Bird Flu Pandemic

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This is one nasty virus. It's current mortality rate is around 70%, which puts it on par with hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola and Marburg. Maybe it wouldn't be that high in developed countries, but that is still a scary stat for a disease that is airborne.
 
Deadly bird flu strain confirmed in Turkey
Virus also detected in Romania; EU bans import, calls emergency meeting




Updated: 11:01 a.m. ET Oct. 13, 2005



BRUSSELS, Belgium - Turkey has the type of bird flu dangerous to humans and European authorities are working on the assumption that cases discovered in Romania are of the same strain, the European Union’s health chief said on Thursday.

His comments were the first official confirmation that the potentially lethal virus, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003, has now reached southeastern Europe.

“The virus found in Turkey is avian flu H5N1 high pathogenic virus,” EU Health and Consumer Protection chief Markos Kyprianou told a news conference.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9674377/
 
Like STING posted: The shit bird flu is in Turkey now. It also has been found in Romania, in the danube delta. from there the birds fly off all around Europe. The EU is thinking of forbidding dem chicken to go outside now.

Dunno, but it gives me a creepy feeling. And there is no vaccination? Wasn´t there talks 2 weeks ago that there was vaccination, but just not enough of it?
 
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I have an ambivalent attitude to this eventual catastrophe. I think it will happen in the near future, but I'm not going to worry about it because there ain't much you can do about it. This is nature at it's most powerful, a genetic cull of society. That sounded cruel and heartless but disease is a consequence of living in a global village.

hiphop, I think you are talking about Tamiflu medication which is made in a single factory in Switzerland ( not sure). I don't think it is a specific vaccine but apparently it is one of the best treatments available. Unfortunately, they are the only ones who supply it and everyone and their butcher is trying to get their hands on it.

Cover story of this months National Geographic is about : The Next Killer Flu
I just picked it up today.
 
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In Italy, the percentage of selling of chicken meal went down of almost 40%.

And the worst thing is that there's really little information about this possible pandemic
 
I have to wonder how this outbreak would be dealt with in the developed world. Everytime I think about this I see "bring out yer dead" images, so it's weird to consider it in the context of SUVs and iPods.

Who wants to place bets on which country will confirm it next? (Romania being the last one)

god i hope it doesnt come this winter :no:
 
I hope everything will be alright, but I am scared of how things could go.
In particular, I am scared that this epidemic could go like it was for Sars some time ago... with people denying the emergency while people were dying :sad: :sad: :sad:
 
I was watching tv tonight... there were 4 or 5 ads regarding "italian chicken" that we can consider "safe".

Dunno what to think about it...
 
I'm boosting this thread because I think it's one of the most important things we should be talking about. Last week's possible human-to-human transmissions in Indonesia, resulting in the deaths of 8 family members, is a new concern, the fact that at least 1 case has been reported in Iraq and we have soldiers returning home all the time, and the fact that the Secretary of Health & Human Services, Michael Leavitt, is going state-to-state urging people to begin preparations, is all a huge concern to me. I disagree that there is nothing we can do. There is a hell of a lot we can do, from preparing our own homes to contacting our state reps to find out how prepared we are locally to respond.

Here are some websites I've been checking for info and welcome all other suggestions for sources of good info:

http://www.pandemicinfosite.com/
Read Leavitt's entire speech from New Hampshire on "We're overdue for a pandemic"--has fascinating info from the 1918 pandemic

http://online.wsj.com/public/articl....html?mod=blogs
Wall Street Journal's hour-by-hour updates on what's happening

http://www.fluwikie.com/
has a huge list of how to prepare

http://www.effectmeasure.blogspot.com/
a great blog written anonymously by apparently well-known doctors who are all over this thing and are saying wake up and smell the Indonesian coffee

http://newsnow.co.uk/newsfeed/?name=Bird+Flu
great UK site culling bird flu reports from all over the world.
 
