Bird Flu Threat

[starrwriter]

The issue of a potential human pandemic from the bird flu is beginning to look like a Chinese fire drill (where the fire alarms goes off and everyone runs screaming in all directions.)

Some news articles say that avian flu hasn't mutated yet to allow direct human-to-human contagion. Other news articles say it has already happened in two cases, one in Vietnam and the other in Indonesia where the victims had no contact with birds (only with an infected person.)

One public health expert claimed a pandemic could kill up to 150 million people worldwide because there won't be a vaccine in time to stop its spread. Other estimates range from 0 (if the virus never mutates) to a few million.

The World Health Organization has issued contradictory statements about the threat.

Who to believe? After the federal government's miserable response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush and Congress has allocated $3 billion to establish a plan for regional quarantines and other measures in case there is a pandemic. It's an attempt to err on the side of caution, but Bush's own health secretary says that no country in the world will be prepared to handle a pandemic.

Meanwhile, migratory wild birds have spread the virus half way around the world. It's now in Asia, Russia, continental Europe and England. It's only a matter of time until it reaches the U.S. and mutates to allow human-to-human infection -- if you believe certain public health experts.

Time to go live in a cave? Or just turn off the TV whenever a new bird flu story appears?

[Mark F.]

This has been all over the news here. My thoughts are; this has existed for over ten years in Asia, a few people have died of it, it's not really a threat, they're just trying to find some new pharmaceutical product to sell to the population.

[subterranean]

I live in Indonesia and so far we already have many lifes taken..not to mention the amout of chickens/bird/pigs that died or need to be destroyed. So yea...this avian thingy seems spooky enough.

[B-Mental]

I thought that I had heard of 61 confirmed deaths from the avian flu in southeast Asia (not sure if thats official). Lets not forget the unconfirmed deaths and as SubT stated several hundred thousand (maybe over one million) domestic poultry and livestock slaughtered to prevent what appears to be the inevitable spread of the virus. When you start to calculate the economic impact of the flu it takes an entirely different scale. Croatia recently slaughtered 140,000 domestic birds and will endure a ban on the sales of poultry. I don't know that I believe all of the naysayers, but its not always smart to bury your head like an ostrich.
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 25, 1:01 AM ET


I found this on yahoo news today
BEIJING - A bird flu outbreak sickened 2,100 geese in eastern China and killed about a quarter of them — the country's second outbreak reported in a week, a U.N. official said Tuesday...

Bird flu has killed at least 61 people and tens of millions of chickens in Asia since surfacing in 2003. Most recently, Russia, Turkey, Britain and Romania have reported the disease in birds.

[starrwriter]

I don't know that I believe all of the naysayers, but its not always smart to bury your head like an ostrich.

I'll stay out of your cave if you stay out of mine.

Seriously, though, I plan to keep abreast of this issue, but I wish I knew who to believe. I live in Hawaii, which will likely be the first state affected since we get thousands of visitors from Asia every day.

I don't have much confidence in the state health department. Three years ago I and hundreds of other Hawaii residents caught dengue fever after the health department failed to quarantine sick airline passengers coming from the South Pacific, where a dengue epidemic had been raging for years. More recently a Filipino woman brought oysters in her suitcase and the people who ate them raw got cholera. This isn't the most vigilant state in preventing communicable diseases.

[B-Mental]

I'll stay out of your cave if you stay out of mine.:lol:

Your always welcome in my cave provided you are quarantined first.:) Big Jam party in my cave where we'll work out the lyrics for the song 'Bird Flu Blues' and practice playing 'WMD Blues' ...aka 'I know they got 'em, but I can't find 'em blues'
BYOB food and smoke provided

[starrwriter]

BYOB food and smoke provided

Good thing I know how to brew an alcoholic beverage from cave fungus. Smells like feet, but packs a wallop.

[starrwriter]

An update on the potential bird flu threat in the form of an essay:

A Canadian public health official claims there is no reason to be alarmed. She warns that panic among the population will make a pandemic worse. Of course, panic is not good, but these pronouncements sound like a government bureaucrat asking the public not to make her job more difficult rather than an honest assessment of the threat.

Many news reports continue to report 60 as the number of known human deaths from avian flu, but that count is inaccurate. Several deaths in the past several weeks has pushed the actual number to around 70. The mortality rate is slightly over 50% of those infected -- a staggering percentage similar to a disease like ebola and 10 times greater than the 1918 flu pandemic that killed tens of millions worldwide.

