Asia prepares for bird flu pandemic; experts pessimistic

NewsTarget.com ^ | 2/4/2005 | Staff

[ex-Texan]

NewsTarget.com printable article

Friday, February 04, 2005

Asia prepares for bird flu pandemic; experts pessimistic

Asian nations are stocking up on Tamiflu and making plans for civil-defense type measures in the event of an outbreak of bird flu. The World Health Organization has warned that the bird flu virus is epidemic throughout Asia; if the disease mutates into a form which can be readily transmitted from human to human, the results could be catastrophic.

Overview:

• Richer Asian nations may be arming themselves to fight off a feared bird flu pandemic, but experts say such a scourge would be almost unstoppable and urged tougher action to stop the virus from spreading in poultry.
• The H5N1 virus has killed nine people in Vietnam in recent weeks and health experts say they are aware of unreported outbreaks of the disease in poultry in nearby countries -- all alarm bells after the World Health Organisation warned of a potential pandemic that could kill millions this winter.
• Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and China have all stocked up on drugs and stepped up their fight against the virus in poultry.
• Drug firms are racing to produce a super vaccine.
• "If the virus gets adapted to humans, no one, no place could cope with it because it is so infectious, and the mortality rate is so high," said Leo Poon, an expert on the virus and professor of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong.
• Japan has stocked up enough Tamiflu, a drug that the WHO says can protect against bird flu, to treat 20 million people, but it has a population of more than 127 million.
• Thailand has approved a three-year, $104 million plan to combat the disease with education programmes, more laboratories, drugs and surgical masks.
• It plans to double its stocks of Tamiflu, although that will only be enough for just over 5 percent of its 7 million population.
• Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert in Hong Kong, said the infectivity of the H5N1 virus could far outstrip SARS, which infected about 8,000 people around the world in 2003 and killed about 800, straining healthcare systems to their limits.

Source: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/29239/story.htm

[Judith Anne]

So, it's about $6-$11 per dose...

[Judith Anne]

Would you please post the link to that H5N1 discussion board again? I'd like to go there and see what's up...

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

Bear in mind that has next to nothing to do with the N5 avian flu.

HAHAHA, I was thinking the same thing

[Mears]

Where do you get those masks? Any websites?

[steve86]

A couple new threads...

http://www.curevents.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=21

[steve86]

Any industrial supply vendor with worker safety items carries the respirators. Even Home Depot and Lowe's stock them in the (spray) painting section. Places like gemplers.com have them online. Many of the actual filters are made by 3M.

[Mears]

Thanks!

[steve86]

During the SARS scare most Home Deports and Lowes sold out of the respirators, and that was with relatively few people aware of the situation. Anyone who takes the possibility of a high-morbidity flu epidemic seriesly would be wise to invest $25 in a respirator now. Also would protect against numerous kinds of bio and chemical WMD.

[Judith Anne]

Thanks for the link, I appreciate it. Good information there.

[steve86]

We went ahead and purchased the N95 face masks, also the N95 true respirators with cartridges. You can combine types of cartridges, for example the N95 particulate filter and one of the organic media to filter chemicals. Many people think this is foolish overkill, but we don't care, do we?

[ex-Texan]

Thanks for the link! Now this headline was pretty scary to me personally because I live in Oregon.

150 Canadian Geese Fall from Sky.

This event happened on or about February 1st near Keizar Oregon which is just a few miles outside of Salem. The local authorities have not determined the cause of the birds' death. Local people suspect poisoning. The article does not mention bird flu. Salem has been the locale for several bizaar incidents inluding a suspected terrorist poisoning incident at a local Cosco store. Read Report Here: Scroll Down

[Ditter]

What are you suggesting, that China would not be opposed to thinning the herd, so to speak?

[ex-Texan]

Human Transmission in One Third of Bird Flu Cases

Recombinomics Commentary

February 5, 2005

Medical investigators said it is the first documented case of human-to-human transmission of the Avian flu virus. Health officials in Thailand said an 11-year-old girl who died from Avian flu last fall most likely transmitted the disease to members of her family.

