The Avian Flu. For those who think this is just scare mongering.

[Locut0s]

It isn't. There is a real danger of this becoming a pandemic. However there also seems to be a lot of misinformation floating around. First the flu in it's current form can't become a pandemic because its current genetic makeup does not lend itself to easy human to human transmission. However viruses mutate often and very quickly and more importantly they can recombine their genes with that of another similar virus to form a chimera with properties of both. The real danger is not from the current "avian flu". The danger occurs when someone is infected with both the avian flu and a regular human/swine flu at the same time. What can happen here is that the two strains can swap genes and the result may be a virus with the lethality of the avian flu and the easy transmissibility of the human flu.

This may not sound like a likely occurrence but when someone is infected there are many millions to many billions of virus particles in their body, multiply that by the number of cases of normal human and avian flu and the probability of this happening isn't that remote. Also the recombination does not have to happen in humans, it could occur in pigs as well. The areas that are hardest hit by the avian flu are places where people are in close proximity to humans, birds, and pigs and where the medical coverage and early warning systems are not as advanced as in the west. Also now that the virus is in so many countries and seems well established there is little hope of completely eradicating it. So it will come back year after year in it's current non pandemic form. Each time it comes back though it draws another ticket in the mutation lottery. As such many believe it is just a matter of time before we do see a pandemic strain.

So to clear that up the current virus is not going to cause a pandemic, however there is a very real danger that it can evolve into a pandemic strain. Also this is very different from SARS. SARS had a low lethality and was a new virus. This means that it was VERY unlikely for SARS to recombine with a flu virus since they are just too different. The avian flu however is essentially just a flu strain and as such can easily recombine with other strains of the flu. Those who are saying that this year we will see million dieing from the avian flu are probably not correct however the possibility of such a pandemic occurring in the next 5 to 10 years is actually quite high, because of the reasons outlined above.

Sorry for the long post.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. What you can expect if you get the Bird Flu

I wrote up a description of a case of Influenza A I had in 1990. It's the same general type of flu as the H5N1 bird flu we're discussing.

I'm sure you've had the flu before. You didn't feel real good, but you may be asking, "how bad could it be"? Well, it could be as bad as I described it, and even a little worse, especially since I survived.

I also don't think I made the description realistic enough, but I trust your imagination to fill in the weak parts.

I should have gone to the hospital, but delerium knocked me senseless too quickly, and then I didn't even have the presence of mind to pick up the phone. In a pandemic, whether you get to the phone or not won't matter, since the hospitals will probably be jammed and turning away patients.

Yes, I'm tring to scare you. Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for it.

--p!

[Locut0s]

14. No to doubt that you were that sick but..

How do you know for certain that what you suffered from was influenza and not a different viral or bacterial infection? I have no doubt that the avian influenza in Asia is as bas as you say and worse, you don't have an influenza with a 75% lethality rate without that kind of experience.

[Dogmudgeon]

25. Good point

I answered this in some detail, and expanded on my original ideas. It went so far afield of your criticism (and well-posed, at that) that I posted it as a new item below.

Here's the edit to include the link: (Later in this thread.)

As always, if you or anyone else detects errors, discrepancies, or downright bullshit in my posts, feel free to point it out.

--p!

[davekriss]

16. Had something like that in 2001

December 2001. First I came down with symptoms, then my wife. We were both bedridden -- and I mean completely collapsed in bed, barely conscious -- for 4 days. Both of our temperatures climbed to nearly 105 degrees. Neither of us experienced delirium of the sort you describe, just total collapse. I remember slowly thinking at one point that I might die, but that would be OK because I'd hardly notice it (I guess that was delirium?). Like you, it took us more than a month to fully recover.

We both say now that we all use the term "flu" too lightly, that until that episode neither of us really had the flu. What I understand now is that it might've been a particularly severe strain, maybe of the "H1" variety.

(PS/If anyone's wondering, this was NY metro in December 2001.)

[mordarlar]

2. I thought there was at least one Human to Human transmission.

Daughter to mother. The mother had not been near the daughter's residence and only saw her in the hospital. Was this debunked?

Edited to add.. they both died.

[Locut0s]

3. Yes but..

It's not that the current strain can't be passed from person to person it's that it doesn't transmit very effectively. Hence in it's current form it is not going to become a pandemic. Given time though, maybe several years, it likely will.

[mordarlar]

4. Ah, thank you for clarifying. : )

[Dogmudgeon]

5. I am not so sure about that

I have heard that this particular strain of flu has become much more actively contageous, with some dozens of human-to-human cases reported just over the last year, as well as transcription of the H5N1 segment into another new virus which is fairly contageous.

