Will Masks Stop Bird Flu? US Students Experiment

WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Can wearing a face mask and regularly cleaning hands stop the spread of deadly bird flu? Students at the University of Michigan started a living experiment on Tuesday to find out.

They are using the peak of influenza season to see if simple cotton masks and little bottles of hand sanitizer will protect them.

Health experts fear the H5N1 avian influenza virus might mutate any moment and start a pandemic -- a global epidemic that could kill millions. If not H5N1, some other new virus could do the same, world health officials agree.

They also agree there is no easy way to stop one. Viruses are very difficult to treat with drugs, unlike bacteria, which can usually be stopped with antibiotics.

Antivirals exist to treat flu, but are in limited supply. Vaccines take time to make, and there is very limited capacity to produce them. So low-tech measures will be the first line of defense against any rapidly spreading new disease.

While influenza is hardly new, doctors do not fully understand or agree on how it is spread.

The virus is carried in droplets that can be coughed or sneezed, and a great deal of evidence shows it can survive in little droplets on surfaces, to be picked up with an errant finger and transferred to nose or mouth.

More than 2,000 students living in University of Michigan dormitories will wear masks and use hand sanitizer to see if they develop lower rates of influenza than students not using such protections.

The dense and intimate living conditions of college life are perfect for such an experiment, says Dr. Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology at the university who is leading the study. Students there share sleeping quarters, bathrooms, hallways and dining areas.

"There is some anecdotal evidence from prior pandemic outbreaks that masks may have helped, but no firm data," Monto said in a statement.

Monto's team has begun handing out 800 cases of alcohol-based hand sanitizer in small bottles for students to carry, and larger pump bottles for their rooms. They will also distribute cotton masks held on by rubber bands over the ears.

Students in one group will use hand sanitizer and wear simple cotton surgical masks. Another group will use only the masks and a third group will get no extra protections.

They will use the products as soon as influenza is detected and reported among students.

The researchers will simply watch and see if the groups get influenza and related illnesses at different rates. The U.S. flu season generally starts in October and lasts through March, peaking in February.

"It's going to be a group effort, that's for sure," said Allison Aiello, an assistant professor of epidemiology.

The H5N1 flu remains mainly a disease of birds, but it has infected 270 people since 2003 and killed 164 of them. If it begins to spread as easily from person to person as seasonal flu, there will be no stopping a pandemic, experts say

I strongly encourage Freepers to lay in a large stock of hand sanitizer (1 qt bottles at Walgreens for $4 is a good bargain); ear loop masks; a supply of latex, plastic and rubber gloves; and a few pairs of clear shop glasses.

It has already been established in a smaller scale experiment that during the cold and flu season, by using hand sanitizer six times a day when out in public, you reduce your chance of catching the flu and colds by at least 60%.

It has been proven that most colds and flus are spread less directly by coughing and sneezing, but more by hand contamination.

Try it this year as an experiment. If you catch a cold or the flu this season, it is reasonable to assume that you have some behavior that puts you at risk. And with the avian flu, that means a high risk of death.

And I do mean high. The avian flu is the closest thing to a "perfect flu" that has ever been seen. It has maintained its mortality rate of more than 50% of cases, and everyone who catches it develops severe lung damage. There have been no examples of anyone who has just developed a "light" case.

The phenomenon of the "cytokine storm" has also been confirmed with this disease. This means that the bodies own immune system destroys the lungs while fighting the virus. And this damage is so pronounced that a doctor can tell from a chest x-ray if you will live or die. Younger, healthier people may be more at risk because of the cytokine storm effect.

Because of this lung damage, it is essential that victims of the disease have access to ventilators. However, nationally we only have 102,000 ventilators, or which 100,000 are in use during a normal flu season. This means that many people could die from preventable suffocation--oxygen deprivation to their internal organs.

Put it all together and several things can be said for sure:

1) A killer flu is almost inevitable. The avian flu is even far deadlier than the Spanish flu of 1918. It only needs one or two mutations to be able to transfer from humans to humans (h2h).

2) The flu should be able to travel around the world in two weeks to one month. It will be in the United States for one to two weeks before it is detected.

3) Once the CDC has a sample of the actual h2h virus, in six months at full production the US will only be able to produce 30 million vaccinations, or enough for 1 person in 10. Antivirals are generally regarded as ineffective.

4) The disease will turn into an epidemic in two major waves, with a long pause in between, for unknown reasons.

