H5N1: Bird flu or schmird flu?

[CSeaSee]

With the bird flu finally getting some serious press time, how serious are people really taking this thing? Although the H5N1 virus still cannot pass from one person to another, this is most likely just a matter of time. Once it can be transmitted person-to-person, which may or may not be this year, will a quarantine really be effective? Every virus has an incubation period, and some people won't know they've been infected for a few days.
Bush is proposing to use the military to enforce a quarantine? I just can't see how that's going to work. I can see if the strain is so virulent that it can't spead and dies out, the progression could be halted, but the only thing that could be really effective is a vaccine... and how would that be instituted? Would the lower class get pushed to the curb because they can't afford health care? It just seems that everyone's on the hamster wheel running as fast as they can, but nothing significant is being done. Hmm... this sounds like a job for FEMA!

[Ninong]

I agree that this is a much more serious threat than most people realize. The U.S. is not even doing as much as other less wealthy countries to prepare for this catastrophe.

I believe the vaccine, which is supposedly very effective, requires somewhere between 6 - 12 shots. And it takes months to cultivate the vaccine. Unfortunately we outsource our flu vaccine production to other countries, most notably the U.K. That's why we had a shortage last year of regular flu vaccine when one of the U.K. facilities was shut down due to contamination.

As you probably know, since you started this thread, the 1918 so-called Spanish Influenza was an avian virus. This was only recently determined after testing lung tissue samples from an exhumed corpse in Alaska's permafrost region and tissue samples preserved by the military from World War I. What makes an avian virus so deadly, once it mutates to enable human to human transmission, is that we have no built up immunity to it. Right now I believe all of the reported cases involve bird to human infection. The CDC expects this virus to attain human to human transmission sometime within the next year, possibly within the next few months.

I am very familiar with the 1918 flu pandemic because both of my maternal grandparents died within 12 hours of each other from it. Both were in their early 30's and both died within a week after coming down with symptoms. Your lungs fill with fluid and you essentially drown. It is difficult to say exactly how many people died during that pandemic but the low estimate is 25 million. That estimate does not include China, India or any of the other developing countries that did not keep statistics. Including those countries would bring the minimum estimate up to 50 million. Some experts place the high end estimate at 100 million.

It's impossible to predict how many people might die in a new avian flu pandemic. There are so many factors that are different today. For one thing, we have probably four or five times as many people living on the planet now and we are in much closer contact thanks to air travel, etc. The big unknown is whether governments will be able to meet this challenge effectively with a vaccine and other measures. If you use FEMA's effectiveness at handling hurricanes as your guideline to the effectiveness of government programs, you might decide to lock yourself in your house and not come out until next spring.

If the virus jumps to human to human transmission before we (meaning the world community) are prepared, total losses could run anywhere from 100 million to 300 million.

[Poseidon]

So even today, some 80+ years later we still don't have an antibiotic or other treatment for a virus that killed so many...

(I know Anti Biotics aren't effective against virus, but geesh there HAS TO be something!)

[almostdiva]

Antivirals... which we are late in stocking up on. We are also late in reserving doses of vaccine, behind other EU countries that planned better and already lined up and paid for flu vaccine in an effort to minimize any outbreak.

To imagine what COULD happen.... just think back to the SARS epidemic and multiply it by a LOT.

Oh, and by the way -- it was announced this morning that the Dept of Homeland Security (now home of FEMA) will the the lead agency in all efforts pertaining to Avian flu.

YIPEE!

[Ninong]

So even today, some 80+ years later we still don't have an antibiotic or other treatment for a virus that killed so many...

(I know Anti Biotics aren't effective against virus, but geesh there HAS TO be something!)

There is something: a vaccine made from the virus itself. It's in production now. It is expected to be highly effective. But there won't be enough of it. And there is almost no way they can make enough of it. Another complication is that in order to make the most effective vaccine, you have to wait for the virus to mutate into its latest form and use it to manufacture a new vaccine.

[CSeaSee]

So as usual, we lose the game of hot potato. Antivirals are a very interesting remedy, but go figure, there isn't enough. The epidemiology of the bird flu is going to be interesting to track. I wonder what all of our wonderful elected officials in washington are doing to make sure that they and their families are protected. That could certainly be an intersting scenario... with so many politicians getting sick, nothing would get done! oh, wait a sec...nothing gets done anyways

[CSeaSee]

This is probably closer to the truth than we'd like to think...
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/41921
*There is one PG-13 word in the linked site*

[Samper]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9883713/

[Ninong]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9883713/

A good move but probably too little and too late.