H5N1 flu first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997. For eight years no public health official in the entire world expressed concern that the virus would mutate to affect large numbers of people. This despite the fact that (1) it was killing millions of domestic and wild birds as it spread (2)health officials knew that all human flu originates as avian influenza viruses which are prone to mutate until they become wildly infectious from human to human.

Now the public is suddenly inundated with dire warnings, calls to not panic and conflicting scenarios on how the avian flu situation will go in the near future. My question is: what were public health officials doing for 8 years (besides sitting on their well-paid butts)?

One science writer says the whole problem could have been prevented easily by going to the source. Human flu epidemics and pandemics always begin in southern China and southeast Asia, where hundreds of millions of peasants live check-to-jowl with farm animals. Domestic chickens, ducks or geese either pass the virus directly to farmers or through pigs to people. Wild birds pick up the virus from domestic fowl and spread it when they migrate to distant regions.

But how "easy" would it be to change farming habits in rural southern Asia? Poverty is endemic and subsistence farmers use the same methods as their ancestors a millenia ago. Domestic fowl and pigs roam free among human living quarters to forage for wild food since farmers can't afford to buy animal feed. As unhygenic as it is, this system works as a survival technique and it won't change without massive government aid which the host nations are unable or unwilling to fund.

Meanwhile, genetic scientists who revived the 1918 flu virus to study it have noted some scary similarities to the H5N1 virus. Most human flu viruses only kill a tiny fraction of 1% of the people infected and most of them are elderly, young children and adults who were already in poor health before they caught the flu. In contrast the 1918 pandemic killed mainly young and middle-aged adults who were healthy prior to catching the flu. Most of the H5N1 deaths so far have followed the 1918 pattern but with a much higher mortality rate. This means H5N1 is a flu virus of unprecedented virulence.

A vaccine may not prevent a pandemic. One drug company is trying a revolutionary method of developing a vaccine from the H5N1 virus before it mutates to pass easily from person to person, but there is no guarantee this vaccine will work against a pandemic virus. Normally, flu vaccines take at least 6 months to develop and drug companies can't start until they have the strain of virus affecting large numbers of people. By that time it may be too late to stop a pandemic, given the huge amount of airline travel and cargo shipments from hot zones.

The anti-viral drug Tamiflu is being stockpiled by some countries (the U.S. waited too long to order and is at the back of the line), but Tamiflu has shown only limited effectiveness against H5N1 and the virus is becoming more resistant as it mutates.

What is an individual to do in the face of all this? Well, a lot of people are skeptical about the reality of the bird flu threat and I understand why. For a long time certain doom-and-gloom scientists have been spinning end of the world scenarios. Earth will get hit by an asteroid and humans will become extinct like the dinosaurs. Half of an island in the Azores will break off and collapse into the Atlantic ocean, generating a mega-tsunami that will destroy cities on the Eastern Seaboard. The Big One (earthquake) will strike Los Angeles and southern California will fall into the Pacific ocean. The volcano under Yellowstone National Park will explode, covering the planet in ash and causing a new ice age. And so forth.

These doomsday scenarios make people feel helpless because there is virtually nothing we can do to prevent them. Skepticism about the potential bird flu threat is a mental defense against yet another possibility that may never happen in our lifetime (and let's be honest, do we really care what happens after we are safely dead of old age beyond the reach of natural calamities?)

Nevertheless, I find one thing curious. Most people have become accustomed to thinking in terms of a world economy that is blurring the importance of national boundaries. But few people wish to believe that farming practices among poor people half a world away could threaten their lives. I guess we are still parochials at heart.

For a little macabre levity, here's the lyrics of a tune many people were singing in 1918:

There once was a bird named Enza
I opened the window
And in flew Enza

[Koa]

There once was a bird named Enza
I opened the window
And in flew Enza

OMG this one is actually hilarious... well if it wasn't serious...
I have a cousin called Enza btw :D (really...it's quite common in southern Italy... She doesnt fly tho :D)


Time to go live in a cave? Or just turn off the TV whenever a new bird flu story appears?

The second.
If we cared of all the dangers, we wouldnt eat anyhting anymore, breathe anything anymore, do anything anymore... so I dont like the cave idea. I mean, not that we have not to care of potential dangers, but this things are often blown out of proportion by the media... I live in a country where when TV says something for 2 days in a row, then all the people scream and are worried... then the TV stopd talking about it, and everyone forgets...(I guess it's so pretty much anywhere, but here we and our TVs thend to scream louder). That's mindless alarmism... things dont start being worrying when the tv mentions them and dont stop being when the tv shuts up about them...

