US prepares for worst-case scenario with bird flu

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051206/hl_afp/healthusflu_051206001434;_ylt=AtJWA5UX01lld5eSZef1OsKTvyIi;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

"WASHINGTON (AFP) - The federal authorities are preparing to face a possible avian flu pandemic in the United States by contemplating a worst-case scenario, under which more than 92 million people will become ill in the space of four months, US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said." ....


Don't know about the rest of you, But I find this to be some pretty scarey shit. These estimates are based on extrapolations from 1918 Flu data. The 1918 flu is similar genetically to this bird flu. So far about half of bird flu patients have died.

The flu doesn't scare me. What I find disturbing is how I'm responding to the reports of "preparation" by federal authorities. If the Bush government is consistent - and they have been so far on nearly every front - then "preparation" probably involves whipping the public into a frenzy prior to anything happening, and doing little more than posturing when a crisis actually occurs.

We're on our own.

repeat.

We're on our own...

...simply because everything he touches turns to crap.

A brand new favorite nickname.

is being (mis)-managed by Cristina Beato - the "Michael Brown of the MD World" - and is being treated as a Military/Law Enforcement problem, which they argue would justify getting rid of the "Posse Comitatus Act."

to be a USPHS Rear Admiral and run the avian flu program -- I have a Basic EMT Certificate, and "got A's in organic chemistry and Biology and Biochem" -- so even without Medical School -- that should make me a Fleet Admiral (Fleet-pun intended) of the USPHS.

"Beato's doin' a heckuva job!"

In this case, it's Rumsfeld, who owns between $5-$25 million in the Tamiflu vaccine.

"The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it's proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that's now the most-sought after drug in the world."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00036.htm

You have to take it just as symptoms are beginning, it doesn't always work and I understand there are some toxic side effects.

http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=55353&col=82

I got this link while researching the cholesterol debate and came across a forum for those infected with HIV who are using VCO to fight the virus (with success!). One post there also mentioned his LDL DROPPED. Interesting...

A bit from the article:

Human Face : VCO as bird flu remedy?

First posted 04:59am (Mla time) Nov 03, 2005
By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on Page A13 of the November 3, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


NEWS FLASH.

If coconut oil has proven effective for HIV-AIDS cases, it might also be good as a H5N1 (bird flu) remedy. Studies must now be made on the oil's efficacy against this new disease that threatens to become a worldwide epidemic.

This urgent proposal came from Dr. Conrado S. Dayrit who helped make virgin coconut oil (VCO) a popular dietary supplement and medicine here and abroad and helped remove it from the "bad oil" list.

Dayrit, hale and active at 86, is a known pharmacologist, cardiologist, internist, science researcher, author and University of the Philippines professor emeritus. He was former president of the National Academy of Science and Technology, the highest scientific body in the country.

The team Dayrit directed in the early 1990s proved that HIV-AIDS cases responded to coconut oil. The highly promising results are now the bases for continued trials meant to alleviate the suffering of millions of HIV-AIDS patients in many countries, especially those in Africa.

<snip>

Especially since the "plan" laid out by Bushie a couple of weeks ago barely took care of 2% of the population - and we haven't heard anything more on it, so who knows if that's even being put into effect.

In this day and age, that have perhaps assisted in the lack of a pandemic? common things like running water and washing hands HAS to take that number down somewhat! Why did they stop showing those corney 1960's films about Hygiene or why not redo them?.

I constantly have to remind my little one how germs are transmitted not to touch her face if her hands have touched anything else. Schools are petre dishes!

We do have international travel which exposes everyone across the planet to more cooties, but I have to hope that a pair of latex gloves and a little surgical mask can go a long way should their be a break out. *shrug* a stupid hope.. but the drugs will never make it in time to cure 92 million.

Sure, hand-washing is the best way to avoid infectious illness, but influenza is so contagious.

"Schools are petre dishes!"

True. If I was in charge, the first thing I would do upon learning of an outbreak is to close all the schools and all other public meeting places like churches and fraternal orders.

the first thing they do is that. Close all schools. I can't agree with you more.

