Bird Flu.. Scary Thoughts

[Archer]

The Vancouver Sun News Paper 05.09.16

Who will recieve the anti-viral drugs that must be taken once per day for up to 12 weeks!!!

The First Group: consists of 600.000 health care workers, the first line of defence in a pandemic. Although their families will not be prioritized as well due to giving them the vaccine would not be logistically feasible or ethically justifiable?

The Second Group: One million essential service providers such as police, firefighters, the armed forces, key decision makers, funeral personnel, public transportation that transport essential goods such as food.

The Third Group: people at risk of dying and in sub-prioritized: 200.000 in nursing homes, 7,000,000 with high risk medical conditions, 1,000,000 additional people over age 65, children aged 6 months to 23 months, and 200,000 pregnant women.

Fourth and Fifth Groups: general populous would be vaccinated only if there is an adequate supply of vaccine: 8.7 million healthy adults and children 23 months to 18 years of age. Children at the lowest risk but play a major role in spreading the virus.

Bottom Line: If you are not in the first three groups you will likely be on your own until there is enough vaccine for the general population.

Statistics on Mortality Rates August 2005

Indonesia [ Vietnam [ Thailand [ Cambodia Deaths

Cases-1-Deaths-1 [ Cases-90-Deaths-40 [ Cases-17-Deaths-12 [ Cases-4-Deaths-4

Total:

Cases-112-Deaths-57 Stats provided by the World Health Organization.

[Guest zombieromero]

Wow!

[Darth Paul]

Yikes. If this thing hits, we're going to see once and for all what the human race is made of. Will we reach out and help each other? Or will paranoia and selfishness run rampant?

[Guest SouthernCelt]

Yikes.  If this thing hits, we're going to see once and for all what the human race is made of.  Will we reach out and help each other?  Or will paranoia and selfishness run rampant? 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If it's anything like "The Time is Now," we may have to take Frank's advice:

FRANK: In the Middle Ages, during the Black Plague, people used to gather their families – take them to the mountains – or the forest. They'd post guards encircling their camps, and they would kill anybody that appeared.

[hippyroo]

I wonder if I can get that drug in Mexico now?

[Guest SouthernCelt]

More craziness in the world of viruses...

New dog flu virus came from horses, experts say By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

Mon Sep 26,10:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new dog flu virus that has killed some racing greyhounds made an unusual jump from horses to dogs and may threaten pets but not people, experts said on Monday.

And the virus can also infect dogs without making them sick, meaning it is not as deadly as some reports have suggested, they said.

But studying it has important implications for understanding the H5N1 avian flu virus now devastating flocks of poultry and which has killed 65 people in four Asian nations since late 2003. (Emphasis added.)

The new dog virus is an influenza A virus called H3N8, a designation that describes two important proteins in the virus.

There is no evidence that it can infect people, said Dr. Ruben Donis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has published a report on the new virus in the journal Science.

"We must keep in mind that this H3N8 equine influenza virus has been in horses for over 40 years. In all these years we have never been able to document a single case of human infection with this virus," Donis told reporters in a telephone briefing.

"At this point there is no reason to panic," he said, adding that in lab dishes, anyway, the virus could be controlled with antiviral drugs."

Dr. Cynda Crawford of the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine first discovered the virus in greyhounds. It looked deadly at first.

"This virus can cause a respiratory disease that mimics a syndrome that we call kennel cough," Crawford told reporters.

"Kennel cough can be due to a myriad of infectious agents," she added, with a bacterial infection called Bordetella the most common cause.

MILD FORM OF DISEASE

Further checks have found the virus in dogs that were both ill and that seemed entirely healthy in Florida, New York and Massachusetts.

"Despite the rumours that are out on the Internet, this disease is not as deadly as people want to make it. Nearly all dogs are susceptible to infection ... about 80 percent of them will have a mild form of disease, characterised by cough and some nasal discharge that will resolve," she said.

It seems to have a mortality rate of between 5 and 8 percent, she said.

