"Next flu pandemic could wreak global havoc, scientists warn"

Mon Dec 1, 8:10 AM ET
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY

The warning sirens are screaming: A deadly, contagious strain of flu will emerge, possibly soon, flu experts say, and the world is not ready to deal with it.

Pandemic influenza occurs periodically throughout history, causing widespread illness and death, overwhelming medical systems and wreaking chaos in societies. These viruses are highly contagious, and because they are new, no one is immune.

Influenza is serious enough, killing an average of 36,000 people in the USA every year, but because it is caused by strains of the virus that are known to be circulating in the world, vaccines can be prepared to prevent it. This year, a strain that doesn't match up exactly with those in the vaccine has emerged and raised serious concerns, but experts believe the vaccine will still offer some protection.

Using current technologies, it takes as long as six months to create flu vaccines.

"The world will be in deep trouble if the impending influenza pandemic strikes this week, this month, or even this year," write international flu experts Richard Webby and Robert Webster of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.

Our current healthcare system can't handle it either, not to mention the uninsured. Are we ready??

and trot out th 1918 flu epidemic...when there was nothing whatever to combat any kind of flu.

Must be angling for grants.

if they are pushing the issue to cover up a possible "biological experiment"...I know, I know, tinfoil hat...but I wouldn't put it past them.

What happens when you get something with the deadliness of SARS but the spreadability of the flu?

Sure, they might be fishing for grant money, but the threat is pretty damn real.

When 36,000 people die each year in the US from flu related symtoms, it certainly make sense to do research. Especially if a desease can become pandemic and potentially kill millions worldwide. Research sounds logical to me.

Just to be clear, the 1918 flu epidemic killed between 20 and 40 MILLION people worldwide. An estimated 675,000 Americans died. Let

Let's look at that number again: 675,000. The US population was 103,208,000 at the time, so this flu wiped out 0.65% of the population with a mortality rate of 2.5%. 0.65% of today's population of 292,737,000 is 1.9 million people (!). AIDS has killed about 475,000 in the US over 20 years.

There is no way on earth our health care system could adequately cope with such a disease, and while modern medicine would surely reduce the mortality rate (well, depending on the virility of the disease), deaths could easily hit in the hundreds of thousands in the US alone, esp. among urban populations.

So, yeah, they "trot out" the 1918 epidemic every year because the potential for it to happen is real, and the consequences would be horrific with major impacts on the nation and the world. Angling for grants? I doubt it.

Flu is serious. In recent years, our medical system has become LESS able to handle such a pandemic. The Bushista priorities just don't make room for either adequate prevention (e.g., funding research on an effective vaccine RIGHT NOW) or treatment. The good news: the 1918 flu may have gotten its start in the WWI trenches, where it could spread in a particularly-deadly form. Despite the wars, famines, and poverty in the world, the same conditions do not exist today; and public hygiene is somewhat better in the developed world. On the other hand, air traffic makes for a world in which flu can spread much-more quickly and easily.

How do you research a strain of flu that does not exist yet? Not only that, don't get the vacination tinfoilers revved up or this thread will be here forever.

It sounds like they would like to come up with an effective way to make a vacine faster, so when a new strain of flu was found then they could start production on the virus.

link and part of the article from USA Today...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=676&e=9&u=/usatoday/20031201/ts_usatoday/12043541

In an article in Friday's Science, they argue that new methods to produce flu vaccines rapidly are known, but have not yet been tested. "What's necessary is to do trial runs and demonstrate these (new vaccines) are safe," Webster said during a press briefing.


Also needed is a stockpile of anti-viral drugs that can be used to treat or prevent the spread of flu. Current supplies would last only days in a pandemic, Webster said, "but no country has yet invested in stockpiling."


It was international flu surveillance that helped alert the world to SARS (news - web sites) this past spring.


In addition to new vaccine technologies and anti-flu drugs, he says, "you need the best surveillance possible, particularly in places where you think a virus might emerge."


It has been more than 30 years since the last pandemic, and "we're overdue," Webster says.