I rarely watch the Oprah Winfrey show, but did tune in today because the topic was the bird flu. The expert guest painted a pretty bleak picture of what would happen if a pandemic did break out, but nothing I didn't already know. Oprah does have a pretty big national audience, so hopefully today's show will make others aware that the possibility of a pandemic is very real and something that should be paid more attention to.

Not to make light of this, but I hope everyone realizes that if this pandemic does break out in the next several months, and let's hope to God it doesn't, you can forget about seeing U2 in Australia, Japan or Hawaii in December. Large public gatherings like concerts or sporting events would be likely prohibited, and I doubt that band would even risk travelling anywhere under those circumstances. I remember reading somewhere that Australia already has plans to immediately keep out all incoming international flights if and when a pandemic starts.
 
Unfortunately while we can do certain things to prepare as individuals, this is really a government/state matter that must be dealt with on that level. Both from the development of the vaccine, to stocking anti-virals, to the way that primary health care workers respond. If there is a pandemic, the mortality rate will be determined largely on the basis of their state of preparedness.
 
Interestingly this past Saturday the Toronto Star had an entire special interest section devoted to disaster preparedness including supply and equipment lists and how to deal with quickie evacuations.

Even during the SARS outbreak and quarantines I don't remember seeing this type of information in the mainstream.

I remember seeing the Oprah show a few months back. The thing I remember most was the CDC guy describing the domino effect of shutting down borders...not only shut to people but to imported/exported goods and domestic distribution channels grinding to a halt. We've become so globally fluid and dependent on trade and JIT inventories that you've got to wonder how self-sufficient any one first-world country can be for any length of time these days.

Combine that with people potentially quarantined or otherwise afraid to leave home for weeks and weeks at a time and it wouldn't take much for a public health emergency to trigger a serious economic meltdown with global proportions.
 
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Well we have to be smart about evacuations and things like that.

IMO, college campuses are one of the most obvious breeding grounds. As it is, statistics show that the rates of acquiring meningitis are 6x the normal rate in college housing. If there is an outbreak, this is going to be a big problem for two reasons. First, because there is a large enough population which helps the spread. Second, because young people are generally healthier, it's likely that the more resistant/dangerous strains will take hold here than say, in a nursing home where you will have large numbers succumbing anyway.

IMO, this is what you shut down right off the bat at the outbreak of a pandemic.
 
What's really a mindfuck to me is that they're saying that the people who are most vulnerable to this particular virus are those with healthy immune systems. I understand this a little bit in terms of my own experience--I am sort of a health freak and have built up a really strong immune system. As a result, this year I started to get weird autoimmune things like eczema that I've never had before in my life. Can you explain this a little bit anitram? For me to not continue building up my immune system in the face of a possible (probable, actually) bird flu pandemic is so counterintuitive that it freaks me out.

I did watch the Oprah rerun tonight and one of the things that struck me most was when this guy said that basically the setup for a pandemic is so clear he doesn't know what can stop it from happening.
 
Well define health-freak? Do you get dirty and exposed to as much grit as possible in your day to day life or do you try to stay clean.

Just a point, the risk of the virus becoming more dangerous when spreading among healthy populations is a great illustration of natural selection ~ the stronger immune systems will remove all but the most virulent strains, those leftover ones will be the ones that propogate.

Should worst come to worse just lock yourself in your room with tinned food for a year :wink:
 
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A_Wanderer said:
Well define health-freak? Do you get dirty and exposed to as much grit as possible in your day to day life or do you try to stay clean.

Just a point, the risk of the virus becoming more dangerous when spreading among healthy populations is a great illustration of natural selection ~ the stronger immune systems will remove all but the most virulent strains, those leftover ones will be the ones that propogate.
Click to expand...

I am not afraid of getting dirty but I wash my hands a lot, I take a lot of supplements, I work with a nutritionist, I exercise nearly everyday, I read labels on foods and avoid the things I know are bad like hydrogenated oils, I make smart food choices but am not afraid of the occasional bag of chips or ice cream or joint or whatever, I just try to be balanced about it, I don't drink soft drinks or eat fast food (maybe like once or twice a year), and I buy organic when I can. But it's the supplements I take that have really boosted my immune system to the point where I travel by air between 2-4 times per month and was surrounded by sick colleagues all through the winter and never even got a sniffle. I haven't been sick since April 2005 after waiting to see U2 in the cold, wind, rain and hail, and before that it had been a long time since I'd been sick.

