Posted on 10/07/2007 5:53:09 PM PDT by Flavius
LONDON, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A new strain of the bird flu virus spreading around the world is more infectious to humans, a study lead by a U.S. researcher has found.
Led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the new study found the H5N1 virus has apparently mutated into a new strain that increases the risk of a human pandemic due to its increased level of communicability, The Independent said Saturday.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
I am sure John Bachelor will discuss this.
It’s that time of year again, folks.....
yup
maybe grant money applications are due
Still waiting for SARs
FR should charge $1 for each bird flu thread posted. Last year’s revenue would have been enough to fund the site.
There has been research several years ago which indicated that bird flu was so hard to spread among humans was due to its affinity for binding sites deep in the respiratory tract, as opposed to the nasal passages; and its preference for the higher temperature of the guts of birds.
If the virus manages to change these, but still maintains its ability to drive a "cytokine storm" we are in for deep shit.
NO cheers, unfortunately.
One way or the other, the establishment is bound and determined that there will be a pandemic. They’ve been threatening one for years now.
Killer flus are generally cyclic. A big mystery is why we haven’t been stricken by an H1 or H3 killer strain since 1918, which was an H1 strain. The Hong Kong flu of 1968 was close, but it did not have the incredible lethality (20%) of the Spanish flu. The Swine flu showed prospect of being a bad flu, and would have killed perhaps 100,000 Americans, but it mutated just before arriving in the US. Otherwise, typical flus kill around 30,000 Americans every year.
But the Avian flu, an H5, is completely new. It is almost like a brand new disease, and is breaking many of the rules of typical flus. No one has immunity to it, and those who catch it either die (60%+) or suffer permanent severe lung damage. There have been no known mild cases of the disease.
Already, it has confirmed the reality of the Cytokine Storm theory, in which the immune system, in fighting the virus, destroys the lungs, which is perhaps more lethal than the disease itself. Physicians can determine whether a patient will live or die based on a chest X-ray.
Typically, a large amount of pathogen must be uptaken before a typical person gets an ordinary flu. This is because they have at least some resistance to it, and it is recognized by their immune system as a known threat. It must overwhelm their immune system defenses before it can make them sick. However, the Avian flu only needs a tiny amount of virus to infect someone.
Avian flu is also unique in the very large number of animal vectors it is found in. This includes both dogs and cats, which have radically different immune systems, as well as many birds, pigs, horses, cows, and likely most other farm animals. In turn, this means that even if it just emerges as an animal plague, it could devastate farming around the world and cause widespread famine. It has even been discovered in fish, passed between them and their bird predators.
Inside the human body, Avian flu is unusual in that typical flus reproduce solely in the upper trachea and sinuses. But Avian flu is found in concentration infecting several other internal organs, with very different internal environments.
This most recent mutation is a critical one, as before the Avian flu stayed in the lower respiratory tract, making it far more difficult to spread contamination through coughing and sneezing. The mutation raises it to the level of typical flus.
It is unusual in that disease usually have their peak lethality at their onset, and from that point on they have a marked decline of mortality. This is because individuals who survive with a weaker strain can pass that strain on, but those with a highly lethal strain die too quickly. Avian flu, however, has maintained it high mortality over time.
The actual threat to the United States from the Avian flu is a factor greater than from even a bad flu strain. The number of Americans killed could be anywhere from 3 to perhaps 15 million. And far worse in the rest of the world, from perhaps 300 million and up.
Once the actual strain is known, in six months the US will be able to produce only 30 million vaccinations specific to it, with most of the production in the final month. This is enough for 1 in 10 people in the US. And it is also very likely that the antiviral agents we have, such as Tamiflu, will have almost no effect against it.
Therefore America’s two biggest assets are our familiarity with personal hygiene and out communications system.
Our biggest problem is that our medical system has a “push” logistics system, with almost no extra available in times of emergency. Particularly is our lack of ventilators. We only have about 102,000 of these, and use 100,000 in a typical flu season. During an Avian flu epidemic, many Americans will die because they can’t get one of these machines.
The WHO and US experts have concluded that it is inevitable. So all we can do is plan for its arrival.
Ping...
10-4.
Thanks for the ping, Joe I appreciate it.
It’s not that they’re “deteremined that there will be a pandemic”, it’s that statistically it’s gonna happen and a lotta people are gonna die - and part of “the establishment” is indeed reasonably tasked with figuring out what to do about it _before_ it happens.
This isn’t a 9/11-scale event we’re talking about (once, with fewer casualties than monthly car accident stats), or some some exotic “what if terrorists get multiple nukes” hypothesis, we’re talking about something that happens on a fairly regular basis throughout human history, and which takes out large fractions of the world’s population within months.
That characteristic is certainly one of the factors but not the only one. I think there were 6 or 7 spots on the chromosome that had to mutate before H5N1 could become a human pandemic strain (forgive me; my genetics lexicon is weak).
But so many people think "but not in my lifetime". Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong.
I think I’ll head out to the garage and make a ventilator, I already have some of the parts.
So with this new mutation, what stage is it in now?
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