And then, as it was mentioned, every media says a different thing, who knows the truth? Let's just be cautious and as calm as possible... until things are proven at least... And screaming doesnt solve anything anyway.

[starrwriter]

OMG this one is actually hilarious... well if it wasn't serious...
I have a cousin called Enza...

I thought someone might appreciate my twisted sense of humor.


If we cared of all the dangers, we wouldnt eat anyhting anymore, breathe anything anymore, do anything anymore...

How true, unfortunately. I still smoke a few cigarettes every day, even though my doctor warns me it will cause lung cancer, heart attack or stroke. He ignores the fact that the majority of smokers die of old age.


... every media says a different thing, who knows the truth? Let's just be cautious and as calm as possible... until things are proven at least...

You mean I should stop stockpiling breathing masks and jumping every time someone sneezes around me?

[RococoLocket]

Well I can't say I'm not petrified.
But it's not exactly in England just yet, there was one Parrot and he was in quarantine, which we can be thankful for.

I would possibly write more on my opinions of this but I'm off to bed :as-sleep:

[starrwriter]

Well I can't say I'm not petrified.

No need to feel petrified. Just stayed informed and make sure your local health department has a workable plan to deal with an epidemic if it happens. Government bureaucrats need to be reminded occasionally to do their jobs.

[jaylow]

hi guys,

There is no need to panic..
Just stockpile tamiflu and relenza, the potent drugs to fight the bird flu virus..
These drugs are basically anti-virals and treat the symtpoms of flu too na doffer great resistance.. If the need be the dosage might be increased depending on how severe the case is.

I think I will go fo relenza.

*Edited by Logos to remove a commercial link

[starrwriter]

There is no need to panic...Just stockpile tamiflu and relenza, the potent drugs to fight the bird flu virus. These drugs are basically anti-virals and treat the symtpoms of flu too na doffer great resistance.. If the need be the dosage might be increased depending on how severe the case is.

Even if you can find Tamiflu or Relenza to buy (rotsa ruck), I don't think anyone should start taking them until the human form of avian influenza is verified to be in their community. Anti-virals have serious side effects for some people and they don't work far in advance of exposure.

Let's wait and see how this thing is playing out before we start swallowing pills.

[starrwriter]

Some good news on the bird flu threat. Scientists are using the latest genetics techniques to get a jump on producing a human vaccine:

LONDON (Reuters) -- No one can predict when or where a bird flu virus will mutate into a human pandemic strain, but scientists are preparing so that when it does, they will be ready to pounce on it, a leading virologist said on Friday.

While surveillance centers dotted around the globe are keeping an eye on changes in the H5N1 bird flu virus, Dr. Jim Robertson and scientists at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Controls (NIBSC) in England are working on vaccines in case it becomes highly infectious in humans.

"The big concern about H5 is that it is so virulent, so highly pathogenic. If that virus gets into the human population and retains that virulence you could imagine what would happen," he told Reuters.

NIBSC scientists have made a vaccine using the H5N1 strain from a Vietnamese patient. They do not know it will work against a pandemic strain but are hoping it will provide some protection until a vaccine against the pandemic strain can be produced, which could take up to six months.

U.S. scientists have also produced an H5N1 vaccine, and early trials have shown it produces an immune response in healthy people.

NIBSC scientists used a technique called reverse genetics to disarm the virus and speed up the vaccine process.

The H5N1 vaccine has been supplied to vaccine manufacturers worldwide who are in various stages of producing it and running clinical trials, Robertson said.

[starrwriter]

Last night on The History Channel I saw a program called "The New Plague" which painted a doomsday scenario of the avian flu turning into a human pandemic.

It was like a post-apocalyptic scifi movie plot: hundreds of millions dead, half the earth's population infected, the world economy worse than the Great Depression, mass graves, riots, lack of basic necessities for survival, etc.

I think the scientists and public health officials interviewed went a little too far. While this doomsday scenario is not entirely impossible, it is unlikely given the quickly growing awareness of the threat and the measures being undertaken to deal with it. We may not be fully prepared right now, but we will be in the near future -- at least as much as it's possible to be prepared for such an enormous potential problem.

There is no human pandemic yet and it may never happen with the H5N1 avian flu virus. All human flu comes from bird flu virus that mutates and every year a sizeable percentage of the human population is exposed without catastrophic results. The last great pandemic was 87 years ago and, although it killed a lot of people, the world didn't turn into a dead zone. And that was before we had anti-biotics and anti-viral drugs (most flu victims actually die from pneumonia which can be treated with modern drugs.)

