Should We Be Worried about Bird Flu?
Man is the only creature that can contemplate, and enjoy the contemplation of, his own extinction. One of the means by which he might disappear from the face of the earth, at least in the imagination of the writers of pulp fiction, is by the development, either by chance or design, of a fast-spreading and fatal new virus against which he has no resistance.
The emergence of bird flu fifteen years ago conjured up visions of a viral Armageddon. It was previously unknown and it was dangerous. It gave rise to the archetypal health scare, that is to say a panic about a remote possibility that was much more frightening than more real, constant but everyday dangers with which we are so familiar that we ignore them.
Bird flu was frightening because the case-fatality rate (the proportion of people who died having contracted the disease) was high and there was no treatment for it. Fortunately, though, its communicability from bird to man was low, and from person to person virtually unknown. According to a recent paper in The Lancet, 344 of 583 people known to have contracted it in the last 15 years died of it, a very tiny absolute number by comparison with the total numbers of deaths in the world during that period.
Is complacency then in order? The problem is that viruses mutate quickly; and theoretically a mutation could take place which permitted the bird flu virus first to spread more easily from bird to man, and then from person to person, in which case there could be a pandemic as large and fatal as that of the Spanish flu in 1918-1919 that killed more people than the First World War.
According to The Lancet, researchers have now genetically-engineered strains of bird flu that can pass easily from ferret to ferret (the animal model often used in flu research) by means of aerosol, that is to say by air exhaled from the lungs. This demonstrates the possibility that a bird flu virus could emerge that would threaten the health of mankind.
The first justification for deliberately engineering a bird flu virus that is easily transmitted from ferret to ferret is that it alerts the world to the potential hazard to public health posed by the virus, thus countering a dangerous complacency about it; the second is that it might aid attempts to produce a vaccine against or a treatment of the illness. But critics argue that the research actually increases the risks of disaster rather than reduces them, either by inadvertence or (if the technique for engineering viruses fell into the wrong hands) by malice.
The scientific journals that were to publish the research were faced with a dilemma. Should they, or should they not, omit information about the technique of engineering the virus? Did freedom trump caution? In the end, they decided to omit the information in the name of safety, but to give it to bona fide researchers who asked for it.
Of course the threat of a pandemic of a new and fatal viral disease would be a very blunt instrument for anyone who wanted to use it, because he could not insure himself or his friends against it. But perhaps there are enough nihilists in the world to make the danger a real one.
How worried, then, should we be by bird flu? I confess that I am not sure. And not knowing how anxious I ought to be makes me… well, anxious.
Please don’t tell me East Anglia has the Hadley BRU (Biomedical Research Unit) next door to their CRU (Climate Research Unit)
Here we go again. The government controlled health researchers are at it again. We were told over the past twenty five years that Americans would all have herpes by the 1990s, that Africa would be depopulated by aids by the 1990s, that all teenagers in the US would have a STD by the late 1990s, the swine flu, mad cow disease, bird flu 1,2 and 3 would wipe us out. What we have here is the manufacturing of fear by the government controllers who then come forth and tell us that only they can save us. This is right out of the 1984 mindset;we must submit to the machine that is the govenment or we will die.
Not to mention that the ferrets are scared shitless.
Here is something to brighten your day:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110607171834.htm
The universal flu vaccine focusses on the unchanging stalk-shaped section common to all flu viruses. I would love to never have the flu again, and I have been greatly sobered by the possibility of a deadly flu pandemic. So faster please with the vaccine!
Should We Be Worried about Bird Flu?
No, worry is a useless exercise. Instead, stock up on Tamiflu, wash your hands frequently, avoid touching your face as much as possible, quit smoking, get to a reasonable weight, and get plenty of rest. Take positive steps instead of simply staring at the abyss. But did you hear about the asteroid that will hit the Earth in 2016?
Tamiflu is an “anti viral” and like antivirals in general must be given at the very outset of a virus.
It really isn’t effective against bird flu, although governments reportedly stocked up during the last scare. (they’ll have to throw their stash away at expiration date, as they had to do when they stockpiled Ciprofloxacin after the anthrax scare)
Our HHS headed up by dominatrix Kathleen (“cough into your elbow”) Sebelius loves to scare the crap out of the population.
I submit they were very disappointed when the last go round when bird flu hysteria didn’t reduce the population to a shambles, create a population desperately beseeching Kathleen and friends to impose martial law or something.
Jacking around with deadly strains in the lab (pity the ferrets and other experimental animals) is sick.
