Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy

AP ^ | 11/1/05 | LAURAN NEERGAARD

[edcoil]

OK, I'll say it.

Americans get 7 Billion of there own money for what we are told is a flu to kill millions of us and President Bush give 15 Billion dollars of our money to Africa.

[Gabz]

Thanks, I was just about to post that link.

[Shermy]

"So, is this a serious threat to the US or just hysteria hitting hard?"

Much drug company corporate welfare.

[burzum]

SARS wasn't hysteria. SARS was a very dangerous disease that was brought under control. While SARS was not nearly as transmissible as the flu, if I recall correctly, it was still surprisingly transmissible. Most cases of infection occurred in apartment buildings or hospitals. When that occurred, many people in the apartment buildings or hospitals became infected, and in many cases they never had direct person to person contact. Once people became aware of SARS' characteristics, they took actions such as donning breathing protection, washed their hands more often, opened windows, quarantined people for ten days, and put on breathing masks over the victims. Then the transmission rate plummeted. Out of about 8000 reported cases, about 800 people died. If China would have acted faster, it might have been half of that. If health authorities would have acted slower, it very well could have become a pandemic, though it probably wouldn't have had done too much to the US (where people don't congregate as often in stale air environments and where the health care system is equipped to handle such a disease). Nonetheless, I believe that health authorities around the world saved millions of lives due to their actions (and in some cases sacrifices such as Dr. Urbani who died researching it).

[discostu]

Running rampant throughout Asia the bird flu has killed less people in 18 months than the regular flu has killed in any major city during the same time period. Hysteria.

[tallhappy]

The emphasis on this is odd. It does seem to be somewhat hysterical.

[Herakles]

You beat me to it!

Sixty deaths since 2003 with a world population of 6 billion and he wants to spend 7 billion. He would stand a better chance of stopping the spread by spending the money on boarder security.

This sounds like either a red herring or someone in the skull & bones society is running a drug company!

[Gabz]

Living in a poultry producing region such as I do, this stuff is not taken lightly.

Evrn if it doesn't mutate to a human problem, it will be a major human problem because such an outbreak could decimate the economy of this area. Only 50 miles north of me is the county that produces the most broiler/fryers in the country. Only 20 miles south of me is one of Perdue's largest processing plants in the country, and I live only about 4 miles from one of Tyson's largest plants in the region (I won't mention the 150,000 chickens currently residing across the road from me).........

I've got no connection to the industry other than being a major consumer, but this is not a laughing matter and we've all been talking about it for years.

[dljordan]

"So, is this a serious threat to the US or just hysteria hitting hard?"

Wait and see where the money goes. What companies are going to make the vaccines and who is connected to them?

[dljordan]

"No. Though more than 100 human cases have occurred in the current outbreak, this is a small number compared with the huge number of birds affected and the numerous associated opportunities for human exposure, especially in areas where backyard flocks are common. It is not presently understood why some people, and not others, become infected following similar exposures."

Let's not pour water on a perfectly good hysteria.

[discostu]

SARS was pure hysteria. All the transmissions happened in countries with crappy medical systems, we never got a patient 1 in the US inspite of importing at leats 3 patient 0s. It ran rampant in Canada becuase the same hospital allowed not one but TWO people killed by SARS to lie in high traffic halways for HOURS. When Canada finally started acting like they had a modern medical system they shut SARS down. A normal old every day see one or two every year flu is caught by more people and kills more people, SARS was entirely driven by media produced hysteria to fill time.

[brothers4thID]

The bird has to cough on you while infected with the disease. I don't know about you, but my Thanksgiving turkey has never coughed on me! ;)

[DumpsterDiver]

Living in a poultry producing region such as I do, this stuff is not taken lightly.
Evrn if it doesn't mutate to a human problem, it will be a major human problem because such an outbreak could decimate the economy of this area.

Two or three years ago there was an outbreak of Newcastle's disease in the poultry farms here in California. Millions of chickens were slaughtered. It was spread by illegal aliens smugglng in infected gamecocks from Mexico. The same people who were raising the smuggled in birds were also working at the poultry farms.

I've got no connection to the industry other than being a major consumer, but this is not a laughing matter and we've all been talking about it for years.

I'm not laughing, but I'm not that concerned about it either... not yet anyway.

[upchuck]

Indeed, pharmaceutical companies hold the cards. Which one is producing the vaccine?

Chiron.

[Gabz]

When the region you live in loses a huge chunk of it's economy when this thing comes through, tell me it's hysteria.

When your nearest neighbors are a couple 100,000 chickens, tell me this is hysteria.

Sorry if I sound tinfoilish, but the threat of this stuff is nothing to sneeze at or about (pun intended). Even if it never mutates to a human to human strain the decimation of the poultry industry and the trickle down effect on agriculture in general will be a major blow to the US economy.

Just one bird in one flock on one farm testing positive for any strain of avian influenza causes the entire flock to be destroyed. One modern chicken house holds upwards of 30-35,000 birds and there are some farms with 15-20 of those houses. One infected bird can ruin a family farm. I've seen it happen.

[panaxanax]

I read somewhere yesterday that Donald Rumsfeld owned a large block of stock in the company that makes Tamiflu. I know this is not responsible posting, but just came in to check my email real quick and have to run back to work. Maybe someone can verify....bye.

[steve86]

Clearly, some of the posters on this thread are going to find the "Avian Flu Surveillance Project" as far over their heads as a flock of geese.

[Wiseghy]

Stratfor ran an article a while back saying that the risk was small. Nonetheless, a pandemic is still a major concern. The hurricane, ironically, has set the standard for what people expect from their government in times of crisis.

In the meantime, a decent civil defense strategy is a perfectly reasonable action to respond to a small but significant strategic threat.

[Gabz]

The avian flu outbreaks in Delaware and Maryland last year were traced back to the live poultry sales in either NewYork or New Jersey. Most poultry grown here doesn't go to the live market - they go straight from the houses to the processing plants.

On a personal/human level I'm not terribly concerned about it - I'm extremely concerned when it comes to an economic standpoint, of course I've felt that way for 20 years.

Like most people that grow up in the big city, I never really paid much attention to where my food came from, or what was involved in getting it to me to cook it (except when I was cooking fish I had caught). Moving to an area where some of the stuff in the supermarkets comes from is a major eye opener.

If this doesn't mutate and poultry is not high on one's list of preferred foods, this is a non-issue. However, if you enjoy eating poultry - be preparred to find shortages and major hits to the wallet if it shows up.

[burzum]

We had over 70 cases in the US, though we had no fatalities. Canada had 250 and lost 38. The main reason, once again, for the high transmissions in Canada was the stale air environments in which the patients were infected.

I disagree with you that SARS was hysteria. I just think it was killed before it got to critical mass. Most airborne infectious diseases grow at an exponential rate (a simplified equation is A=A0*k^(t/t_T) where A is the number infected at a time t, A0 is the initial number infected, k is the number of transmissions per person on average, and t_T is the average time to transmit to k people). In the early stages is is theoretically possible to mobilize enough resources to combat and defeat a disease. This was done with SARS. In the later stages, the exponential law overwhelms that option. Consider a normal flu virus. The number of infections due to the normal flu virus is past the critical mass point, and actions like quarantines will not reduce the infection rate appreciably. If avian flu becomes readily transmissible from human to human, I think it is highly probable that it will go past the critical mass point. With a potentially high mortality rate this is unfortunate. It should be noted that with US health-care, the mortality rate will probably be much smaller than that which is observed for the rest of the world (maybe 20%).