If you do have to go out in public it should be mandatory latex gloves and the MJ surgical mask (with out the police escort of course)

Right now, it's cheaper than chicken, anyway.

(Sorry - just can't seem to get worked up about bird flu when there are so many worse things happening.)

If a pandemic hits we will wonder why we ever worried about anything else.

but where are most of these people contracting this disease, and dying from it? The NorthWestern hemisphere is far more sanitary than the areas I understand this disease came from.
Is this another SARS scare?
West Nile Virus?
What will be the viral boogyman next year?

...are from SE Asia. They contracted bird flu from close contact with domestic fowl. I don't think sanitary conditions are the issue. What makes a new flu strain so dangerous is the fact that we have no natural resitence to it (unlike the routine flu that hits every year.) Measles is a nuissance to children who get it, but it damn near wiped out the American Indians who had no previous exposure. You can't rely on modern medical institutions. They will be quickly overwhelmed. In 1918, hospitals and morgues were set up in schools, town halls and army tents.

Those in agricultural areas will be particularly at risk since they have the least exposure to numerous people and have the least natural resistance. The virus is bad enough, but the collapse of the infrastructure will make it much worse.

There are media and state created false scares, but it would be wise to heed the lessons of history. The concensus at WHO and similar groups is that infectious disease is the top threat to humanity in this century.

Were there any antibiotics in 1918? No

Were there any flu vaccinations in 1918? No

Yet people still compare 1918 to now. Astounding

Don

not necessarily due to treatments. First, you have to consider the mobility of society- that's spread an pandemic variant so fast that it'll overwhelm most communities health care capacity- score a point for 1918.

Anti-biotics are nice for secondary infections- score a point for 2005.

Effective vaccinations for the breakout variant probably won't be available in quantity until the second wave of the pandemic- if even then. Half point at best for 2005.

Not a great big margin of victory, IMHO.

There aren't many antivirals now. As far as I know there are none for even a routine flu except the aforementioned Tamiflu which is marginal at best.

Viruses are not affected by antibiotics. Period.

It is not yet known whether or not a vaccine can be developed for a disease that does not yet exist in a human to human form. If so, it might be hard to make and distribute 6.3 billion doses. Vaccines are made based on previous incarnations of a disease. This years N. American flu shots are based on what the southern hemisphere got in June and July. That's one reason they are never 100% effective: the bug has changed since then. Human to human 'bird' flu does not yet exist, so there is no past incarnation.

One way in which 1918 is not analogous is the speed at which disease can travel. It took 10 months for the 1918 flu to burn itself out in America because there were few automobiles and the only real way to travel long distances was by rail or ship. Now anyone can fly from any city to any other city in less than a day. What's more is that this traffic is truly global. I figure if a human to human strain breaks out in SE Asia it will be here in a week or less. Once here it will be everywhere in a few days. I have done the math. The CDC's worst case scenario amounts to one in six Americans ending up in the morgue.

Don't be too confident in the power of modern medicine. Our barely adequate system will quickly become irrelevent.

But they sure are good for treating what killed most of the people during the 1918 pandemic. Namely secondary infections such a bacterial pneumonia.

Several vaccines for H5N1 are already being produced and are currently going through trials. They may not be perfect enough to keep someone from getting bird flu but it will be enough to keep people from dying which is just about as good.


H5N1 was first identified in 1959. That was a long time ago. Many wonder why it hasn't become a pandemic already. Some think it lacks the ability. Perhaps they are right.

Don

How do you know they were killed by secondary bacterial infections as opposed to viral pnuemonia?

Right now the virus does lack the ability. It cannot move among humans. The fear is that it will evolve, just as the similar virus did in 1918. With so many cases among fowl, the conditions are ripe for that. Evolution is like trying to throw a perfect Yahtzee of all sixes in one throw (that's five dice). It is nearly impossible. Yet with a billion players throwing at once (or billions of virus units in this case) the impossible becomes inevitable.

