How worried are you about Bird Flu?

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

If avian flu doesn't create a multi-million dead pandemic (the 1918 influenza killed well over 50 million when the world's population was less than a third of what it is today), some other bug will, some day. All that's really needed is enough casualties to saturate available health care services and then it's out of control.

Smallpox could do it, and Mother Russia under Gorbachev manufactured TONS of the virus. And practically no one has immunity any more. If somehow it gets loose, there's the distinct possiblity of millions dead before it can be caged again.

There's the Twelve Monkeys scenario, where a group deliberately seeds widely scattered populations with a deadly virus. What fun.

I don't think avian flu itself is going to blow up into a pandemic, though. From everything I've seen, you practically have to french kiss the birds to catch it.

 

[ludahai]

I don't think avian flu itself is going to blow up into a pandemic, though. From everything I've seen, you practically have to french kiss the birds to catch it.

That's true now and hopefully it will stay that way. However, viruses have this nasty tendency to evolve. This virus is now more widespread and out of control that at any time since its discovery in the 1950s. With its becoming endemic in so many places, the likelihood of the virus making that mutation increases exponentially.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

That's true now and hopefully it will stay that way. However, viruses have this nasty tendency to evolve. This virus is now more widespread and out of control that at any time since its discovery in the 1950s. With its becoming endemic in so many places, the likelihood of the virus making that mutation increases exponentially.

I won't deny the possibility. And given that every generation of a virus has some that are slightly mutated from it's parent, it's a perfectly real concern.

Killer flus happen on a cycle. We're probably overdue for a visit.

 

[shuamort]

Michael Leavitt, Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services just recommended:

that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Under my bed even? That's where the monsters live and they'll eat my food and drink my milk.


So, even though we have years to prepare, we're not going to be ready and the administration is playing "Chicken of the Sea" with the country:

The 5,000 state and local health departments in the United States are rushing to plan for an epidemic of avian flu, but they say they are hobbled by a lack of money and guidance from the federal government.

Only a few places, particularly Seattle and New York City, have made significant progress, experts say. Most departments say they expect to be unprepared for at least a year.

"It's a depressing situation," said Jeffrey Levi, a flu expert at the Trust for America's Health, a nonpartisan health policy group. "We are way, way behind."

Under the national response plan issued by the Bush administration on Nov. 2, the national government took primary responsibility for creating stockpiles of vaccines and anti-viral drugs. But the states and local governments were left to be responsible for quarantines, delivering vaccinations and assuring that the sick receive medical care.

Of the $7.1 billion President George W. Bush requested for fighting avian flu, Congress provided only $3.3 billion for this year. Bush was expected Monday to ask for an additional $2.65 billion for 2007. The bulk is for vaccine and drug research, while only $350 million is for local health departments.

"That $350 million sounds like a lot, but divided among 5,000 health departments, it's only $70,000 each," said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, chief of communicable diseases for the Seattle and King County health department.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged at a conference of avian flu experts in Washington last week that the nation's strategy was one of "buying time" until millions of doses of vaccines and anti-viral drugs could be produced.

So, why are they dragging their feet? What could possibly be good about doing that?

A published reported says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made more than $5 million from Tamiflu, the drug being sought to treat bird flu.

Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and was its chairman from 1997. He left to join the Bush administration, the newspaper said. A disclosure report showed that he still had up to $25 million worth of shares at the end of 2004.

Ahhhhhhhh, got it.

 

[ludahai]

Are you saying that Rumsfeld invented Avian Flu so that he could make money through the sale of Tamiflu because it is the best known antiviral that can treat Avian Flu?

 

[shuamort]

Are you saying that Rumsfeld invented Avian Flu so that he could make money through the sale of Tamiflu because it is the best known antiviral that can treat Avian Flu?

Where would you even extrapolate that from? That isn't close to what I wrote at all.

 

[lily]

I voted Human pandemic, tens of millions dead. It's not going to be a major problem, until it mutates and according to most experts, that is just a matter of time.

What I don't get is all this money being spent on a vaccine. If I'm not mistaken, an effective vaccine can only be "made" from someone that has contacted this and has lived. So far, no on has contacted a human to human strain. Only after the first outbreak of this, can a vaccine be made and then they estimate at least a 6 month trial and error period. By that time, folks, most of this would be over.

My nickels worth.......wash your hands, because the government isn't going to save your ***.