Bird flu
The H5N1 bird flu seems to be continuing its steady spread around the planet, and along with it the muted panic of governments who are realising they are woefully unprepared.
The WHO has confirmed the presence of the H5N1 bird flu in Turkey and investigations into suspected cases in Romania continue. The obvious threat of it spreading further and eventually to United Kingdom is being reported in the Times, where a mass flu vaccination of children, the elderly and other vulnerable people is being planned.
The flu vaccine will do nothing to stop someone contracting H5N1, but it is hoped that by stopping people getting the regular flu the bird flu virus will not have a chance to come into contact with it and mutate to something that can be transmitted human to human.
But in all reality none of the experts know whether it will mutate and, if it does, whether this mutated version will be a virulent as the present version.
So while most people mark time waiting to see what will happen next, scientists are busily working on developing a vaccine or treatment and many governments are preparing their health systems.
In Australia for example the Government has announced it plans to get 300 extra ventilators into hospitals to cope with the severe respiratory problems the bird flu causes.
Here, the latest version of the Yellow Pages contains instructions for what to do in a pandemic.
I am wondering about one thing I have recently read. Many New Zealanders who become ill during a pandemic will be expected to care for themselves at home. See here.
According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention 51 percent of the 117 cases reported in Asia between January 2004 and October 10 2005, proved to be fatal. Now I’m going to take a wild guess, as I don’t know for sure, but most of these cases are likely have been treated in hospitals and, despite the constant attention of highly qualified people like doctors, 60 still died.
The virus can cause a variety of ailments including severe respiratory distress and pneumonia. Just how many people would survive with these conditions if they were treating themselves at home is questionable.
Sue Kedgley has made several calls for preparations to be sped up. I agree. It would be criminal for people to be left in their homes without medical help.
PS. I note there has been an absolute lack of study into whether frogs are susceptible to bird flu. This leaves me wondering whether or not I should be hopping aound in a panic.
October 14th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
The fact that 51% of the known cases have been fatal is not in itself a cause for panic. Those who caught it were likely to have been immune compromised to begin with and are thus not representative of the general population. Furthermore, the number of people who have caught it, survived, and were never diagnosed is unknown and is likely to be much larger than 117.
October 14th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Don’t worry frog,
God will look after you (despite the prayers of the EB).
You must stay alive and well.
You have become very important in the scheme of things.
eredwen
October 14th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
yes yesterday’s Herald made worrying reading with both the ‘if you get Bird Flu you’re on your own story’ and a similar one from civil defence chiefs, saying if an earthquake, volcano or New Orleans style hurricane hits NZ,
you’re on your own.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10349984
October 14th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
True, but that’s not a change in policy or anything, it’s just facing facts. If Wellington gets hit with a major earthquake I’m not expecting anyone to come help me for a while - the whole place will be a complete mess.
While I personally consider me quite a priority, I don’t really expect everyone else to hold me in quite the same regard.
October 14th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
Frog: I do not know about bird flu but my knowledgeable son tells me that you should beware of Roundup: lethal to batrachians!
October 14th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
What worries me is that people seem to think the 72 hrs of self sufficiency is a new message. It’s not. It has been in the yellow pages etc. for as long as I can remember. Reporters flying in to the latest big disaster to document the “lack of aid” may make for compelling viewing but they also promote the perception that it is the exception rather than the rule.
October 14th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
Predicting the evolutionary path of the H5N1 virus is like reading tea leaves. No-one (even us evolutionary virologists) has a clue (1) whether it will become human-human transmissible, and (2) how virulent it will be if it does. JamesP is absolutely right that there is no evidence the 117 are representative of the general population, so the proportion of deaths is not very useful as a predictor. It is likely to be lower in the event of a pandemic. Nevertheless, the 1917-18 Spanish flu did kill something like 40 million people. Whether or not H5N1 causes a pandemic, is virtually inevitable that we will have another bird flu pandemic at some time in the future.
Nevertheless as scientifically predictable threats to human life go, I would have thought that global climate change and worldwide environmental degradation were ultimately far more lethal.
October 14th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
greengage
Avoiding Roundup is one of my highest priorities!
JamesP
True, there may have been many more cases than that which have gone unidetified, but I still think those numbers indicate that it is not a pleasant illness and certainly not something that should be treated with a take two pain killers and go home attitude.
If we have time now to prepare for a pandemic, let use it, rather than sticking our heads in the sand and hoping it won’t happen. If H5N1 doesn’t make it here, or cause any problems, then it’s possible there could be another pandemic along sometime soon - or an earthquake, or some other kind of natural disaster.
We’ll all be much better off if we’re personally ready, and if our health services have the resources they need.
October 14th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
Diseases that jump species seem to be much more powerful than their original counterpart. Consider HIV from monkeys, and CJD from cows.
October 14th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
The reason for cross-species transmissions creating diseases that are very pathogenic is still poorly understood. But the general trend is that they get less pathogenic the longer they are in the new species. However this is usually over the space of hundreds of years, which isn’t really relevant for a bird flu pandemic which would be over in months or years.
Also, there are tons of diseases people catch from animals all the time without them being very dangerous (like cow-pox in milk maids) or else without us even knowing it at all. Viruses are hopping from one species to another very frequently. We just like to focus media attention on the really dangerous ones obviously.
October 14th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu) can mutate from a benign influenza virus in chicken farms. This has happened in the Netherlands and Canada, which both had an outbreak of a different strain than the Asian H5N1 virus. According to communications I got from health Canada, their epidemic was traced to a factory farm.
Factory farms are bird flu epidemics waiting to happen. Under cramped, crowded conditions, with unhealthy birds and weak immune systems, influenza viruses will be incubated in greater numbers and will therefore have a greater chance of mutating to the pathogenic form. It is human addiction to cheap meat that is causing the pandemic.