The bigger problem isn't that just this virus will become more contageous. It's that the rate of polymorphism -- viral mutation -- has sped up tremendously in the last century. Our population is much higher than it was in, say, 1918. Industrial pollution is now part of the human environment, which probably explains why so much immunomodulatory illness is showing up -- and novel immune system responses provide the natural selection mechanism to diversify viral genomes. And the fact that far fewer children die before they themselves can have children accelerates passing viral material across generations. A larger ageing population, too, provides a reservoir for new viruses to exploit.

In short, we're one big, super-fertile field for influenza and other, newer viral models. The next big plague could be weeks away, or centuries, but the processes that will create it are active today. Unless we figure out how to pre-emptively defeat or innoculate against viral infection, the human species will suffer another pandemic.

--p!

[Locut0s]

10. Agreed

[retread]

8. My limited understanding is that this is a virus known for its

ability to rapidly mutate. It used to infect humans by going from birds to swine then to humans. The difference between avian and human is one receptor site. This virus may become pandemic in humans by infecting a human with a strain of flu and then exchanging genetic material or it may mutate on its own. In its present form it is 70% lethal.
It is not a question of if but when.

[Locut0s]

11. That's exactly what I was saying in my original post.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

20. IMHO, I think this will be at the pandemic stage a lot sooner than...

...several years because of that ability to mutate rapidly.

[robcon]

6. I think the whole story is scare-mongering.

There are a lot of possibilities... but the focus on this highly unlikely one is scare-mongerinbg, IMO.

[retread]

9. Highly unlikely?? You are much more sanguine than most scientists

when it comes to these viruses. Do you have information you care to share?

[Locut0s]

12. It is not highly unlikely. If the chances are..

something like 0.05 percent per day of the virus mutating into a pandemic strain then while the odds are not good on any one day the odds are almost certain over 5 years or so.

[Ms. Clio]

24. The World Health Organization doesn't agree that it's "highly unlikely"

either.

Just a year ago they were downplaying the possibility of a pandemic, but they have changed their tune.

WHO: Bird flu pandemic is imminent
Governments must act swiftly to prevent outbreak, officials say

World Health Organization officials urged governments on Wednesday to act swiftly to control the spread of bird flu, warning that the world is in grave danger of a deadly pandemic triggered by the virus.

(snip)

“We at WHO believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic,” Dr. Shigeru Omi, the WHO’s Western Pacific regional director, said Wednesday.

He said the world is “now overdue” for an influenza pandemic, since mass epidemics have occurred every 20 to 30 years. It has been nearly 40 years since the last one.

(Note that the CDC discounts this: Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the of the CDC, said "We are ... not on the brink of an avian flu epidemic." Hope those don't become famous--or infamous--last words.)

But officials with the WHO appeared far more concerned about the possibility of a bird flu epidemic. In comparing the deadly virus to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which killed nearly 800 people in 2003, Omi said, “If the virus becomes highly contagious among humans, the health impact in terms of deaths and sickness will be enormous, and certainly much greater than SARS."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6861065/

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. Gee...I guess all of those medical authorities trying to get their....

...respective countries ready for a potential pandemic are actually just using the Avian Flu as an excuse to get overtime pay.

No offense, but even if you slept in a Holiday Inn Express recently, I think I'll stick to trusting what qualified medical experts are saying about this disease.

[patricia92243]

7. Is it airborne or is actual human contact required to get it?

[Locut0s]

13. I'm guessing that you need close contact at the moment. However I think...

there have been a few cases of air born transmission. In which case it may just be very ineffectively transmitted by air at the moment.

[fortyfeetunder]

15. So what?

Now we know the probability, what can people actually do about it, other than practice immaculate hygiene?

[Locut0s]

22. We can start developing and stockpiling vaccine for one.

[fortyfeetunder]

23. The loaded question is...will they? n/t

[Ladyhawk]

17. I'm wondering if combining with a human flu will cause the avian flu...

...to be more communicable, but less harmful.

What do you think? If it's going to mutate, why can't it mutate to a less harmful form?

I'm no medical research scientist, but in order to become a pandemic, the avian flu most likely has to mix with a human flu. Is there a possibility this will take the proverbial wind out of the avian flu's sails?

[Silverhair]

18. Not likely.

The part of the flu's RNA that is controlling the lethality and the part that controls the contagion are different parts. It only needs a minor change to become highly contagious.

[Ladyhawk]

21. That's not good news.

Is there a chance the RNA controlling lethality could mutate before it becomes highly contagious? After all, flu mutates all the time.

What do you suppose the chances are?

I guess I'm dealing in layman hopes (possiblities) while the scientists are dealing with what they see. What they see doesn't sound very hopeful.