So should I stop all that and start eating junk food, lol?
 
What all this reminds me of is how extremely fragile this thing we call life is, on both the micro and macro scale. I'm also struck by how dependent we've become on things beyond our ability to really control or manage--we are deeply dependent on the "systems" in our world working as they should. If these "systems" ever break down. . .we're going to have a mess.

And people like me, who live on small remote Pacific Islands are in even more trouble. I can't imagine what would happen here if there was shut down of world trade etc due to bird flu or something like that. This island can not function without those flights in and out, and the containers coming in. (Actually, I can imagine it. . .I've been working on a novel about something like that happening and I'm beginning to freak myself out!)
 
^ Yes, you're right about how dependent we are on systems. In that way people in 1918 probably faired better than we are prepared to. My friends and I are seriously contemplating this whole thing and trying to prepare ourselves as best we can. We figure preparations can never be a waste. After what we saw with hurricane Katrina here in the states and what we've seen in other parts of the world with various disasters, I don't think preparedness can be overestimated. At the same time, we realize there is only but so much we can do and in the end, as anitram said, so much depends on how well we are prepared for anything on a local level. Knowing that if a pandemic strikes it is up to each state to handle it means that we here in NM are pretty much on our own.

:hug: maycocksean
 
anitram said:
Well we have to be smart about evacuations and things like that.

IMO, college campuses are one of the most obvious breeding grounds. As it is, statistics show that the rates of acquiring meningitis are 6x the normal rate in college housing. If there is an outbreak, this is going to be a big problem for two reasons. First, because there is a large enough population which helps the spread. Second, because young people are generally healthier, it's likely that the more resistant/dangerous strains will take hold here than say, in a nursing home where you will have large numbers succumbing anyway.

IMO, this is what you shut down right off the bat at the outbreak of a pandemic.
Click to expand...

That would be a good reason to vaccinate this age group first along with health workers...help contain the spread.
 
joyfulgirl said:
What's really a mindfuck to me is that they're saying that the people who are most vulnerable to this particular virus are those with healthy immune systems.
Click to expand...

The H5N1 virus caused proteins known as cytokines to rush to infected lung tissue -- evidence of a so-called cytokine storm, an immune system overreaction that can be fatal.
Click to expand...

So the stronger your immune system (young healthy adults), the stronger and faster the deadly overreaction.
 
AliEnvy said:




So the stronger your immune system (young healthy adults), the stronger and faster the deadly overreaction.
Click to expand...



i haven't been genuinely sick since Thanksgiving of 2000 when some european preschooler gave me a nasty strep throat. i have a spectacular immune system -- the slightest bit of illness, and i have a bunch of water, a tablet of Vitamin C, and the next day, i'm all better.

i'm doomed.

:grumpy:
 
I'm not so sure that people who haven't been sick in a while can safely claim a great immune system on the basis of that alone. A lot of it also has to do with exposure.

For example, when I was at university, I had a bad cold once in 4 years and felt great. When I started working at a pediatric hospital surrounded by SCIDs and kids on chemo who have no immune system and are routinely ravaged by opportunistic pathogens, I picked up everything imaginable. You could compare your immune system with mine and come to the conclusion it's better when in fact it hasn't been challenged even a fraction of the amount. So for those of you who haven't been sick much, I wouldn't panic yet. ;)

The best way to test your immune system is with an array of tests (subclasses levels, total IgG, mitogen and antigen stimulation). Some of these are very specialized and very expensive.
 
actually, i think it was my year long exposure to european strands of colds, flus, and strep that has made me invulnerable to everything -- i spend loads of time on public transportation and work in a big old office and it's still been years.

so i'm doomed. doomed! not even Brangelina's baby can save us.
 
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