Why is it that we have enough Tamiflu for only 1% of our population, yet Britain has enough for 25% of its population and France has enough for 20%???

Hopefully we will have enough for all of our military. They should come first, followed by all health care providers and then public safety employees such as police and fire fighters.

Tamiflu is the best defense against the spread of the virus once it mutates into a form that can be spread from human to human. At least that's what we hope. We can't be certain until after the virus completes it's next mutation. Right now it only spreads from animals (birds & pigs) to humans. Once it has mutated into a form capable of human to human transmission, then we can begin to produce a vaccine. That will take a minimum of 6 months and probably at least 18 months to produce enough to vaccinate a sizeable percentage of the world's population. By that time it will be too late.

[mungus]

There is a really good special on PBS about the avian flu. It really shows you how ill prepared we are for it. It also show how people in vietnam and surrounding areas live and the things they are doing that are putting us all at risk. In a few of the villages they had doctors come through to teach these people how to help stop the spread of the virus. (Such as don't eat sick birds, don't eat raw birds or birds blood, no free roaming birds.) When the returned to some of the villiages the people were not listening to warnings. At one point they had a guy on telling how he was hiding his birds in cardboard boxes so they wouldn't find them when they came through to kill birds they felt could be carriers. They also had a case where they were thinking the flu had already jumped from human to human. (not proven though) One of the doctors that was working on a flu victim came down with the flu. He said that he did not have any exposure to birds.

[Ninong]

Bush's 7.1 billion dollar strategy
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9883713/

Remember this from President Bush:

Now, all the steps I've outlined today require immediate resources. Because a pandemic could strike at any time, we can't waste time in preparing. So to meet all our goals, I'm requesting a total of $7.1 billion in emergency funding from the United States Congress. By making critical investments today, we'll strengthen our ability to safeguard the American people in the awful event of a devastating global pandemic...

The Republicans in the House refused to fund it this past Thursday! They don't think it's an emergency and they prefer to wait.

Probably has something to do with the fact that many of them don't believe in evolution and therefore cannot accept the possibility that bacteria and viruses are capable of change. Maybe if a few of them come down with MDR TB they will change their minds.

I think if you believe in "Intelligent Design" you would be allowed to believe that God makes new things every now and then, right? Maybe God said, "I think I'll make Me a lemur today. No wait, better yet, I'll make a new flu virus to cut back on all that fruitful multiplying and subduing of the earth that those people have been doing down there."

[peterkanton]

I know this kind of a very old thread.

I was reading an interesting article on bird flu. I want to share it with you all.
New Weapon May Help Battle Bird Flu

New Weapon May Help Battle Bird Flu | Caring.com

Peter

[Ninong]

T-705 looks like it might be a promising addition to the present arsenal of weapons to combat all of the various strains of influenza, including both H5N1 and H1N1.

[returnofsid]

The shortage in the flue vaccine, last year, wasn't mainly about our outsourcing it. It was because of a shortage of chicken eggs, used to grow the vaccine. This is also why the Swine Flu vaccines were slow in coming out. The cultures grew slower than predicted, they had to wait for the regular flu vaccines to reach maturity AND there was a shortage of chicken eggs.

[Ninong]

The shortage in the flue vaccine, last year, wasn't mainly about our outsourcing it. It was because of a shortage of chicken eggs, used to grow the vaccine. This is also why the Swine Flu vaccines were slow in coming out. The cultures grew slower than predicted, they had to wait for the regular flu vaccines to reach maturity AND there was a shortage of chicken eggs.

This is not a thread about the current H1N1 pandemic. This is a thread from 2005 discussing H5N1, avian flu. Avian flu, unlike swine flu, is not easily transmitted from human to human because it incubates in the intestinal tract instead of the respiratory tract. Unfortunately the morbidity rate with avian flu is extremely high -- approximately 40% of all known cases in humans resulted in death. It's also possible that there actually were milder cases that were not diagnosed but the statistics based on known cases were absolutely terrifying.

The current strain of H1N1, swine flu, is a pussycat compared to avian flu but it spreads VERY easily through droplets coughed or sneezed out. However, even though only a small percentage of 2009 H1N1 cases resulted in death, because there were/are millions of cases, the death toll worldwide is extremely high compared to avian flu. And there is always the possibility that H1N1 will come back much stronger next year. That's exactly what the 1918-1919 so-called Spanish Flu did.

Anyway, this thread is about avian flu and it's five years old. It has nothing to do with swine flu.