-old from New York City, came to Washington two weeks early to help get things ready for well-orchestrated protests.
Today's demonstrators aren't just students and twenty-somethings flying by the seats of their pants. Many are seasoned professionals who are part of a fine-tuned, technologically savvy protest machine that is backed by labor unions and individual financial sponsors.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_6_17/ai_72272404
The population here isn't large enough to assemble a 'flash' mob. There are more people in Houston, Texas than in my whole state.
July 14 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. inspectors are probing the disappearance of four boxes of goose intestines smuggled from China, where bird flu is spreading.
The Department of Agriculture had tagged about 100 pounds of goose guts, a delicacy used in some Chinese recipes, for destruction before they disappeared last week from a Troy, Michigan, warehouse, officials said today. Agency inspectors previously found about 2,000 pounds of frozen poultry shipped illegally from China at the same warehouse.
Smuggling of poultry products poses a risk for avian influenza, which has infected 230 people in 10 countries in Asia and the Middle East, killing 132. Frozen products pose less risk because they aren't likely to spread virus to other birds, said Joseph Domenech, chief veterinary officer for the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, based in Rome.
``Nothing can be sure and everything can happen,'' Domenech said in a telephone interview late yesterday. ``This is smuggling and it's totally uncontrolled.''
People can be infected with H5N1 through close contact with infected live birds or by eating them, according to the World Health Organization in Geneva. Proper cooking kills the virus, and no cases of transmission from cooked food have been recorded, the health agency's Web site said.
(more at the site)
L
Health officials in Michigan in the U.S. are working to track down frozen Chinese poultry smuggled into the United States and found in a warehouse in Oakland County.
The chickens were smuggled in from China, a country still battling to control bird flu outbreaks.
State and Federal investigators are said to have raided the Tinsway Company in Oakland County three times in the last five weeks, confiscating over 2,000 pounds of meat and other improperly labeled food, following a tip off from a restaurant owner near Flint.
Officials apparently found no sign of the frozen chicken, duck and pigeon carcasses, some packed with entrails intact, that are suspected of being contaminated with the deadly avian influenza virus.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted the first raid but did not tell state officials for several weeks which has concerned members of the Oakland County Health Department, who are currently taking part in bio-terrorism training.
According to state officials no testing for bird flu has as yet been carried out by the federal food safety regulators who had taken the lead in an investigation that began in early June.
(More at the site)
Posted 2006-07-12
By Melvin Mason
Plant Tries To Reduce Inventory By Closing Two Days A Month
TIMBERVILLE — The Pilgrim’s Pride plant outside of Timberville will shut down for several days over the next six months as the company tries to reduce inventory.
The plant, located between Timberville and Broadway, will close two days every month for the rest of the year, according to Gary Rhodes, a Pilgrim’s Pride spokesman. The announcement of the "skip day" work schedule was announced in a June 28 letter to the facility’s employees.
The first "skip day" at the Timberville plant will be July 28, according to the letter, and will continue every other Friday.
The cutbacks will reduce production by 10 percent, the letter says.
Rhodes said the reduced schedule is needed to bring supply in line with demand. Pilgrim’s officials say they’ve seen an increase in inventories, primarily because of a reduced export demand after the recent reports of avian flu in Asia and Europe.
"Poultry in the United States has had a hard time this year," Rhodes said. "There’s been a very weak demand in the export market because of fears of avian flu."
The concerns and scale-back plans were cited in the Texas-based company’s second quarter earnings reports issued in May, Rhodes said.
"We’ve seen inventories in the U.S. building and building and chickens going in the fridge," Rhodes said.
The skip days will affect about 600 employees at the Broadway facility, Rhodes said.
Rhodes said the company hopes to return to a regular work schedule by the end of the year once the markets improve.
"Remember a while back when I noted that the term, 'It's a matter of when, not if' seemed to disappear from all the reports? And, I asked then if 'they' were worried that they'd scared us too much too early?"
They didn't think we'd listen?!
By the way has anyone done any bird watching recently and what have you noticed?
Has anyone else read this.
“At the end of last year, Retroscreen Virology in London began laboratory tests on Sambucol to discover whether the natural remedy could also be used to combat the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in dog kidney cells. And their findings last week are an encouraging sign.
While it is too soon to know if Sambucol can cure avian flu in humans, the Retroscreen Virology trial does hold out hope that it may be a possible solution if more studies support the findings. Mumcuoglu admits that clinical research into H5N1 is impossible at this stage, because there have only been 140 or so cases around the world, and the mortality rate is over 50%. Instead, the company is preparing to begin in vivo studies to look at the effect of Sambucol against the disease caused by the avian influenza virus.”
(Gratuitous Monty Python reference.)
L
Same O Same O around here. My Eastern Blue Birds look like they're starting their 3rd brood for the year, three is a little unusual in one year.
I still avoid crowds--of 100...Too unpredictable, too irrational. People who never should have died get killed by mass panic, sometimes by the dozens, exits which should have been adequate get blocked, people get trampled... I always look for multiple ways out of any venue with a 'herd' in it.
Final Epidemiology Report For Low Pathogenic Avian
Influenza (H7N3) Outbreak In Norfolk, England, April - May 2006 Published
Main Category: Bird Flu / Avian Flu News
On 29 April tests provided positive results for avian influenza in chickens on two further poultry farms near Dereham, Norfolk. On 5 May the Veterinary Laboratories Agency confirmed that the virus was H7N3 Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza.