"The Next Plague" had a sort of disclaimer at the end. One public health official, admitting that avian flu might not become a human pandemic, said he was sorry if the warnings scared people unnecessarily, but it was better to err on the side of caution. I thought another official made a better point. He said the worst effects of a pandemic could be caused by panic, hoarding, lack of cooperation, etc.

[starrwriter]

My two cents about President Bush's plan (announced yesterday) to deal with a bird flu pandemic if it happens:

Better late than never. Sure, government and health officials all over the world should have started making preparations 8 years ago when avian flu first appeared in Asia. But that boat has sailed and all we can do now is play catch up as fast as possible.

I'm a liberal Democrat, but I'm very disappointed to see partisan politics erupting over Bush's plan. This is a public health issue, not politics. Regardless of party affiliation, all elected officials should cooperate with each other to protect Americans from the threat.

At least Bush is taking steps in the right direction. The woulda/coulda/shoulda harping is not doing the American public any good.

[starrwriter]

Well, it's official. No human pandemic of bird flu even exists yet, but panicky people have already gone insane.

Some people in Hawaii and the midwestern U.S. are stockpiling sauerkraut and kim chee, two forms of pickled cabbage. This is based on a rumor that chicken farmers in Korea cured infected fowl by feeding them kim chee. Supposedly, the high level of lactic acid in kim chee and sauerkraut kills the avian flu virus. (Funny how the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta knows nothing about this miracle cure.)

These nimrods actually believe that pickled cabbage will protect them. Think of what that says about our public education system.

It won't be long before they bring out the leeches and start voodoo chants to ward off the evil spirits embodied in avian flu. When people get spooked, the thin veneer of civilization peels off and the ignorant savage underneath is exposed.

[subterranean]

I just read in BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4442436.stm) that China has confirmed its first human death from bird flu.

It can't be the first... :rolleyes:

[baddad]

Two Questions: 1.) Migratory chickens?

2.) If everyone ignored the media coverage would the threat of a pandemic, or any threat for that matter, immediately decrease?

[starrwriter]

I just read in BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4442436.stm) that China has confirmed its first human death from bird flu. It can't be the first...
China is definitely the loose cannon in the pandemic scenario. The PRC is run by a totalitarian government that feels above international interests. They covered up the SARS outbreak until it was almost too late to control it. The world lucked out on SARS, but if China tries to hide a human avian flu outbreak within its borders, a pandemic is practically guaranteed.

Start eating sauerkraut.

[starrwriter]

Two Questions: 1.) Migratory chickens?
Chickens don't migrate, but infected frozen birds could be sold as food all over the world. One has already turned up in Hawaii, but it was destroyed before anyone handled the meat or ate it.

Migratory fowl (ducks, geese and other wild birds) have already spread the avian virus over half the world from Indonesia to Europe.


2.) If everyone ignored the media coverage would the threat of a pandemic, or any threat for that matter, immediately decrease?
If everyone ignored media coverage of the Iraq war, would the war end?
I think it's wise for people to keep abreast of avian flu news because their lives may be on the line in the forseeable future. They can (1)keep pressure on government and public health officials to devise an adequate response to a pandemic (2)find out where to get anti-viral drugs like Tamiflu and a vaccine after it is developed.

[baddad]

You seem quite worried. Personally I can think of a lot of other pandemics (mostly moral) in the world that need immediate and unqualified attention. The chickens can by all means, wait. People starving to death to the tune of thousands everyday, despot rulers, the horror in the Sudan, mayhem in Pakistan, Indonesia, Chechnya, malaria killing tens of thousands every year, children starving, children slaving, countries ruining their environment to take advantage of economic opportunities, and not caring about a future for the following generations., .....etc...etc...etc.....

For me the bird -flu...chicken pickin' pandemic ....is not even a blip on the radar.

And how about the massive overuse of the word "Pandemic"?? Until a matter of weeks ago, most people hadn't heard the word, and probably couldn't spell it. BUT NOW EVERYTHING IS A 'PANDEMIC' !!! Propaganda perpetuated by the media. I see the scientists running toward the problem, not away from it. I see alot of people screaming that 'the sky is falling'!!! Oh, wait!! ....That would be Chicken Little...

I will go to B-mental's cave, I will not bring my television, but

[starrwriter]

You seem quite worried.
I seem quite worried when I advised people to start eating sauerkraut? You don't have much of a sense of humor.


Personally I can think of a lot of other pandemics (mostly moral) in the world that need immediate and unqualified attention.
There is no drug to cure moral pandemics.


For me the bird -flu...chicken pickin' pandemic ....is not even a blip on the radar.
The last great flu pandemic in 1918 killed 100 million people worldwide. I'd say your radar is not working properly.


