Posted on 11/13/2006 4:57:44 PM PST by blam
The So-Called "Bird Flu": Why is Concern So High?
November 13, 2006
Seasonal (annual) flu is the flu that comes every year starting in the late fall and ending in the spring. There are a number of subtypes of this influenza virus circulating around the world, which is why the flu vaccines are a bit different each year. Most people have built up some immunity from exposure over the years. Although the seasonal flu is not usually a threat to healthy adults, it still kills some 36,000 Americans every year.
Pandemic flu is a global disease outbreak. An influenza pandemic occurs when a new flu virus emerges for which people have little or no immunity, and for which there is no vaccine. Pandemic flu spreads easily person-to-person, causes serious illness and death, and can sweep across the country and around the world in very short time.
It is difficult to predict exactly when the next influenza pandemic will occur or how severe it will be. Wherever and whenever a pandemic starts, everyone around the world is at risk. Unlike SARS, influenza is infectious before symptoms emerge. Consequently, countries might, through measures such as border closures and travel restrictions, delay arrival of the virus, but cannot stop it.
Health professionals are concerned that the continued, rapid spread of the highly pathogenic avian H5N1 virus across eastern Asia and other countries represents a significant threat to human health. The H5N1 virus has raised concerns about a potential human pandemic because:
It is especially virulent and has caused severe disease in humans who have become infected There has already been limited human-to-human transmission in Southeast Asia It could evolve to become readily transmissible in humans No human H5N1 vaccine is commercially available, despite continual advances in vaccine technology Supplies of expensive antiviral medicines are very limited.
The H5N1 Strain
As journalist Galen McBride summed it up for Pandemic Flu Awareness Week (Oct. 9-15), "A pandemic will occur if the H5N1 avian flu virus, currently circulating in more than 50 countries on three continents, mutates to acquire the ability to transmit efficiently from human to human. Flu viruses mutate millions of times a day and this virus has already achieved limited human-to-human (H2H) transmission as acknowledged by the World Health Organization (WHO)."
Public health experts understand that even a mild pandemic today would kill millions of people worldwide. However, the H5N1 virus is so lethal to humans in its current form that it raises the specter of another 1918 or worse. Scientists theorize that if H5N1 becomes easily transmissible it will also becomes less lethal, but there is no hard evidence to indicate that it will. The 1918 virus killed an estimated 2.5% to 7.4% of the Americans it infected, depending on the city. H5N1 currently kills over 50% of the people infected.
Everybody hopes a severe pandemic will not occur, but to not prepare for a worst case scenario is unconscionable. The U.S. Government and every state have pandemic plans. You can find your state's plan at http://www.pandemicflu.gov
For more information about preparations for communities, businesses, schools and individuals, check out these resources:
U.S. Government Site: http://www.pandemicflu.gov
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Plan for Pandemic Influenza
http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/
Note: Information for this article comes from the following sources:
Caldwell, M. Blake, MD, MPH, "Planning for a Severe Influenza Pandemic: Implications for the Community." Presentation to the Skidaway Community Institute, Oct. 13, 2006
McBride, Galen, "Flu Awareness Week." CulpepperCitizen.com. Oct 4, 2006
U.S. Government Pandemic Flu site: http://www.pandemicflu.gov
BF Ping.
we are wimps.. scared to death of a flu pandemic. If we were to suffer one it would be the end of civilization. We don't have the guts to survive it.
You are the one with lots of documentation on this subject.
BTTT.
I stopped reading about H5N1 this summer because I was busy. Just started reading again the last week or so.
I will be keeping a very close eye on it now. If anyone thinks there could not possibly be a severe bird flu pandemic, they either haven't read history or learned nothing from it.
It certainly doesn't hurt to have extra stuff on hand. Nothing happens? Rotate and eat/use it any you don't have to go to the store for a while, or so often. Then people will be less likely to catch "regular" flu, which is no vacation either.
I expect to survive a pandemic. We're not all wimps.
One of these days something big is going to come along and folks are going to ignore the warnings. The overblown coverage of the Bird Flu situation is going to be a leading cause why.
ping....
(thanks, blam!)