I put the worry of bird flu right up there with that of aliens harvesting my organs…
“Bird flu was frightening because the case-fatality rate (the proportion of people who died having contracted the disease) was high and there was no treatment for it.”
As much as I enjoy panicking over things, I have to say that I’m pretty sure we have not a smidge of an iota of a clue what the real case-fatality rate is. We know what the very-sick-people-who-were-dragged-to-the-hospital fatality rate is. But do we really know how many people contracted it but who did not die or even fall seriously ill? Is it really realistic to believe that the cases that have come to our attention are all there is? Given that the places where bird flu has actually infected humans are not places with great public health infrastructure or the most open of communication, I rather think not.
I used to worry about H1N5 because we seemed to have a pandemic every 100 years or so. Last one was the Spanish Flu about 100 years ago so we were due. Then we had the H1N1 pandemic so we’re cool for awhile.
We are forgetting that when the Spanish flu struck in 1918 there were no anti viral drugs. Second there are no stats on how many people actually died from the flu itself and how many people actually died because of the many “quack” treatments that were applied such injecting people with all kinds noxious substances.
Dead wrong; the majority of deaths concentrated on young people, who had not been previously exposed, and therefore partially protected from the new strain, and the old an ill who succumbed to secondary opportunistic infection. Quack treatments had nothing to do for it.
Be careful what you wish for in terms of a super flu vaccine: purported universal vaccines tend to mutate themselves and turn the majority of the Earth’s population into pseudo-vampires. On the plus side, the provide job security for folks like Charlton Heston (RIP) or, nowadays, Will Smith.
Seriously, has anyone ever read the 1986 Frank Herbert (of “Dune” fame) book “The White Plague?” It’s about an IRA molecular biologist who creates a disease that kills only women–and sets it loose. Horrifying.
Alternative medicine, particularly traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, and homeoopathic medicine, have very successful treatments for the flu. Since conventional physicians (sorry, Dr. Dalrymple) are unlikely to be of much help with this, I suggest that folks do their own research to familiarize themselves with them while the flu is somewhat less nasty. Homeopaths, for instance, had outstanding success with the Spanish flu. http://www.interhomeopathy.org/hydrocyanicum_acidum_and_the_purple_death_1
Since homeopathic treatments usually consist of expensive, distilled water, I’ll give that form of fraudulent quackery a miss, thanks.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion and your choice, but next time you suffer a soft-tissue trauma you might want to take some Arnica and see what happens. Or if it makes you feel superior, just leave it to the rest of us morons who just imagine that something positive is occurring when we use these remedies.
It occurred to me that the last several “crisis” balloons have the taint of “bimbo irruptions. Remember Bill Clinton. Anytime there was something he wanted to get past the electorate there was a new “scandal”.
Obama doesn’t have this to use. Who’d sleep with him, especially with Michele as attack dog. In the last two months we’ve had Bird Flu, Contraceptives and it’s extended religious freedom fallout, which the administration seems intent on prolonging.
I wonder why? Kind of makes you say hmmmmmmmmm.
H5N1 was not first identified 15 years ago. It made its appearance in 1959. The lethality has always been hyped because federal money has turned scientists into whores. Virologists saw a gravy train almost as good as climate change if they could sell H5N1 as a doomsday virus.
As noted above we have no way of knowing what the lethality of the virus was. However, the socio-cultural aspect of this part of Asia gives us a hint. Bird flu occurred in places where people don’t see a doctor until they are at deaths door. We have no idea how widespread the virus was in the population although I recall reading that the WHO did a population survey in Viet Nam and found that antibodies were present in general population. In all likelihood, this strain of bird flu was not very lethal at all.
Upon further investigation even the deadly 1918 flu turns out to be less lethal than previous assumed. Scientists now believe that upwards of 90% of the US population contracted the Swine Flu. That drops the death rate from 5% down to a still robust by today’s standards 0.7%. As example, my late father told me that everybody in his family caught the flu yet no one was seriously ill. Everybody went to school or work because there was no sick leave in 1918.
I recently had a discussion with medical researcher about the Dutch strain of H5N1. It turns out making H5N1 more transmittable makes the virus less lethal. Lethal virus strains don’t propagate. They quickly die out leaving less virulent but more transmittable strains around. It’s Darwin in action.
To summarize, H5N1 was, at worst, only slightly more lethal than other strains and by making it human-to-human contagious made it less lethal.
YAWN….. Another epidemic that’s gonna wipe us out? Wake me when it’s my turn.