And how about the massive overuse of the word "Pandemic"?? Until a matter of weeks ago, most people hadn't heard the word, and probably couldn't spell it. BUT NOW EVERYTHING IS A 'PANDEMIC' !!! Propaganda perpetuated by the media. I see the scientists running toward the problem, not away from it. I see alot of people screaming that 'the sky is falling'!!! Oh, wait!! ....That would be Chicken Little...
You can ridicule warnings as propaganda and bury your head in the sand like an ostrich if you wish. Nature has a way of weeding out those who ignore serious threats. I chose to stay informed so I'll know exactly what to do in order to survive.


I will go to B-mental's cave, I will not bring my television, but
As long as you stay out of my cave unless you're vaccinated.

[Scheherazade]

Two Indonesians Die from Bird Flu (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4444532.stm)

I remember in the beginning of 1980s (even though I was very young then :p), there was such an outcry about AIDS... that it was 'the end' and by 2010 the whole world population would be affected by it etc etc... I am not saying we should ignore the bird flu threat. I think unless precautions are taken, it will be costly -both human lives-wise and financially. However, I am not sure if it is as big a risk as they make it sound like... provided that people start paying attention to the risk.

[starrwriter]

I remember in the beginning of 1980s (even though I was very young then :p), there was such an outcry about AIDS... that it was 'the end' and by 2010 the whole world population would be affected by it etc etc... I am not saying we should ignore the bird flu threat. I think unless precautions are taken, it will be costly -both human lives-wise and financially. However, I am not sure if it is as big a risk as they make it sound like... provided that people start paying attention to the risk.
The H5N1 strain of avian flu may never cause a human pandemic. Right now it doesn't spread easily from person to person, but flu viruses mutate rapidly and often become much more infectious.

Even if H5N1 doesn't cause a pandemic, a worldwide epidemic is virtually inevitable at some point in the forseeable future since that is the established history of flu disease. Two other avian flu viruses, H3N1 and H4N1, were recently discovered in chickens and either one may cause a human pandemic eventually.

I think the widespread media coverage of H5N1 is worthwhile because it has forced government and public health officials and drug companies to admit they weren't prepared to deal with a flu pandemic and to get busy devising an adequate response. This will save lives no matter when a pandemic happens. We have had 87 years to prepare since the last great pandemic, medical science has come a long way during that time, and there is absolutely no excuse for millions of people to die in the next pandemic.

I'm convinced that if people stay informed about developments and demand an adequate response plan from their local officials, they have no reason to panic. This is a solvable problem if everyone remains focused and cooperates.

[topomeas]

ai......................

[starrwriter]

ai......................
I will respond to your original post before you edited it. I have done very extensive research on the avian flu virus ever since it first appeared in 1997. I read everything I could find published and I'll tell you why.

My paternal grandmother died of the flu in the 1918 pandemic. This left my father a 4-year-old orphan since his father had been killed the previous year in a mining accident. Being an orphan raised by a foster family who mistreated him affected my father's personality development in a strongly negative way.

My grandmother's death was understandable since flu vaccine and anti-biotic drugs had not been invented yet. But flu is now preventable and/or treatable and I decided my family had suffered enough from this disease. That's why I keep track of the latest developments in the avian flu threat.

[starrwriter]

Last night PBS broadcast two programs about the 1918 flu pandemic. I mention this because PBS often re-runs programs and I think these two are well worth watching.

On American Experience the episode titled "Influenza 1918" described the effects of the pandemic in the U.S. Some of the facts were eye-opening. The flu killed more Americans than all the wars of the 20th century combined. The U.S. soldiers going to World War I European battle fields on troop ships were more likely to die of flu than in combat. In the U.S. there were so many dead people all at once the survivors ran out of coffins and had to bury victims in mass graves. Business and industry ground to a halt, schools were closed, public gatherings were banned. Most insidious of all the effects, people became paranoid, lost their empathy with fellow Americans and violence erupted.

Medical science of the day was helpless to deal with the outbreak. The epidemic ended only because the virus ran out of fuel after infecting all suseptible people. The situation had been so traumatic the American public quickly developed a sort of collective amnesia about it.

The second program was a "Secrets of the Dead" episode explaining why the 1918 flu spread so fast and killed so many people. Deaths from ordinary flu are mostly confined to the very young, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. The 1918 virus was a maverick strain that mainly killed healthy young adults in the prime of life. The victims turned blue in the face, coughed up blood and literally drowned as their lungs filled up with body fluids.