Thompson Warns Insurers: Flu Risk Certain
BY DANIEL HAYS
NU Online News Service, Nov. 8, 3:21 p.m. EST
SEATTLE—Former Bush administration Health Secretary Tommy G. Thompson warned an insurance executives’ conference here yesterday that the coming of a flu pandemic is a certainty and they need to take steps to be ready.
“Yes, we are going to have pandemic flu,” Mr. Thompson said, noting that such an event has occurred on the average of every 30 years, with the last big epidemic occurring in 1918. “We’re on borrowed time. It’s not if; it’s when.”
Mr. Thompson, who left his secretary’s post a year-and-a-half ago and is now chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, which works on health care and public health issues, said once a fatal flu mutates to transmit from human to human, “it is going to be lethal.”
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, Mr. Thompson asked his audience to consider what would happen to their businesses if a flu hit and 30 percent of their employees could not show up for work.
>snip<
Once the flu arrives, Mr. Thompson advised, the attack would ebb and flow, lasting 12-to-15 months.
He said the nation is hampered because it uses an “arcane” method to produce vaccine, a process involving inoculation of chicken eggs. As health secretary, he said he asked for a $2.5 billion appropriation to improve vaccine production methods. However, even with the cash in hand, it would still take five years to get adequate production levels.
>snip<
The article may require a password, but is here:
I study anthropology/archaeology and if you do that as thoroughly as I do, you'd be a catastrophist like me. I keep track of all sorts of 'stuff'.
Patients who take Tamiflu should be closely monitored for signs of abnormal behavior, health officials said today in announcing an updated label for the flu drug.
The added precaution comes after reports of more than 100 new cases of delirium, hallucinations and other unusual psychiatric behavior in children treated with the drug. Most were Japanese children.
Global warming and Bush.
I don't have enough years or brain cells left to study as much as you have, but I know from what I have read (and common sense to digest it) that severe disruptions of all kinds have happened throughout time, and will continue to do so. Our little hi-tech civilization is but a spec in the river.
And we aren't wimps here, either. The better half just went out to get chain saw parts, another fire arm and ammo, and check out prices on (another) water storage tank.
We have a few acres of trees, a wood stove, and quite a bit of food since we usually buy in bulk anyway.
When I see the hygiene habits of many people I wonder they're not sick all the time already. Licking fingers as they count money, just for starters. Shudder!
2 cases today.
Avian influenza – situation in Indonesia – update 37
13 November 2006
The Ministry of Health in Indonesia has confirmed an additional two cases of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
The first newly-confirmed case is a 35-year-old female from Tangerang in Banten Province. She developed symptoms on 7 November and was hospitalized on 10 November. She remains hospitalized. Her source of exposure is currently under investigation.
The second case occurred in a 30-month-old male from Karawang in West Java Province. He developed symptoms on 5 November, was hospitalized on 10 November, and died on 13 November. An initial investigation of his exposure source found reports of chicken deaths near his home in the days prior to symptom onset.
Of the 74 cases confirmed to date in Indonesia, 56 have been fatal.
Yes, the bird flu will come to the USA and the bird that will be the vector is the Canada goose. These filthy critters no longer migrate in much of the US and they produce 2-3 lbs. of poop daily that they leave in school yards, on golf courses, in public parks and in the yards of millions of homes everywhere. Their population must be lowered by increased hunting and nest destroying practices. It will be too late once the epidemic is here........destruction of the vector is necessary now!
What's your vector, Victor?
I study anthropology/archeology and if you do that as thoroughly as I do, you'd be a catastrophist like me. I keep track of all sorts of 'stuff'.Are you so 'rigidly' extrapolating into the future based on past results that you have overlooked the gains made in containing those contagions that at one time absolutely ravaged mankind?
I submit for the review of those not so familiar with the ground-breaking work that set the stage for the 'modern' model of disease the following:
Pasteur's phenomenal contributions to microbiology and medicine can be summarized as follows. First, he championed changes in hospital practices to minimize the spread of disease by microbes. Second, he discovered that weakened forms of a microbe could be used as an immunization against more virulent forms of the microbe. Third, Pasteur found that rabies was transmitted by agents so small they could not be seen under a microscope, thus revealing the world of viruses. As a result he developed techniques to vaccinate dogs against rabies, and to treat humans bitten by rabid dogs. And fourth, Pasteur developed "pasteurization", a process by which harmful microbes in perishable food products are destroyed using heat, without destroying the food.
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