"Flu keeps knocking on the door. We've seen enough incidences over the past three or four years to make us very alarmed."

Aside from the other possibilities listed an easy way to prepare is to stockpile antiviral medicines. That is not happening, but why bother when the people who need them will get them, right?

There are those of us who think it is worthwhile to protect the whole population and not just those who are incredibly rich and well connected. That idea, to protect not only the extremely privileged, is very much out of fashion these days, but we can wish for it anyway.

so the bodies were stacked outside funeral homes. It struck and killed its victims at the prime of their lives. People who were well enough to enter a subway died before their destination, with pink foam coming from their mouths. When it was over it was treated like a nightmare, people couldn’t bare to dwell on the horror.

It isn’t a scare tactic; we really haven’t learned that much. It could very well happen again.

Flu pandemics have wiped out tens, perhaps hundreds of millions at a time in the past. Much of the world still lives at the same primitive level of no health care. And increasingly, so do U.S. citizens.

Until the annual outbreak gets going, they don't know its virulence and scope.

Until such time, it's better for epidemiologists to exercise caution, and rightly so.

And, yes, a true 1918-style pandemic is always at least a possibility. Drugs and medical treatment are better today than back then (at least inthe developed world), but with three times the global population, you're also looking at faster spread rates and higher caseloads.

Too bad the nearly one trillion dollar pHrm industry can't find time to kick some capital towards this problem.
(I'm sure they have a press release stating that they invest .04% of their profits a year into influenza pandemics)

..but anti-depressants and erectile dysfunction are important too I suppose...Let's let that terribly efficient gov't research funding system tackle this one.

This industry and its investors are immoral basically

<http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/flu/weekly.htm>

Quite a bit of information on this page.

The flu is widespread in Texas but there are no reports in Louisiana? Could this have something to do with reporting and testing in impoverished states? Naw, anyway even if that’s it, who gives a shit about a bunch of poor Democrats anyway, let them get the flu.

Apparently you were not made aware of the virus-proof barrier between Texas and Louisianna.

None of the thousands of folks who drive over to Bossier City or Shreveport to play some blackjack every weekend have the virus. Because they couldn't get thru the virus-proof barrier you see.

Seriously, just more proof that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. No doubt everyone involved in collecting and presenting that data are well-intentioned, but that doesn't begin to make the results accurate.

that Louisiana didn't provide any info to the CDC. "No Activity" (yellow) would imply that a state filed a report stating they had no reported cases.

... correct. :)

no idea why, though. You notice Missouri's in the same boat.

Thanks in advance...

I just went back to Yahoo news where I found it and it wasn't there. I did a search for Flu Epidemic and I could only find articles about the flu in France and the flu in general.

Why would it disappear like that?

I'm still waiting for that Rage shit to break loose. I've got my machete ready.

:(

have health care.

find the original that I posted.
http://drkoop.com/template.asp?page=newsdetail&ap=93&id=516258

Also, I thought this bit of the article was interested - I am not the only one who considered bioterrorism:

"Webster pushed the case even further. "Influenza can be a bioterrorism agent of the very worst kind, a natural bioterrorist agent and how do we prepare for those things? We stockpile," he said. "Authorities have to think about doing so."

The cost of several billion dollars, Webster added, should not be a deterrent. "Isn't the health of the nation and the world worth a few billion dollars?"

To date, no country has invested in stockpiling these antivirals. "They've talked about it but talking doesn't get you there," Webster said.

Officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to questions.

Story link....

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=676&e=9&u=/usatoday/20031201/ts_usatoday/12043541


link to a yahoo page that has numerous links to other sites regarding the flu....

http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=Health&cat=Influenza

has spooked the epidemiologists and health care folks.
and rightfully so perhaps.

First the SARS thing, now this nasty flu. If SARS comes back, as most of us expect, a tandem epidemic with this fuji flu could be very nasty.