Alarmingly, the avian flu virus that has killed more than half the people it infected in Asia displays certain similarities to the 1918 virus. Most fatalities have been healthy young adults rather than children or the elderly. The good news is medical researchers may have figured out why this happened in 1918 and again now with the new strain.

The human immune system is strongest in young adulthood. By comparison children and the elderly have weak immune systems, which is why they normally die more often from infectious diseases. But super-flu strains that occur on the average of once every 30 years provoke an over-active immune response in people who have the strongest immune systems (young adults.)
Much of the damage is not caused by the virus itself, but by the over-active immune response. As in the disease of lupus, the immune system actually attacks the body.

This discovery may help scientists develop an effective vaccine against the avian flu -- one that limits the immune response while preventing the growth of the virus.

[B-Mental]

I was just thinking about the bird flu, and it dawned on me that we may all have come in contact with a little blue bird that flies nonstop and goes by the name of pensive.
We should have pensive tested to set my mind at ease. Right whose with me....let's go!

[starrwriter]

I was just thinking about the bird flu, and it dawned on me that we may all have come in contact with a little blue bird that flies nonstop and goes by the name of pensive. We should have pensive tested to set my mind at ease. Right whose with me....let's go!
To me it's amusing and revealing of human nature that many people have reacted to the bird flu threat in one of two ways. They either panic or pooh-pooh the threat as nonsense.

Both reactions are irrational. There is absolutely no reason to panic. The public health system is moving swiftly to deal with the possibility of a pandemic. All a person has to do is stay informed about preventive measures and where to go for treatment if they are infected.

Those who ridicule the threat as a conspiracy by the media, the government, the pharmaceutical industry etc. simply don't want to believe anything as horrendous as 1918 could happen again. This amounts to whistling while walking past the cemetery so one won't hear the ghosts. It would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerously naive.

[certus]

I've been reading the site http://www.birdfluinsider.com and came across an opinion piece that got me thinking. I recall how Toronto shut down with SARS, it really shook that town's economy. If this bird flu turns out to be legitimate and it hits my city, I'm wondering after having been shut down for a few months whether my employer will have a job for me to come back to.

[starrwriter]

I recall how Toronto shut down with SARS, it really shook that town's economy. If this bird flu turns out to be legitimate and it hits my city, I'm wondering after having been shut down for a few months whether my employer will have a job for me to come back to.
The potential economic impact of a bird flu pandemic is the wild card in the scenario. If government and public health officials let the medical situation get out of control, the entire world economy could suffer catastrophic damage comparable to the Great Depression. You should find out if your local officials have a workable plan in effect to deal with a bird flu epidemic. If they don't, a job is the last thing you might be worried about.

[starrwriter]

CHINA COVERUP?

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai boy has become the 70th person to die of bird flu, representing a fatality rate of more than 50% for infected humans, authorities said on Friday.

Meanwhile, China has so far reported more than 30 outbreaks of bird flu among domestic fowl and five cases where the virus spread to humans. But Chinese officials were accused of concealing bird flu outbreaks in several provinces for many months this year, according to comments from a leading virologist in Hong Kong published in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper on Friday.

Beijing has promised resources and openness in fighting bird flu after being widely criticized for an initial cover-up of the SARS virus in 2003.

Despite the promise, Guan Yi of the University of Hong Kong claimed bird flu was "out of control in China."

"I don't know if they are brave enough to admit that they have the virus in every corner of the country," he said. The Globe and Mail noted that Yi had analyzed nearly 100,000 bird flu virus samples from across China.

"Quite honestly, some provinces have the virus and they still haven't announced any outbreak," the newspaper quoted Yi. "I can show direct evidence, even though China is still trying very hard to block my research."

[starrwriter]

Latest maps showing world regions where avian virus has spread --

Bird infections:

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a234/starrwriter/bird.png

Human infections:

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a234/starrwriter/human.png

[samercury]

OMW :eek:.....

[starrwriter]

Bold experiment in live-virus vaccine against bird flu:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051218/ap_on_he_me/bird_flu_sprays

[starrwriter]

FIRST DEATH OUTSIDE OF ASIA

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Wednesday (Jan. 4) two people had been diagnosed with bird flu -- the first human cases outside Southeast Asia and China -- and a doctor said one of them, a 14-year-old boy, had died from the killer H5N1 strain of avian flu.

A top World Health Organization (WHO) official said the cases marked a dramatic shift westwards for the deadly disease to the threshold of Europe. It is the first death outside of Asia where more than 70 people have succumbed to bird flu.