October 15th, 2005 at 12:16 am
Tell you what, chicken meat is about to get really cheap where I’m sitting.
The virus is now killing wild birds on the Danube. Depending on migratory patterns, it will surely reach the Rhône and the Loire within weeks.
(Apparently cooking kills the virus reliably…?)
A question for the specialists : if wild fowl are the vector of transmission from one country to another, then free-range chooks would seem to be more at risk than factory ones?
October 15th, 2005 at 10:57 am
I agree with the previous comment that we should all have some degree of disaster prepapredness; tinned food, candles, stored water (keep some frozen, it wil replace your fridge for the first 24 hours while it melts) and spare blankets are the minimum; big buckets, a gas primus or similar, torches, transistor radio, spare batteries for all the electricals, are all recommendations that have been promoted by CD ever since I was a child. These are also valid for the much more likely earthquake scenario!
A pandemic ‘flu of the 1918 variety is unlikely to kill as many in this millenium, simply due to better general health education and dissemination of information, but the possibility of Polio epidemic (1950’s) style isolation of the susceptible, closing of schools and places of community congregation, is a valid thought to consider.
How would our society cope under those conditions? Would essential sevices be exempt? How much business could be done by teleworking? How would we rebuild society if huge chunks of occupational skills were lost due to culling of, say “the working classes”, as a result of susceptibility due to long-term pre-existing poor health conditions? Should we be preparing by creating a buffer to infection by targeting children and old people whose caloric intake and living conditions compromise their immunological strength? A little extra now could save thousands in medical expenses down the track.
Asking more questions than I give answers, yes, but sometimes we ignore the questions because we don’t have an answer that fits.
October 15th, 2005 at 11:09 am
It will also pay to temper the fears we have of a repeat of the 1918 epidemic by recalling that the single most important factor that protects public health is the provision of safe drinking water and the treatment of sewerage. Because we are blessed with both in this country we are far less vulnerable than we were in 1918.
Closely related to this is that most flu infections are transimitted by contact; by contrast air-borne transmission is usually a less potent factor.
Clean water, safe food, good hygiene and compelling most people to stay at home will go a long way to protecting us. Panic is not needed, sane preparations will suffice.
October 15th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
How many people die from flu in a typical year anyway?
I think the figure is quite high.
Maybe 400 in Aotearoa a year? would that be right?
October 17th, 2005 at 9:52 am
Frog,
Frog’s are not susceptible to any form of influenza that I’m aware of (but I’m just a lay-person who’s read a few books).
In case of a true pandemic it’s secondary issues that’ll get ya. Breakdown of infrastructure is quite possible if too many people are sick/dead/dying (or, more likely, staying home because going to work can get you infected and dead - and going to work and then home can get your kids infected and dead). After that it gets bad: localised breakdowns of electricity and/or water supplies, panic responses aimed at wild bird populations hitting the rest of the environment, pollution from graves or chemical dumping, etc. We haven’t seen a pandemic hit a truly modern infrastructure before. It could be extraordinarily bad.
Then again, it may not happen. Just like my house catching fire is unlikely to happen.
But I’ve got sensors and fire insurance just in case. I think our govt is currently failing to have a good ‘insurance policy’ in place for pandemic.
October 17th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
“A question for the specialists : if wild fowl are the vector of transmission from one country to another, then free-range chooks would seem to be more at risk than factory ones?”
Free range chooks may be more likely to be exposed to the virus, but that does not mean they are more likely to transmit the virus. Free range chooks are kept at a lower density than battery chooks, and are healthier and therefore more likely to throw off any effects of the virus before clinical symptoms appear, and before it can be transmitted.
Battery chooks on the other hand are in the same position as Londoners in Victorian England, and you know how quickly disease spread there once it was introduced. I am also not convinced that they cannot be exposed to disease. There are rats, cockroaches, blowflies and other vermin in battery operations, and any one of these could have been rolling in bird poo before entering the factory.
Also remember that the organisation speading the story that free range chooks are more at risk is the Egg Producers Federation. This is the same organisation that lied about the layer hen code of welfare, stating that the industry had no input into the code and then threatening NAWAC with legal proceedings if NAWAC altered “their” code. This is the same organisation that spent an obscene amount of money lobbying the government to change its mind on the layer hen code, so that the government has now made the absurd statement that keeping hens in a space less than an A4 sheet of paper has no detrimental effect on their welfare.
Finally, this is the same organisation that has done their best to bankrupt free range farmers through the commodity levies act, by forcing ridiculous compliance costs on to them.
So I would not trust the EPF if they told me the sky is blue; I would check first to make sure it had not changed colour when my back was turned.
October 17th, 2005 at 8:51 pm
If you want to read about the real insanity associated with bird flu, read this:
http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/001689.html
Nothing more fun than dying to ensure that patent rights are protected.
October 17th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
er - I don’t know about elsewhere in Asia, but in Cambodia it is highly unlikely the reported numbers of cases (4) or deaths (4) is remotely accurate.
As to ‘constant attention of highly qualified people like doctors’ - yeah right, as I believe you still say.
Out in the provinces, births and deaths are often not reported, and the ones attributed to bird flu would have been discovered more by accident than design.
I don’t know, but taking a wild guess I’d say the same is true for most of the region.
But if you want to live in the 117th most livable city in the world, you gotta have some drawbacks …
Don
Phnom Penh
May 6th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Here’s a detailed new article that confirms what others have said before - that the theory that wild birds spread bird flu doesn’t hold any water and the real cause of bird flu is factory farming:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Fowl-Play-in-Bird-Flu.php