[Dogmudgeon]

26. Extinction -- more than just Bird Flu

(This was originally a brief reply to Locut0s' remarks about the cause of my illness. Since it became a longer mini-essay about the overall problems we face in our world, I have decided to post it as a new reply in this thread.)

It's impossible to know the exact pathogen unless a sample is taken and tests positive, ideally by looking at the virus particles or the bacilli themselves. Even though the diagnosis was made by my physician, it's beside the point. The symptoms fit Influenza A very well, and anyone else who contracts and develops a severe flu will have a similar course.

My purpose was to make the bird flu more real; more personal. Most people have not had a bad case of the flu like this. A lot of people think that the flu kills its victims as if by magic -- one minute, the patient is resting in bed, with maybe a fever and some mild chills, and the next minute, they die. TV and movie versions of the flu are like that. They do not show the effects of delerium and pain; rapid dehydration, starvation, and wasting; bruising, sensitivity to stimuli, and other horrors of severe viral illness. Unless the patient is screaming in pain -- rare because screaming takes a lot of energy -- even in the hospital, it doesn't leave much of an impression.

I am concerned that our overall lack of attention to the risks of our civilization is leading us to "sleepwalk over a cliff", as Mike Ruppert described it. The same attitude is leading us to a post-Peak-Oil energy and agricultural crisis, unpredictable climate changes, genetic organism engineering disasters, and war on an unimaginable scale. It took over 30 years from the time the first alarms were raised about possible Earth-devastating impacts from comets and asteroids until the funding of the first deep-sky impactor-risk surveys -- and the final push came from the movie Deep Impact. Likewise, The Day After Tomorrow attracted attention to our worsening climate changes; we still won't sign Kyoto or commit to our own carbon-reducing plan.

The potential for pandemic crisis is simple. The rate of viral polymorphism has increased dramatically -- just the increase in human population has contributed to it, and several other factors enhance the recombination and mutation of viruses. The potential for a super-lethal virus to emerge is certain -- when it will happen is the only wild card. And yet, virology remains underfunded, and it took the mishandling of this previous year's flu vaccine batch to even start public health officials thinking about stockpiling antiviral agents.

The outcome I would prefer is simple: That people maintain just enough anxiety about pandemic risks to lobby for better biosurveillance and public health measures designed to prevent or control such diseases. A little advance planning would go a long way toward reducing the morbidity and mortality of a flu pandemic, and the cost would not have to be a strain on public health budgets.

The same philosophy of preparedness applies to the other critical issues I mentioned. We've already wasted 30 years laughing at "tree huggers" while petrologists have gotten nervous that so few new oil fields are being discovered. That's 30 years that we could have used to re-engineer technology to be much more energy-efficient. Now we are within 10 to 20 years (at best) of ruinous oil field failures and energy shortfalls. Climatologists also first saw global atmospheric CO2 start to increase around the same time; nothing was done.

And we've whacked the Islamic hornets' nest. There's well over a billion Muslims in this world, and with every injury and humiliation we inflict on them, each becomes more sympathetic to the Shi'a-Wahhabi sura of combat, revenge, and retribution. We should have learned when Thomas Lawrence presented King Faisal al-Saud to the "modern" world; instead, we had ribald fantasies about "The Sheik of Araby" and thought we could outfox the ignorant heathen we called Faisal behind his back.

It is far cheaper, safer, and healthier to prevent problems before they get out of hand. My great fear isn't the bird flu, or new influenzae, or Peak Oil or a year-round ski season in Florida. It's that we will continue to blunder our way to a final, civilization-destroying decade of pain and destruction. Seven billion human deaths is too high a price to pay for dumb-ass human stupidity.

Salvation starts with small steps. Paying attention is the least we can do.

--p!

[Locut0s]

27. Agreed...

Sadly it seems the attitudes of most people is either one of denial or "yeah were fucked but let my children and grandchildren deal with it". I think the current US administration is very aware of the looming oil crisis, they know that their administration is going to be one of the last ones that doesn't absolutely have to face these issues. So they are saying "let the next generation deal with it, while things are good in these last few hours lets party and fuck the world over"! As you alluded to it's astounding how a little anxiety, not panic stricken anxiety, and a lot of forward planing can easily head off a lot of the problems we are going to have to deal with in the coming decades. For some of these, like the looming oil crisis, it's almost getting to be too late, though not yet I think. Problem is most people aren't even willing to acknowledge there is a problem. With the "lets party while the lights are still on" mentality and comments like "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy. - Dick Cheney" we are a long way off from even seeing icebergs in the watter let alone making course corrections to avoid them.