Avian flu is typically transmitted from infected birds to humans, but health investigators said, in this case, the young girl may have passed on the virus to her mother and aunt when they hugged and kissed.

World health officials are concerned the virus could mutate, allowing for widespread human to human transmission, but said this small scale transmission is not an indicator the virus is mutating. <<

Although the case in Thailand led to the first published paper documenting human to human transmission of H5N1 avian influenza in the recent outbreak, there are at least 8 other familial clusters that are similar. The cluster in Thailand stood out because the mother was several hundred miles away from her daughter when her daughter developed symptoms and the mother had no history of exposure to birds. She developed symptoms after her daughter died, suggesting she was infected by her daughter. In addition, the aunt also developed symptoms. Thus, it was the lack of bird contact by the mother and a bimodal distribution of onset dates that made human to human transmission in the cluster convincing.

The lab data supported the conclusion, but only after considerable effort. The index case was initially diagnosed as dengue fever and was never tested to show that she was infected with H5N1. Samples were also not collected for the mother, but after her death H5N1 sequences were identified in fixed tissue. The aunt did test positive, although she was negative on her initial test.

An equally compelling case can be made from a much earlier cluster in Vietnam. The index case developed symptoms on Jan 3, 2004, was hospitalized on Jan 7 and died on Jan 12. There was no sample collected for testing. However, his two sisters who cared for him both developed symptoms on Jan 10, both were hospitalized on Jan 13, both were inclusive on initial tests, both were H5N1 positive on subsequent tests, and both died on Jan 23. One sister had no history of contact with birds so the cluster was very similar to the Thailand cluster. One patient had no history of contact with birds, but developed a fatal infection after caring for a close relative. Although the disease onset was bimodal for the cluster, it was unimodal for the two sisters, indicating they were infected by a common source, who was almost certainly their brother.

The other 7 clusters had the same type of bimodal distribution for disease onset, indicating they were all likely human to human transmission. The 9 clusters involved 21 patients and 19 died. These patients represent about 1/3 of all reported H5N1 avian influenza cases in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia so the clusters as a group are not small scale.

However, each of the 9 transmission chains was short, because the patients from the second round of infections sought medical treatment, and their caregivers knew from first hand experience that human to human transmission of the fatal illness was quite possible.

I found this report and others Here

Ditter: Culling is normal conduct for communist societies.

[Phsstpok]

I heard on Albuquerque news last night that NM had 2 deaths from the flu this past week.

There was no indication that these were the Avian H5N1 virus, was there?

As I understand it there are thousands of deaths in the US from influenza every year, but the fear is that Avian flu, or some other strain, will repeat what happened around 1918, when 20 million died worldwide from the "spanish flu."

Pandemics are scary.

My aunt and her grown kids and their families live in Albuquerque. She's a semi-retired nurse and her late husband was the M.E. there until he retired in the 90s. She still works part time in the university hospital and would be exposed to any wide spread outbreak. When she's not at the hospital she helps her daughter run a gourmet cooking store up in the part of town towards Sandia. With folks in and out of there all day they'll be exposed to anything that comes along there, too.

[bitt]

see this?

[NRA2BFree]

There was no indication that these were the Avian H5N1 virus, was there?

No, not at all. That's why I said that flu season was late in starting this year. It was just the regular flu, but it seems to be a pretty nasty bug. Let's pray that the bird flu doesn't hit America.

[Domestic Church]

I have a tamiflu pen in my purse,lol.

[Domestic Church]

You really are better off just taking zinc, magnesium & B6 daily.

[Myrddin]

I have a cold right now, my first in well over 5 years.

Same situation here. It takes a pretty hot cold or flu to get past my immune system. This one stayed in my sinuses for the last 2 weeks. Finally getting to the tail end.

[Lazamataz]

I hate seeing poor sneezy chickens in bed drinking grapefruit juice and checking their temperatures.

You know they have a fever when they lay hardboiled eggs.