Avian Flu

watched MSNBC briefly this morning. interview with richard branson of virgin airlines etc.
he stated that the airline is buying tamiflu wholesale ! "we have a business to run " , he stated ; "we have to make sure our flight=personnel has medication available when required; we may also need it for passengers if they get sick on a plane ... ".
in canada we are being told NOT to buy tamiflu as individuals, but leave it to be available for people in need , should a pandememic break out. as far as i know pharmacies have been told not to sell without physicians prescription .
will i have to fly virgin air to get tamiflu ... ? interesting ... ! hbg

Some experts are saying it will mutate in about the next 2 years.

avian flu
listen , you don't have to be afraid of the avian flu anymore...ONLY $14.95... will buy you the book that'll have all the answers . how can you go wrong ? (let's see $14.95 times x number of books sold = $XXX,XXX . that should make a tidy profit . perhaps the author can get the health authorities to buy the books - wholesale, i hope - for distribution to the public . hbg

The bird flu is for the most part a political smokescreen to move the news away from other issues. The bird flu was first found in Thailand 2 years ago. In that time there have been 14 deaths in a nation of 65 million people, and where chicken and duck are very highly consumed (not exactly a pandemic). Doctors said that the most recent death (of a 5 year old boy) would probably have been avoided if he'd received faster medical care, and if his family had informed medical authorities that they raised fighting cocks.

I don't think bird flu is going to jump the shark either, Wilso, but my link for why is over on another thread and I don't have the enthusiasm to chase it down right now.

wilso wrote : "The bird flu is for the most part a political smokescreen to move the news away from other issues . "

not being a scientist , i can't comment on the actual threat of a "mutated" bird flu virus - from what i understand , the ordinary bird flu virus is no more dangerous than regular flu, perhaps even less so.

canadian medical authorities - particularly those involved in the SARS containment battle in canada , which cost the economy many millions of lost revenues - international conventions cancelled etc. etc ... - feel that not enough resources are applied to develop vaccines (multiple) , plan how to deal with an outbreak etc.
there are a number of sars victims in toronto (about 20 nurses and others) , who are suing the hospitals and the government because adequate measures were not taken to contain the outbreak . from what i read in the newspapers , these people are still pretty sick , some are wheelchair bound .
as i posted previously , the toronto doctor who was in charge of directing the battle against sars - and who would likely be in the forefront of fighting a flu pandemic , admitted on TV to having stocked up on tamiflu (i listened to the interview, not just hearsay).
hbg

Here's that link I was talking about. It's fairly old by now and one would have to pay for the article to read the whole thing in the NYTimes now, I believe. I quoted some of it in this post on, of all things, a thankgiving cooking thread.



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/science/08flu.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 8, 2005
NYTIMES

Hazard in Hunt for New Flu: Looking for Bugs in All the Wrong Places
By GINA KOLATA

Science moves in mysterious ways, and sometimes what seems like the end of the story is really just the beginning. Or, at least, that is what some researchers are thinking as they scratch their heads over the weird genetic sequence of the 1918 flu virus.

Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Technology who led the research team that reconstructed the long-extinct virus, said that a few things seemed clear.

The 1918 virus appears to be a bird flu virus. But if it is from a bird, it is not a bird anyone has studied before. It is not like the A(H5N1) strain of bird flus in Asia, which has sickened at least 116 people, and killed 60. It is not like the influenza viruses that infect fowl in North America.

Yet many researchers believe that the 1918 virus, which caused the worst infectious disease epidemic in human history, is a bird flu virus. And if so, it is the only one that has ever been known to cause a human pandemic.

That, Dr. Taubenberger said, gives rise to a question. Are scientists looking for the next pandemic flu virus in all the wrong places? Is there a bird that no one ever thought about that harbors the next 1918-like flu? And if so, what bird is it, and where does it live?


SKIPPING MUCH OF THE ARTICLE, THEN

Despite that, and the fact that those viruses have been circulating in China more than a dozen years, almost no human-to-human spread has occurred. "The virus has been around for more than a dozen years, but it hasn't jumped into the human population," Dr. Palese said. "I don't think it has the capability of doing it."