5) The US will do far better than most of the world, as we have high public awareness of hygiene and an excellent communications system. In quarantine areas, cities may use automated phone banks to periodically contact every residence with information and requests for assistance, which will multiply the effectiveness of emergency services.

6) There will most likely be few food or fuel shortages.

7) Businesses will be encouraged to have free hand sanitizer available at the front entrance to their business, and many public restrooms will be closed. Restaurants will be strictly supervised by Health Department.

8) Large public gatherings will be discouraged.

9) Mortuary services may be so strained that cremation is mandated.

10) The government has changed its vaccination policy from "The old, infirm, and the very young", to "Outbreak areas and school aged children". This is an earlier technique regarded as more effective for killer disease epidemics.

Put it all together and hand sanitizer, masks, gloves and clear glasses may not only be our best line of defense as individuals, but as a society. If it is an effective way of avoiding the disease, and avoiding spreading the disease, then it will also act as a "fire break", limiting the spread.

WHO and CDC experts have to assume that it is inevitable. And they are so utterly terrified of the possibility that doctors all over the world have forced into the attention of every government how very serious this is.

Even North Korea, which is in the middle of an ignored Typhus epidemic in at least one of its major cities, is scared of Avian Flu, and cooperating with the WHO to at least some extent.

Initially, the top epidemologist at WHO estimated that worldwide mortality could reach 300 million. However, he was overruled by the non-medical, non-scientist bureaucrat leaders of WHO, who ordered that estimation downgraded to 3 million. That is certainly reassuring.

However, he reached that 300 million estimate based on previous flus and known factors about the Avian flu. Since that time, several things have come to light:

1) Avian flu has maintained its greater than 50% mortality rate. This is very abnormal for disease progression. The Spanish flu mortality peaked at 20%.

2) The "Cytokine Storm" effect was only speculation before the Avian flu, but has since been proven. This explains much of its mortality, and means that young, healthy people are at greater risk of dying from the disease--as was noted with the Spanish flu.

3) The H5N1 designator can be explained as "H" is the factor used by the virus to invade a cell, and "N" is the factor the reproduced viruses use to break out of a cell.
There are seven "H" factors, but only H1, H2, and H3 have ever been in human flu strains, so H5 is brand new. No human has any immunity to it at all. Normally it takes a lot of contamination to infect a person; but much less will be needed because of this abnormality.

4) Unlike with normal flus, which concentrate in the upper trachea and sinuses, avian flu concentrates in the lower trachea. This is the one mutation that needs to happen for it to become easily h2h. However, the virus atypically grows in other internal organs, causing some damage to them--unlike other flus.

5) There may be a genetic factor to the disease. In one outbreak, a large family was wiped out, except for two women who lived with them, who were spouses, not blood relatives.

6) The disease also has a far larger range of animal vectors than most other diseases. Some birds do get mild enough forms of the disease so that they can carry it hundreds or thousands of miles. Other birds die in one day. It has great virulence among felines, and can spread cat-to-cat. But it also attacks canines, with a very different immune system. It is widespread in swine. It is yet unknown if it attacks horses, cattle and sheep. The critical animal is the ferret, which has an immune system very similar to humans. If there is a mass die-off of ferrets without a related mass die off of birds that they fed from, it most likely means the disease is now h2h.

That being said, besides killing many people, it could cause widespread malnutrition and even starvation by wiping out farm animals around the world.

On the plus side, there are several commonly available substances that may prove to be useful in protecting and defending against the Avian flu. These are all speculative:

1) Vitamin D (specifically D3, not D2), has been shown to stimulate the bodies' production of a chemical that erodes the outer coat of some viruses, killing them. Most people do not have the recommended amount of vitamin D in their body.

2) Ordinary cranberry juice, in quantity, has been shown to reduce adhesion of several viruses and bacteria to cells. If the virus or bacteria cannot stick, it cannot infect. (Note: most store cranberry juice is 27% juice, but 100% juice is also sold, at a proportionally higher price.) This effect only works in quantity, however, so a lot of juice must be consumed.

3) Several "free" metals have been shown to inhibit virus and bacterial reproduction, especially zinc. Unfortunately, ordinary zinc supplements are not readily uptaken by our sinus membranes. But one company, Cold-Eeze, found a proprietary form of zinc that is readily uptaken, and patented it. They are the only lozenge that has the cherished "Proven to reduce duration and severity of common colds and flu" on it.

Again, the best way of avoiding the flu is avoiding contamination.

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