Posted on 03/12/2006 5:22:46 AM PST by Lessismore
MOSCOW, March 7 (RIA Novosti) - The world is one step away from a bird flu pandemic that cannot be averted by quarantine or vaccination, a Russian expert said Tuesday.
"One amino-acid replacement in the genome remains to make the virus transferable from human to human," said Dmitry Lvov, the director of a virology research institute at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.
Lvov said the pandemic virus could strike at any moment, and would most likely come from China, leading to tens of millions of human deaths, or one third of the global population. He added quarantine measures could delay the pandemic for a few days but not prevent it, and that vaccination would not stop people getting sick.
"A good vaccine will only save [people] from death and complications, but not from the illness itself," he said.
Lvov said any pandemic was based on a hybridization of the bird and human viruses.
Pigs are the most vulnerable animals in the face of both human and bird viruses, which makes them "an intermediary link between human and bird flu," he said.
Lvov said the bird flu pandemic was irreversible like any other natural cataclysm, and would not stop until the highly pathogenic strain mutates into a less dangerous one.
"When will it stop? When highly pathogenic strains localized in wild birds are once again transformed into a low-pathogenic one according to the law of nature," Lvov said.
He said all that could be done to deal with the pandemic was large amounts of vaccination, hundreds of thousands of beds in intensive care, and the necessary instruments and medicines.
Lvov also said that the bird flu virus would shortly sweep the south of central Russia, specifically the Astrakhan, Rostov-on-Don, and Volgograd Regions.
The Agriculture Ministry said Monday that bird flu had been registered in eight regions in the south of the country, a major stopover area for migrating birds.
The ministry said over 1.3 million birds had died or been slaughtered in three outbreaks of bird flu since July 2005.
Wolf!
Umm.. It's a rather huge leap between "tens of millions" and two billion deaths!
Who said Y2K was for the birds?
One thing of note from the article is that viruses tend to mutate into less lethal forms. It does a virus no good to kill off its host.
So eventually the bird flu will develop into less virulent strains that will spread through birds easier without killing them and the lethal forms will stop spreading and will be replaced.
But that doesn't mean the "less lethal to birds" virus will be less lethal to humans. It might be that the milder virus just spreads easier and at an undetectable level across the world while continuing to kill off people and continuing to mutate into forms that can infect humans easier.
We really need an effective, easy to manufacture vaccine soon.
In other words, we need Tort reform......
At the same time it is passing from host to host, the virus continues to mutate.
Algore is working on a new book titled "Birdflu Brain"
I've read several of these 'Bird Flu' articles, and it seems like the elites are rooting for this disease to depopulate the planet for them.
I thought we passed a law doing that last year making it easier toto make vaccines without getting sued
Hopefully, you're right and this won't make the final jump to a human to human mode. But this possibility is giving the CDC a lot of sleepless nights...
"We are dealing with a highly lethal virus that no one has natural immunity to." Dr Gerberding, CDC
Alarm bells are going off all over the world in the medical community. Our government has already produced around 7 million vaccine doses for an earlier bird flu strain (from Vietnam) and has just announced a crash program to develop a new vaccine for the latest variant, which is even more deadly to humans (over 70% mortality rate in Indonesia). The CDC goal is to get enough vaccine to hopefully protect the military, government functions and first responders. It will take much longer (years?) to produce enough vaccine for use by the general population and in any event it is unlikely a final vaccine can be developed until the final variant is known - which means it is spreading like wildfire (if it ever gets to this stage) and it won't do the average Joe much good.
It appears inevitable a highly pathogenic version of this virus will spread to the USA in migrating birds this year just as it is rapidly doing in the rest of the world. Probably the "best" we can hope for is economic havoc in our poultry industries - as is happening in already infected regions.
If this rapidly mutating virus jumps the species barrier into humans things could get really bad. Recent reports have government officials now advising individuals stock up their households to prepare for a widespread quarantine of at least 6 weeks. However, modeling based on previous experience indicates several 3-5 month waves of a pandemic disease are more realistic so 6 weeks would seem minimal. If I recall, New Zealand is already telling it's populace to prepare for a 6 month seige.
A lot of people pooh-pooh this, equating it to the Y2K scare. The medical community isn't thinking that way. One can only hope if it breaks out it can be contained. Both possibilities are open questions and one shouldn't lightly dismiss either one, IMHO.
According to even the most pessimistic forcasts, the most a human-transmissible H5N1 virus could kill is about 360 million people. Definitely huge but that would barely make a dent in human population growth.
5 - 10% ain't bad....unless it's MY 5 - 10%!!
What is wrong with the above quote? :)
I was speaking with the Chief of our local fire department who had returned from Emergency Management Training and he was talking about this issue.
If the pandemic takes off, it would make New Orleans look like a tea party.
First off, 50% of adults from 24-55 would die. The virus attacks the stronger people worse because their bodies fight it harder. The body raises temperature to fight a virus and when this flu hits, the body raises to 104 or higher to kill the virus and in the process, kills the brain. He didn't say it, but most likely, emergency services will receive the first anti-virus available.
Barring an effective antivirus, half of the firefighters, police, and government officials would be hit, and people would be dropping like flies, the society would very likely break down and anarchy would reign.
Apparently there was a flu like this a hundred years ago and a lot of people died. We have more people, higher density, and worse yet, jet travel.
Also, he said it comes in waves. Every six months or so, it will return and strike a large portion of the population in a slightly different strain.
If the flu transitions to a human-human flu without losing its virility, we have a big problem.
-A lot of people pooh-pooh this, equating it to the Y2K scare. The medical community isn't thinking that way.
I've been hearing about this for a long time now. How long before we can safely say it was much ado about nothing? You know I am not a very superstitious person but sometimes I think the last great epidemic was an almost biblical thing related to the Great War.
---IMHO, your "Chief" is as full of 'it' as any number of other scare-mongers--
Today the world population is approx. 6.5 billion. If we use the 1918 figures, 975 million people would die. Keeping in mind that in 1918 we did not have millions of people flying every day, nor did we have products shipping across the globe in 24 hours.
In this instance progress would be a bane not a boon. My guess is if H5N1 mutates into a virus that easily transmits from human to human,360 million deaths worldwide is going to be a severe under-estimate.
What? being saved from death and complications is not a good thing?
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