Dr. Taubenberger said he could argue it either way.

"It's a nasty virus," he said. "It is highly virulent in domestic birds and wild birds. The fact that it has killed half the humans it has infected makes it of concern, and the fact that it shares some features with the 1918 virus makes it of concern.

"But the fact that it has circulated in Asia for years and hasn't caused a pandemic argues against it. Maybe there are some biological barriers we don't understand."

So where will the next pandemic come from? Dr. Taubenberger says he wonders if it may be from a bird no one has thought of, a bird with a flu virus that has the same funny coding of amino acids that he saw in the 1918 flu.

END OF QUOTE BUT NOT OF THE ARTICLE

i think the above article sums up things quite well . at this point no one seems to be sure what will take place eventually . that's why it has been suggested that a single vaccine would not be sufficient .

of course , this could turn out to be just another "millenium scare" - we did buy two cases of water and extra flashlight batteries .

the way i see it , if a pandemic should hit , it'll probably pretty nasty - question is : can we really do anything to prevent it or at least moderate its impact ?

as an aside : a toronto newspaper reported recently that members of the ontario medical team that has been charged with preparing an emergency plan , are suffering from a great deal of stress . apparently they are overwhelmed by the task and find it difficult to put together a workable "what if " plan . there have been no official comments from either the team members or the authority charged with this task . ???
hbg

avian flu
...AVIAN FLU AN ECONOMIC RISK ?...
a conference in vancouver trying to get a handle of the risk of avian flu, is as much concerned about the impact on the economy as it is about the impact on the health of the population.
perhaps that will have a greater influence on research and possible preventive measures as the concern of the medical/scientific community.

locally our public health department has formed an action committee to address how to deal with a possible pandemic. the medical officer of health has pretty well admitted that there isn't much to be done. there are simply not sufficient resources to properly address this problem . "plenty of handwashing and staying away from sick people and places where people gather" , is the best advice he can offer at this time(or to put it straight-forward : "live in a castle , if you can "). hbg

the "worldbank" has also started to show in interest in the subject .

from a wordbank report :

"IndonesiaHas "Real" Risk of Flu Pandemic, World Bank Says


/noticias.info/ Indonesia, which confirmed Wednesday its ninth fatality from avian influenza, harbors a "very real possibility" of triggering a pandemic, the World Bank's representative in the country said, according to reports by Bloomberg and Today (Singapore).

Of Indonesia's 1.3 billion chickens, as many as 400 million are in "very informal settings, running around people's houses," Andrew Steer, the World Bank's Director for Indonesia, said in an interview in Singapore Wednesday. This "is a huge problem," as Indonesia recovers from the tsunami disaster of December 2004, Steer said. Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous nation, has confirmed 14 human cases of avian flu. The spread of the disease, which has killed at least 70 people in Asia since 2004, is fueling fears of a pandemic that the World Health Organization says may kill 7.4 million people.

The average life-span of a chicken in Indonesia is three months, equating to a 5.2 billion annual population, Steer said. Indonesia needs "an extremely good surveillance plan,'" he said. Most of the human infections have been caused by contact with diseased poultry. Scientists are monitoring for any human- to-human transmission that may herald the start of a pandemic.

Indonesia's latest confirmed fatality was likely caused by infected fowl, the Indonesian health ministry said. In the past two years, infections have been more common in December and January, Hitoshi Oshitani, leader of WHO's avian influenza outbreak team in the Western Pacific, said last week. "

IT HAS ALSO APPEARED IN AZERBAIJAN, with about 3 deaths.

INDIA has also confirmed it in Chickens but surpisingly only 1 human death.

I'm afraid that Avian Flu might mutate. I don't think face masks are any good because doctors use face masks so they do infect their patients,It's really protecting you. Even that medication Tamiflu doesn't work for everyone and they don't have enough for everyone (I hate to be pessimistic). What if it became a pandemic?