"(The boy) died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu," Huseyin Avni Sahin, head doctor at the hospital in the town of Van in eastern Turkey, near the Iranian and Armenian borders, told a televised news conference. The boy's sister has also been diagnosed as having bird flu and remains seriously ill.

Turkey, on the path of migratory birds that are believed to spread the virus, has had two outbreaks of the highly contagious disease among poultry in the past three months. Veterinary experts across Europe have been on alert, culling birds and taking other precautionary measures since October outbreaks in Turkey and Romania.

JANUARY 5 DEVELOPMENTS

ERZURUM, Eastern Turkey (Reuters) - A second Turkish teenager died of bird flu on Thursday as a virus that has killed 74 people in east Asia claimed its first lives far to the west, on the fringes of Europe and the Middle East.

In a sign the disease may have infected people over a wide area of eastern Turkey, six people from a different province were taken to hospital with suspected bird flu. In all, doctors said 18 patients were under scrutiny and two of them very sick.

All the previously confirmed victims have been from Southeast Asia and China. H5N1 has killed around half of the people known to have been infected with the virus.

The Turkish teenagers who died were in remote, rural Agri province next to the Armenian border. People there live, as in the affected areas of the Far East, in close proximity with livestock and poultry, which they mostly raise for their own consumption.

The development could mean that the extent of the outbreak in poultry in Turkey had been underestimated or that the virus could jump more easily from birds to humans, said Professor John Oxford of Queen Mary's School of Medicine in London.

"It is surprising that there are two deaths and a number of people have been infected in what we thought to be a rather small outbreak," he said.

[starrwriter]

EPIDEMIC BREWING IN TURKEY?

DOGUBAYAZIT, Turkey (AP) -- Fears rose Sunday (Jan. 8) that a deadly strain of bird flu was spreading in Turkey after preliminary tests showed two children and an adult tested positive for the virus in Ankara -- the first known cases outside an eastern region of the country where three people have already died.

Russia's chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, urged Russians not to travel to eastern parts of Turkey because of the bird flu outbreak, according to a statement released Sunday. Iran also has closed down its border to Turkish citizens.

The two young brothers and an adult who were hospitalized in the Turkish capital, Ankara, would be the first cases of H5N1 found outside the vicinity of Van in eastern Turkey.

Health officials have not yet determined if the infections in Turkey resulted from contact with sick birds or passed directly between humans. A pandemic that could kill millions worldwide is feared if the avian virus mutates to become easily transmittable from person to person.

Birds in Turkey, Romania, Russia and Croatia have recently tested positive for H5N1, which in recent months has killed 74 people in Asia and three more in Turkey.

If a pandemic occurs, a vaccine would take several months to develop and manufacture in sufficient quantity to affect the outcome. In the meantime, the anti-viral drug Tamiflu is the only treatment available. However, a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported how four of eight patients in Vietnam died despite using Tamiflu. It sparked concern as it suggested that certain strains of the H5N1 might have become resistant to the drug.

[starrwriter]

OMINOUS PROBLEMS

The ominous developments in Turkey show the problems that will be encountered in preventing a human pandemic of avian flu.

Peasants in remote villages in the eastern province where the first human deaths occurred were reluctant to surrender their chickens and other domestic fowl for destruction by government authorities. This despite assurances they would be financially compensated. Some hid their domestic fowl because they either didn't believe they actually would be compensated or because they doubted the existence of avian flu.

Within a few days human cases of avian flu spread 600 miles to Ankara in a country where peasants travel very little.

The same scenario is playing out in affected Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. If the virus continues to spread (as is very likely) every country in the world where peasants depend on domestic fowl for survival will face the same problem in confining an outbreak to rural areas. When human cases begin to erupt in big cities, it could only be a short time before infected people spread the virus worldwide via airline travel for business and tourism.

Meanwhile, migratory wild birds have already carried the virus from Indonesia 10,000 miles west to Europe. Culling domestic fowl is difficult but possible. Eliminating wild birds that may be infected is impossible.

It seems to me that the World Health Organization's first line of defense against a pandemic -- preventing the spread of avian virus from birds to people -- is not a plan that has much chance of success. Also, it will become moot if the virus mutates to become easily passable from human to human, as has happened in the past with avian flu viruses.

The second line of defense, the anti-viral drug Tamiflu, may not be effective against the H5N1 virus. That leaves a vaccine as the last line of defense. But that will take months AFTER a pandemic starts to develop/deliver and many millions could die in the interim.

