Asian flu Pandemic

[NewBie]

There's no reason to play Chicken little, however the comfort derived from thinking it doesn't suit an organism to kill the host is almost ascribing intelligence to these bugs. It's simply the process of selection. The longer a virus has to mutate the more likely it will end up more benign in some form; however there continues to be deadlier mutations as well. It's just that these are less likely to survive. Unlike HIV there won't likely be the timeline required for this to happen during an outbreak.

They aren't "designed" with long term survival in mind, so they can be very virulent from the outset and perhaps kill their host so quickly they die in bed. Others will keep the host alive long enough to spread. The question is with the mobile society that now spans the globe; how long does a host have to survive to spread disease? The answer today is not very long at all.

300 million is a very conservative number at 5% of the global population. I would suggest this is nowhere near a worst case scenario if viewed from historic events. Plagues have reduced populations by 1/3 before and have even wiped out entire regions. We want to somehow feel we are now better off than we were in those times. Our technology will only assist us if we are using it to our advantage. One thing is for certain; our technology is going to assist these bugs by rapidly disseminating them throughout the globe if given the opportunity. During previous plagues the average person only traveled 7 miles in their life times. The average American must travel at least 7,000 miles today.

I can say I've logged over 500,000 miles via vehicles I personally drove, significant additional miles with others driving, and have also done alot of air travel. Not sure if I am abnormal or what...

 

[cy]

IMHO there isn't a vaccine yet as the potential pandemic virus isn't here yet ...
bernie

"A hybrid vaccine virus has already been produced that could immunise people against the H5N1 bird flu virus. But manufacturers can't make enough of it. Production capacity will not significantly increase any time soon, beyond a few new plants already under construction in Europe, and with the equipment available they can make only a few kilograms of the viral protein that forms the basis of the vaccine. If each dose contains 15 micrograms (ìg) of viral protein, as in vaccines against ordinary flu, that's enough for no more than 900 million doses of vaccine over a normal six-month production cycle (New Scientist, 28 February 2004, p 36)"

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825215.900

A strain of the H5N1 flu virus that resists the antiviral drug Tamiflu has been analysed by scientists. Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, is expected to be almost the only defense against the virus in the early stages of any H5N1 pandemic.

"But New Scientist can reveal that this discovery does not mean the drug will become useless. The mutation that made the virus resistant is already well known in ordinary human flu, and it seems to make both ordinary flu - and now H5N1 - less able to cause further infections."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8160

Deadly Asian bird flu has reach Europe

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/bird-flu

 

[Lightmeup]

I don't think Bush could use any federal military troops to quarantine anything without first declaring martial law. And that obviously hasn't happened yet. I believe state and local health departments can impose quarantines if needed.

 

[DarkLight]

My opinion is this is the warning for when this strikes this year..

Keep a weeks worth of food at home at all times, when it strikes...STAY HOME.

 

[bykfixer]

And then there was covid……

It's kinda strange how quickly we forgot about the bird flu yet due to said bird flu things were somewhat already in place for the next deadliest virus of all time.

Some would argue we were not prepared, and in some ways that was true. But on paper there was a plan. And had it not been for said plan on paper and some of the just in case research that took place it could be we are still waiting on a shot, and other treatments that we now have.

Just sayin'.

 

[Poppy]

Fortunately medical knowledge has grown exponentially. In 2010 it was estimated to double in 3-5 years, and in 2020, 73 days!

 

[turbodog]

Fortunately medical knowledge has grown exponentially. In 2010 it was estimated to double in 3-5 years, and in 2020, 73 days!

The lesser obvious part of this is:

All knowledge is growing, not just medical. Even a sharp, educated person can't keep up with it all. So therefore, people are becoming less and less aware about the state of everything. This leads to needing to identify _sources_ of reliable assessments of information, or trust.

 

[jtr1962]

The lesser obvious part of this is:

All knowledge is growing, not just medical. Even a sharp, educated person can't keep up with it all. So therefore, people are becoming less and less aware about the state of everything. This leads to needing to identify _sources_ of reliable assessments of information, or trust.

Also, better science education in this country is sorely needed. It's great that modern medicine can develop vaccines in record time. It's also great to have other mitigation measures which reduce the spread until the vaccines are ready. But the effectiveness of all these things is dramatically reduced when you have massive non-compliance among the population. Asian countries didn't seem to have this problem. They also tend to be a lot bigger on STEM education.