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Source for Bird Flu Reports: http://newspundit.net/birdflureports.htmlBrief Excerpts from Reports: New Fears of Bird Flu Mutation:
Nguyen Sy Tuan can barely talk. His wasted frame is tucked beneath a thin white sheet on the hospital cot. His cheeks are sunken and his bulging eyes stare blankly at the ceiling.
But the young man has begun to eat rice again and can finally breathe without a mechanical ventilator, a dramatic turnaround for a bird flu patient whom doctors had assumed would die.
More than a year after avian influenza emerged in East Asia, killing more than two-thirds of those confimed to have the virus, Vietnamese doctors are reporting that the mortality rate in their country has dropped substantially.
But while this is good news for survivors, it could mean the outbreak of bird flu in Southeast Asia is taking an ominous turn. If a disease quickly kills almost everyone it infects, it has little chance of spreading very far, according to international health experts. The less lethal bird flu becomes, they say, the more likely it is to develop into the global pandemic they fear, potentially killing tens of millions of people.
``The virus could be adapting to humans,'' said Peter Horby, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization in Hanoi. ``There's a number of indications it could be moving toward a more dangerous virus.''
The mortality rate for bird flu in Vietnam this year is about 35 percent, almost exactly half that of last year, according to Health Ministry statistics. The mortality rate of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, by comparison, was less than 5 percent, but the outbreak killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide.
Officials said the drop in the bird flu mortality rate was more marked in northern Vietnam than in the south. While the virus in southern Vietnam is still killing at the same pace as last year, the rate in the area around Hanoi and elsewhere in the north has dropped from that level to as low as 20 percent.
Russian Scientists: Bird Flu Pandemic Has Begun
"Most of these countries are experiencing outbreaks of this disease for the first time in their histories. In several, outbreaks have been detected in virtually every part of the country Over the past two months, more than 100 million birds have either died of the disease or been culled in Asia. * * *
But to the greatest concern of the worlds scientists today is the evidence that the most deadly flu virus the world has ever seen has indeed made its final mutation, and as we can read as reported by the American Newspaper Washington Times in their article titled "Bird flu looking more like a pandemic", and which says, "Public health officials in Vietnam fear the South Asian outbreak of bird flu is becoming less virulent and, thus, more likely to spawn a pandemic.”The virus could be adapting to humans," said Peter Horby, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. "There's a number of indications it could be moving toward a more dangerous virus."
By way of comparison, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed some 40 million people worldwide, had a 5 percent mortality rate. The comparable rate for bird flu has fallen from nearly 70 percent to 35 percent this year. Also worrying health officials is the emergence of asymptomatic bird flu in poultry."
Dr. Henry Niman of Harvard Medical School, and one of the worlds leading virologists, and founder of the privately funded research institute Recombinomics, has further stated, "Media reports are now providing more detail on specific human-to-human cases that signaled the more efficient H5N1 transmission, particularly in northern Vietnam. The case described above provides detail about the first reported transmission from patient to health care worker, a very big red flag for human-to-human transmission.
The transmission at the time was the longest transmission chain, and symptoms in a second nurse would have extended the chain further. Although that nurse tested negative, the virus is changing genetically. This can affect the screening tests. Moreover, prior false negatives increase the likelihood that the second nurse was also H5N1 infected, consistent with the clinical presentation and contact with confirmed H5N1 cases."
But Dr. Niman’s most important statement about the mutation is, "Thus, there are several clues that H5N1 infections in humans may dwarf official numbers, yet these results go unreported and media reports continue to talk about possible human-to-human transmission."
Bird Flu is easily spread by biting insects and migratory birds. Bird migrate hundreds and even thousands of miles. The Spanish Flu (1918) which killed 40 million people was spread by birds as well. Some of the people who died from the Bird Flu did not exhibit ordinary flu symptoms like coughing and high fever. A high percentage just fell into a coma and died 72 hours later. Think about it a bit. |
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