My conclusion is that it will be pure luck if we avoid a huge death toll. The H5N1 virus may not mutate for easy transmission between people and it will be this random effect of genetics that prevents a pandemic. While it's unnerving to realize the survival of a substantial portion of the human population can depend on random events we can't even see with the naked eye, I wonder how many times in its 2-million-year history the human race has unknowingly escaped extinction as a species from pathogens that narrowly failed to evolve the right genes to finish us off. More than once in all likelihood.

Ignorance may be bliss, but now we know too much to be blissful. Man is the only animal that knows he is going to die -- for one reason or another.

[Nightshade]

Those who ridicule the threat as a conspiracy by the media, the government, the pharmaceutical industry etc. simply don't want to believe anything as horrendous as 1918 could happen again. This amounts to whistling while walking past the cemetery so one won't hear the ghosts. It would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerously naive.

Humm Star I havent read most of this but I was thionk 1918 medicine has come along in leaps and bounds since then hasnt it and was the reason it spread the way it then , the trenches and the general low imunity of the soilders who were in close contact, then they toojk it home to their families?
Andother thing Ive often wondered about -- and dont laugh Im genuine here-- how do they know it was bird flu that did it , or rather the same birdflu? I mean they couldnt see virus the way we can and know what they are under an electron microscope (or could they? when was that invented anyway??) so how do they know it wasnt somthhing else?
Id ask my sisters who did history of medicine at school but they tend to look at me like Im an idiot. But I really do want to know.

:D

[starrwriter]

Humm Star I havent read most of this but I was thionk 1918 medicine has come along in leaps and bounds since then hasnt it and was the reason it spread the way it then, the trenches and the general low imunity of the soilders who were in close contact, then they took it home to their families? And another thing Ive often wondered about -- and dont laugh Im genuine here-- how do they know it was bird flu that did it , or rather the same bird flu? I mean they couldnt see virus the way we can and know what they are under an electron microscope (or could they? when was that invented anyway??) so how do they know it wasnt something else?
The 1918 pandemic didn't come from bird flu in Asia, as most ordinary human flu does. It actually originated in Kansas and the source could have been either bird flu or swine flu from domestic animals. So American soldiers spread it to Europe, not the other way around (although a later second and third wave of mutated flu virus did come from Europe to the U.S.)

You don't need an electron miscroscope to see flu virus. The optical microscopes available in 1918 could do that. There was no question that a flu virus caused the pandemic.

[joni1]

Studies at the genetic level further determined that the virus had jumped directly from birds to humans. An outbreak of highly pathogenic H7N7 avian influenza, which began in the Netherlands in February 2003, caused the death of lots of persons , and mild illness in 83 other humans. these are some information these are very important to be allert humans for more see- http://www.drugdelivery.ca/bird-flu.aspx you can collect more information.

[lil_prepper]

Sorry to burst all of your anti-hiding-in-caves bubbles but the bird flu IS very serious. It is up to a 62% death rate, meaning if you get it there is a 62% chance that you will die. I forget who said it, but it was along the lines of "the media makes things sound so much more serious than they are" which is almost laughable in this case. The media is hiding dramatic amounts of information and WILL wait to tell us all the actual truth until it is too late. This isn't my opinion either. It is hundreds and hundreds of people who are actually informed of the bird flu.

For those of you interested in prepping (preparing for the bird flu pandemic that WILL happen) you should definitely check out these links:
http://www.newfluwikie2.com
and
http://web.mac.com/monotreme1/iWeb/Pandemic%20Influenza%20Information/PFI_Main.html

Good luck to all. I'll be over here proudly hiding in my own cave. :)

Okay I see now that the thread has turned around. I just read the first page when I posted that last message. Very cool to see it discussed by people who actually know stuff about it now.


To me it's amusing and revealing of human nature that many people have reacted to the bird flu threat in one of two ways. They either panic or pooh-pooh the threat as nonsense.

Both reactions are irrational. There is absolutely no reason to panic. The public health system is moving swiftly to deal with the possibility of a pandemic. All a person has to do is stay informed about preventive measures and where to go for treatment if they are infected.

Those who ridicule the threat as a conspiracy by the media, the government, the pharmaceutical industry etc. simply don't want to believe anything as horrendous as 1918 could happen again. This amounts to whistling while walking past the cemetery so one won't hear the ghosts. It would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerously naive.

I do agree with alot of this, especially the last paragraph. But the second paragraph is partially wrong. The WHO isn't gonna do anything. No organization can keep millions of people alive for months at a time when they all are screaming for food, shelter, light, etc.

Just look at Katrina. They didn't do **** to help all those people and this is gonna be ten THOUSAND times worse.