You're welcome.
I wish we could get permission somehow, to print the series here. I just read a comment by Dr. Osterholm in the second article that brought up something I hadn't cosidered before.
Most countries are concerned about the virus mutating to the point where there is efficient human to human spread. Let's just remember how fast SARS got spread from China to Toronto--one man on one flight--and it wrecked Toronto health care and their economy for months. SARS is a virus that doesn't transmit efficiently, but influenza spreads BEFORE symptoms show--you can't screen for it at the border, any border.
Which means, according to Dr. Osterholm, that the first country that announces that it has found efficient human-to-human spread of H5N1 is signing its own death warrant--it becomes a place that the rest of the world will not trade with, enter, or allow citizens to leave.
There are two things that jump out here:
1. Nobody wants to be that country. What lengths would a country go to, to prevent that identification?
2. That COULD be the country that makes our US health care workers' masks, gloves and gowns. Or hypodermics. Or whatever.
And it raises another question: How long does it take a country to confirm that it has efficient H2H transmission of avian flu. At LEAST a week. Can we all do the math ourselves?
Here's a link to some excerpts of the CFR transcripts, I just had to read a couple and copied some bits I thought people might want to read, now I'm not sure why I copied it onto this particular thread... Who knows if the parts I copied actually make sense, it's too late for me to be up:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1528111/posts?page=55#55
Expert says bird flu has killed 300 people in China