Here's a link to some very nice sim projections:
http://www.cdc.gov//ncidod/eid/vol5no5/meltzer.htm

I believe that was the phrase used in the
"Rebuilding America's Defenses" PNACZI document.
They were referring to the development and use of
genetic specific biochemical weapons.
Flu?
Maybe...OR maybe government/pharma cartel orchestrated
genocide.
I vote door number two these days.

BHN

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/050303Madsen/050303madsen.html

"Considering Dr. DaSilva's warnings about
bio-economic warfare, the world should be
on guard against a deliberate policy by the
right-wing elements that populate the Bush
administration to use bio-weapons to punish
countries for failure to cooperate with the
United States."

don't trust the BFEE

and keep both eyes on the WHO

wage biological warfare gives me the creeps. Face it, this stuff is in the WRONG hands.

start dying off in droves. ;0

with these bastards they'll use anything for control and fear

and Captain Trips

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/filmmore/transcript/index.html

I saw this a few years ago when it aired on a local PBS station.

It makes me look at the old war memorials (To WW1 dead) you see in so many small towns differently. My paternal grandmother almost died of it as a little girl and she told me that it more or less destroyed the little town her family lived in at the time.

There's a book (Actually several) that came out in the last three years or so by someone who was involved in the attempt in the '90's to unearth the remains of an inuit tribe that was wiped-up to the last member by the Flu that year. The bodies are in permafrost and a group of scientists wanted to find the 1918 virus intact for study. There were some pretty violent demonstrations about it (Not letting it happen) in that part of Canada when the dig was anounced.

Anyway, it's a terrific read.

according to www.usatoday.com/news/health (includes "RSV" a related illness). I fear some kind of US public health emergency will overwelm errupt and overwelm us. It makes more sense than any other future possibility.

The human appetitie for pig flesh is the cause of influenza. Avian flu is excreted from the bird, usually wild ducks, with no harm to the bird.
The virus then contaminates hogs through feces and contaminated water. The hog is the resevoir. The virus then moves from the hog to the human. This is especially true in Asia where there are huge open-air hog pens. (Hence Fuji, Asian, Hong Kong flu etc). Genetic reassortment can occur when an avian infected hog also acquires another strain from human pig farmers. The two strains can reassort into one for which there is no vaccine. A very nasty combination.
Eliminate the consumption of hog meat and the problem becomes very small. But it is unlikely that humans would give up bacon, even if it were to save their own lives.

More:

Pigs serve as a major reservoirs of H1N1 and H3N2 influenza viruses which are endemic in pig populations worldwide and are responsible for one of the most prevalent respiratory diseases in pigs. The maintenance of these viruses in pigs and the frequent exchange of viruses between pigs and other species is facilitated directly by swine husbandry practices which provide for a continual supply of susceptible pigs which have regular contact with other species particularly humans.Ê The pig has the role of intermediate host for reassortment of influenza A viruses of avian and human origin since they are the only mammalian species which are domesticated, reared in abundance and are susceptible to, and allow productive replication, of avian and human influenza viruses. This leads to the generation of new strains of influenza some of which transmit to humans.

Interesting. But couldn't one also argue that more sanitary pig husbandry will help deal with the problem too? As you point out, a lot of the flus originate in Asia. There is also massive swine production here in the States but I don't recall any new strains originating here... :shrug:

I remember reading awhile ago that pigs & humans diverged in our evolutionary paths when a virus infected our common ancestor. The human line fought off this virus, while the pig line absorbed it into its DNA. The article was talking about animal-to-human organ transplants, and explained why humans universally reject pig organs because of that.

Science is so damn cool.

but we are not. Why? We have the means to do so. Questions posed by journalists to various health agencies in this country have not been answered. I mentioned this in the original post, but it has been deleted for some reason.

Check out this article from the UK telegraph:

"In the face of a pandemic, the available supplies of antiviral drugs would be used up in days," Prof Webster says. "It would take up to 18 months to make more drugs from scratch. Stockpiling is the only answer."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2003/12/03/wflu28.xml&sSheet=/health/2003/12/03/ixhmain.html

I don't really know, but it has been only recently that we've been able to think about treating a virus at all.