H7 does not transmit easily from human to human. In almost all cases of human H7 infection to date, the virus, in both low and high pathogenic forms, has only caused a mild disease. Therefore at this stage this is a virus which only has extremely limited implications for human health.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=46883
Indonesian authorities have confirmed that a child who died last week was the country's 41st victim of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5179466.stm
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The A(H5N1) strains circulating now are quite different from the A(H5N1) strain detected in Hong Kong in 1997, which killed 6 of 18 human victims.
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Over time, A(H5N1) seems to have developed the ability to infect more and more species of birds, and has found its way into mammals -- specifically, cats that have eaten infected birds.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/avianinfluenza/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier
July 15, 2006 1:10 p.m. EST
Nicole King - All Headline News Staff Writer
(AHN) - New research shows the H5N1 avian flu virus multiplies several times as it's passed down through generations of people. Scientists studied a case in which at least seven members of one Indonesian family became infected.
The research shows as the virus was passed through three generations of one family, it mutated. In one instance, 21 times. This is believed to be the first time H5N1 has spread through so many generations.
Only one member of the family survived. Since 2003, there have been 229 confirmed cases and 131 deaths.
Posted 7/15/2006 8:01 PM ET
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A 44-year-old man died of bird flu in Indonesia, a senior health official said Sunday, putting the country on the cusp of being the world's hardest hit by the disease.
The man died July 12 after being hospitalized for two days with high fever, coughing and breathing difficulties, said the official, Nyoman Kandun.
"Local tests showed he was infected with the H5N1 virus," he said, adding that the man was from eastern outskirts of the capital Jakarta and had reportedly had contact with birds.
If confirmed by a World Health Organization-sanctioned test, the number of people killed by bird flu in Indonesia rise to at least 42, tying it with hardest-hit Vietnam.
India; Vaccination for poultry:
Bird flu vaccine offers protection above 90%, immune response good
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/18/stories/2006071800730900.htm
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WHO prepares instructions to prevent human-to-human bird flu spread in Azerbaijan
[ 18 Jul. 2006 17:44 ]
The World Health Organization’s experts are preparing instructions to prevent communicable diseases, especially human-to-human bird flu,
which is supposed to break out in autumn in Azerbaijan.
The WHO Office in Azerbaijan told the APA that the instructions on inflection in hospitals are being prepared by the WHO’s proposals and recommendations. These instructions are for health servants and will be published in several thousand of copies at the initial stage. Health servants will get these instructions free of charge./APA/
http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=12210
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Annals of Internal Medicine
18 July 2006 | Volume 145 Issue 2 | Pages 141-144
"Avian influenza, or influenza A (H5N1), has 3 of the 4 properties necessary to cause a serious pandemic: It can infect people, nearly all people are immunologically naive, and it is highly lethal. The Achilles heel of the virus is the lack of sustained human–human transmission.
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"Analysis of H5N1 shows that it is avian, and nearly all cases have resulted from direct contact with poultry; human-to-human transmission has been reported but is rare.
"Those who are skeptical about an H5N1 pandemic point out that genetic changes to facilitate efficient person-to-person transmission are unlikely to occur by either mechanism, since the virus has not acquired this property during 10 years of existence.
"If they are right, H5N1 will remain primarily an avian pathogen that sporadically causes disease in people, with most cases occurring in those who have close contact with sick poultry. "
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"...many of the patients with avian influenza died despite access to antibacterial agents, antiviral agents, and ventilatory support. Despite modern intensive care, the mortality rate for avian influenza is about 20-fold higher than that for the influenza of 1918.
"The 1918 pandemic and avian influenza also have virologic similarities. Analysis of the reconstructed 1918 pandemic influenza strain shows unusual similarities with H5N1, including the fact that both strains have genes of avian influenza viruses."
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"Current planning assumptions are based largely on the anticipated experience if a virus comparable to the 1918 flu strain were to cause a pandemic now.
"The medical consequences would include the following: 1) The attack rate in the United States would be 30%, causing 90 million cases; 2) of those infected, about 50% would seek medical care; 3) the excess mortality would be 209 000 to 1 903 000 deaths; and 4) the outbreak in a community would last about 6 to 8 weeks.
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"Caring for victims of an influenza pandemic will endanger health care workers. The risks involve exposure to H5N1, a virus to which unvaccinated people are considered universally immunologically naive.
"Health care workers and their families need to receive the highest priority for vaccination, assuming a vaccine exists, and for access to antiviral agents that are active against the epidemic strain.
"Health care workers should expect hospitals to provide optimal protection, and someone needs to take the lead to resolve the current controversy about the need for negative-pressure rooms and N95 masks or powered air-purifying respirators versus surgical masks.
"What are the obligations of health care professionals to care for the sick at great risk to themselves? Historical experience on this point is varied. The Hippocratic Oath is silent on whether physicians are obliged to care for the sick. Many physicians, including Galen and Sydenham, are said to have fled patients with contagious epidemic diseases.
"But AIDS, SARS, and smallpox have focused attention on the duty to serve, and a consensus has emerged. The American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics states "that a duty to serve overrides autonomy rights in societal emergencies, even in cases that involve personal risk to physicians".
"Some states regard the obligation to treat during an emergency as a legal duty punishable by criminal sanctions for failure to act or for abandonment of patients. Some health care contracts specify that health care workers are required to provide services in emergencies.
"The moral obligation to treat seems obvious, but it has a possibly less obvious reciprocal obligation for institutions to provide maximum available protection, including antiviral agents, vaccines, personal protective equipment, and liability protection. "
http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/145/2/141
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