Donis said very few changes in the virus, in just a few of the amino acid building blocks of proteins, seemed to have allowed it to jump species from horses to dogs.

This was an "an unprecedented interspecies transfer", he said -- and would have implications for understanding the potential of H5N1 to begin infecting people easily.

And dogs could infect people with new viruses, too, the researchers theorised.

"Evidence of canine influenza infection in pet dogs, a primary companion animal for humans, raises the possibility that dogs may provide a new source for transmission of novel influenza A viruses to humans," they wrote in the Science report. (Emphasis added.)

Crawford said pet owners did not need to be unduly concerned yet.

"I am taking my two Pekinese to be groomed next week. I will continue to board my pet greyhounds at boarding kennels when I need to," she said.

She will even let her dogs play at dog parks, but said owners should exercise common sense and keep their pets inside when they have any respiratory disease for two weeks or so, both to allow them to fully recover and to protect other dogs.

[Archer]

Pandemics by the numbers

CTV.ca News

Every year, influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, causing respiratory infections in five to 15 per cent of the population. Those who die of the flu tend to be in high-risk groups such as the elderly, chronically ill.

These epidemics are thought to result in between three and five million cases of severe illness around the world and between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths.

In contrast, flu pandemics, which come from a completely new strain of virus, can cause illness in anyone, including healthy younger persons.

1918 – Spanish Flu

Approximately 20 to 40 per cent of the worldwide population became ill with Spanish Influenza. More than 20 million, and perhaps as many as 40 million people died.

Across Canada, as many as 50,000 died.

1957-58 – Asian Flu

Unlike the virus that caused the 1918 pandemic, the 1957 Asian Flu virus was mild and quickly identified, and a vaccine was available in limited supply by August 1957.

But worldwide, it still managed to infect 10 to 35 per cent of the population and kill almost 1 million people.

1968-69 – Hong Kong flu

The Hong Kong flu was even milder than the Asian flu and claimed 700,000 lives worldwide.

The next one

Canada’s Public Health Agency estimates that between 11,000 and 58,000 deaths may occur in Canada as a result of a new influenza virus, depending on its severity of the pandemic it causes.

Based on the assumption that the virus will infect between 15 and 35 per cent of the population, 4.5 million to 10.5 million Canadians would become ill.

Worldwide, the World Health Organization expects the next pandemic could kill at least two million people.

Are we ready for a flu pandemic?

By Angela Mulholland, CTV.ca News

It’s no secret that the world is overdue for an influenza epidemic. Epidemiologists have been warning for years that it’s just a matter of time before a new strain of the flu emerges that has the potential to kill millions.

Could the bird flu moving rapidly through Asia be that strain? Researchers aren’t sure but think it’s quite possible.

The H5N1 virus strain has killed millions of domestic and wild birds in Asia and has spread to mammals such as cats and pigs. It’s also killed more than 50 humans since an outbreak began almost two years ago.

What has epidemiologists worried is that the H5N1 strain may also be beginning to find a way to transmit human to human -- though researchers are wary of confirming that. There have been at least two cases in recent months in which someone with close contact with an infected patient came down the flu themselves, despite having no contact with infected birds.

Also worrying are the similarities this flu has with the last two flu pandemics of the last 100 years -- the 1957-58 and 1968-69 pandemics. Both began in Asia as avian influenzas that eventually took on genes from a human influenza virus.

Shigeru Omi, the head of the World Health Organization in Asia, believes it’s "highly likely" the H5N1 Asian bird flu will be the source of the next pandemic, unless concerted action is taken to eradicate it.

Yet controlling the Asian bird flu quickly seems unlikely. Just a year ago, experts in Asia spoke confidently about eradicating the virus. They now say it could take years to eliminate and admit they are struggling just to contain the disease.

If the H5N1 bird flu strain does “learn” to efficiently pass between humans, it could begin spreading rapidly like the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed more than 20 million people. The World Health Organization has warned that even in the best case scenario, the next pandemic will likely kill 2 to 7 million people.

WOW!!!!!

[Guest zombieromero]

WOW indeed!