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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIs This a Pandemic Being Born?
Source: Foreign Policy
Here's how it would happen. Children playing along an urban river bank would spot hundreds of grotesque, bloated pig carcasses bobbing downstream. Hundreds of miles away, angry citizens would protest the rising stench from piles of dead ducks and swans, their rotting bodies collecting by the thousands along river banks. And three unrelated individuals would stagger into three different hospitals, gasping for air. Two would quickly die of severe pneumonia and the third would lay in critical condition in an intensive care unit for many days. Government officials would announce that a previously unknown virus had sickened three people, at least, and killed two of them. And while the world was left to wonder how the pigs, ducks, swans, and people might be connected, the World Health Organization would release deliberately terse statements, offering little insight.
It reads like a movie plot -- I should know, as I was a consultant for Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. But the facts delineated are all true, and have transpired over the last six weeks in China. The events could, indeed, be unrelated, and the new virus, a form of influenza denoted as H7N9, may have already run its course, infecting just three people and killing two.
Or this could be how pandemics begin.
On March 10, residents of China's powerhouse metropolis, Shanghai, noticed some dead pigs floating among garbage flotsam in the city's Huangpu River. The vile carcasses appeared in Shanghai's most important tributary of the mighty Yangtze, a 71-mile river that is edged by the Bund, the city's main tourist area, and serves as the primary source of drinking water and ferry travel for the 23 million residents of the metropolis and its millions of visitors. The vision of a few dead pigs on the surface of the Huangpu was every bit as jarring for local Chinese as porcine carcasses would be for French strolling the Seine, Londoners along the Thames, or New Yorkers looking from the Brooklyn Bridge down on the East River.
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Lots More at link
Read more: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/01/is_this_a_pandemic_being_born_china_pigs_virus?page=0,0
wickerwoman
(5,662 posts)would worry about.
Notice the "floating among garbage flotsam". We're not talking about pristine alpine streams here.
In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)March 25
China pulls 1,000 dead ducks from Sichuan river (BBC).
Government officials say that 1,000+ rotten duck carcasses pose no threat to human and livestock along river banks (Xinhua News).
Illegal Zhejiang pork found in food chain (South China Morning Post).
March 26
Dumping of thousands of dead pigs linked with Chinese crackdown on pork black market (Business Insider)
More than 1,000 dead ducks, in 60 woven plastic bags, are found in Sichuan province (China Daily, Time).
March 31
The government's National Health and Family Planning Commission said over the weekend that two men, aged 87 and 27, died in Shanghai in early March after being infected with H7N9 avian influenza (AFP).
April 1
Widespread reporting about two human deaths and one severe casualty of a "lesser-known bird flu virus" (USA Today, AP).
Dr. Michael O'Leary, World Health Organization, says that there is no evidence to show that a type of bird flu which has killed two Chinese men can be transmitted between people (Reuters).
April 2
Shanghai Animal Disease Prevention and Control Center tested 34 samples of pig carcasses pulled from Huangpu River and found no flu viruses (Shanghai Daily).
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)Best way to prevent a panademic is the quick putting a ring around it technique of a vaccine.
And the quacks against vaccines should be jailed.
Wakefield did more damage in weeks to spread diseases with a vengence due to his lies and distortions, and the lies and distortions of his cult like group.
There should be really heavy penalties.
TeamPooka
(24,156 posts)BlueToTheBone
(3,747 posts)of those vaccines. Think of all the money to be made off mandatory vaccines. Not that I think vaccination is a bad thing; but I just saw that side as the predominate action.
My pessimism is showing.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,576 posts)mainer
(12,013 posts)But latest news indicates the flu strain has not been found in the dead pigs. Only one victim so far has had contact with birds. Source of infection in other cases unknown.
byeya
(2,842 posts)living in close proximity speed the evolution of the various flu viruses. Don't need to add the dead pigs into the equation; the acricultural practices where the above is the norm is the main breeding house for the mutated flu strains.