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=3805

Panicky people forget that in 1918 antibiotics and antibacterial vaccines that could prevent the deaths caused by secondary infections were still decades away. Panic-purveyors want you to think it doesn't matter. In "The Next Pandemic," her oh-so-spooky Foreign Affairs article this summer, Laurie Garrett declares that while "most strains of the flu do not kill people directly" the Spanish flu "was a direct killer," adding, "Had antibiotics existed, they may not have been much help." She couldn't be more wrong. "Even in 1918, there was a window of opportunity so that if they had had drugs they could have made a major difference," says one of the nation's top virologists, Dr. Frederick G. Hayden of the University of Virginia. "It would have been susceptible to both antibiotics and antivirals." John Barry, in his landmark 2004 Spanish flu book, The Great Influenza, states that without modern drugs "even in the face of this pandemic, doctors could help. They could save lives. If they were good enough, if they had the right resources, if they had the right help, if they had time."

True, no retelling of those horrible days is without anecdotes of apparently healthy young people simply dropping dead, such as the man who boarded the trolley car feeling fine only to leave in the company of the grim reaper. But even these probably didn't die from a direct attack of the virus, writes Barry. Rather, "victims' lungs were being ripped apart . . . from the attack of the immune system on the virus."

That explains in great part why an extraordinary number of young people died – they have stronger immune systems. Another apparent reason is that older people had previously been exposed to related strains and acquired immunity, which also explains why isolated populations of aboriginals were slammed the hardest and often enough wiped out. Further, the virus had incubated where an extremely high number of victims were packed together – namely, young soldiers at the Western Front or en route. There was no black magic about Spanish flu that caused it to pick on the young, as we're often led to believe.

What is more, some of the victims who suddenly dropped dead clearly died of pneumonia caused by secondary bacterial infections. Barry explains: "Often influenza victims seemed to recover, even returned to work, then suddenly collapsed again with bacterial pneumonia." In any case, most people died in the usual fashion of subsequent flu epidemics and pandemics. "Autopsy records from New York City found that most of the deaths {from Spanish flu} occurred at the end of the first week and beginning of the second," the University of Virginia's Hayden told me.

Researchers at Stanford have assembled a website that quotes from the medical journals of the time. The principal danger of an influenza infection was its tendency to progress into the often fatal bacterial infection of pneumonia, according to the British Medical Journal of July 13, 1918. Sick soldiers at Ft. Lewis, Washington, had sputum and other samples taken and grown in the lab. Commonly found bacteria, according to the April 12, 1919, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, were pneumococcus, streptococcus, staphylococcus, and Bacillus influenzae (today called haemophilus influenzae).

Comments the Stanford site, "It was this tendency for secondary complications that made this influenza infection so deadly." Writes Barry, "Most deaths almost certainly did come from secondary bacterial infections." In fact, the bacterial infections were so common that even years after the pandemic, many researchers believed the causative agent was bacterial and not viral.

1918-1919 (Spanish Flu pandemic) ----- 500,000 dead in US

1928 ---------------------------------------- Alexander Fleming Discovers Penicillin

1957-1958 (Asian Flu pandemic) -------- 60,000 dead in US

1968-1969 (Hong Kong Flu pandemic) -- 40,000 dead in US

It may be that the mid-century pandemics were less virulent than the 1918 variety.

There is a direct inverse relationship between the existence of Carribean pirates and rising world temperatures. The proponents of the Flying Spagetti Monster have concluded that global warming is caused by the lack of pirates and have proposed to cure global warming by conducting their religious services in full pirate regalia.

Perhaps it doesn't match some peoples preconceived misconceptions?

Who was it who said ignorance is bliss anyway?

Don

I read it. I don't have anything to add. Still, I am not going to rely on our health care professionals and drug makers who will be overwhelmed.

"Who was it who said ignorance is bliss anyway?"

Dunno. Try http://www.online-literature.com/quotes/quotations.php

Thin the herd.

Doesn't the future look peachy under the * regime?

One-third of the population?

Please, scientists, explain this for me.