Avian Flu - run for your lives!!!

[ClubMan]

So, Avian Flu, which has seemingly lead (directly or indirectly) to the deaths c. 60 people in Asia over the past few years could kill up to 50,000 people in the UK according to some expert or other. So those of us who were not already wiped out by global epidemics of AIDS, vCJD, Ebola, TB, SARS etc. are now under threat? Why do so called experts, the media and Governments engage in this sort of ridiculous scaremongering?!

 

[sherib]

Yes, the media seems to be going to town scaring people about Avian 'flu. These links provide the facts.
[broken link removed]
[broken link removed]

The experts say the risk to humans remains low but with three pandemics in the last century there have been concerns about another one being due for quite some time. According to the Director of the Health Protection Surveillance Centre in the past week, there has been no documented case so far of the virus jumping the species barrier as happened with SARS. That ended quickly enough thanks to global surveillance and safety measures.

 

[daltonr]

60 people die of the 115 infected out of a population of 1 Billion in Asia.
I'm pretty sure the common Flu that we all know and love kills more people than that.

Things that you are more likely to do than die from Avian Flu:

1. Go into Space (Almost 500 people and counting worldwide)
2. Get hit by lightning (1 in 240000)
3. Get killed on Irish roads (about 1 in 13,000 per year)
4. Contract pneumococcal disease (about 650-700 cases per year in
Ireland - Highest in Europe)[broken link removed]
5. Die of MRSA (Figures not known - They don't track such things)
6. Die because your local hospital isn't allowed to save your life
despite having the staff and the facilities (15 cases and counting)

The Last Word had Mary Lou McDonald of all people telling us what needs to be done. The IRA has killed more people in the last 2 years in Ireland than Avian Flu will in the next 100 years. Any chance Sinn Fein will
release the IRA Vaccine Mary Lou?????? Didn't think so.

Let's all cop ourselves on.

-Rd

 

[Decani]

My understanding is the damage it could do if it successfully mutates into a human version. But yes, you can see the pharmaceutical companies rubbing their hands thanks to govts buying in stocks of vaccine.

 

[Marie]

If battery-poultry was not reared in such appalling conditions of overcrowding, repeatedly dosed with antibiotics and after slaughter transported in often less than optimal conditions over vast distances there would be no danger of 'pandemic'! It amazes me these 'experts' keep referring to migrating wild birds which "might" (for God's saaaaaaaaaaaaake!) bring this to these islands from the Urals! Evidence-based science?

 

[ClubMan]

If battery-poultry was not reared in such appalling conditions of overcrowding, repeatedly dosed with antibiotics and after slaughter transported in often less than optimal conditions over vast distances there would be no danger of 'pandemic'!

Isn't it the case that viruses need live organisms to survive? In which case the transportation of dead battery hens would seem to have no bearing on the spread of something like Avian Flu?

From Wikipedia:

Because they use the machinery their host cells produce, viruses are difficult to kill.

 

[daltonr]

>there would be no danger of 'pandemic'!

There is some confusion about this fuelled mainly by the media referring to Avian Flu mutating into a human tranferable form.

We don't have to have a mutation of avian flu in order to have a flu pandemic.
That's just one way it could happen. A new strain of the human flu is far more likely to be the cause of the Pandemic.

Avian flu is a non issue as far as I'm concerned.

We're supposedly overdue a flu pandemic which could in theory kill millions. The last one did nearly a hundred years ago. You might say governments and media are right to be concerned that we're overdue. You might say that they're right to say that it's a case of WHEN not IF.

But isn't also possible that the reason why we're overdue a pandemic is that science has moved on, the ability to track strains, develop anti-virals, communicate and handle the logisitics of targetting drugs to contain outbreaks have all moved on.

We have a flu pandemic plan. The odds of one happening appear to be pretty small. Let's all stop wasting TV and Radio air time and newspaper columns talking about it and start discussing issues of some relevance.

There's nothing a government likes more than an electorate that's worried about something that isn't going to happen. It gives them a chance to spend time working on a plan that will never be tested, all the while noone is asking serious questions about real issues.

Heaven forbid any serious questions should be asked of the government in the run up to the FF Ard Fheis.

-Rd

 

[Marie]

>there would be no danger of 'pandemic'!

There's nothing a government likes more than an electorate that's worried about something that isn't going to happen. It gives them a chance to spend time working on a plan that will never be tested, all the while noone is asking serious questions about real issues.

Heaven forbid any serious questions should be asked of the government in the run up to the FF Ard Fheis.

-Rd

I enthusiastically endorse your perception on the covert political agenda DaltonR! This scare does seem strategically timed to divert from the burning social issues. However the information, approach and inferrences from the 60 human deaths is not in my view 'scientific'.

 

[daltonr]

However the information, approach and inferrences from the 60 human deaths is not in my view 'scientific'.

Oh I agree. The reports are of about 60 deaths LINKED TO Avian Flu.
We have no idea how tenuous the link is. These might be people who would have died from ANY Flu strain, i.e. if there were other complicating illnesses etc.

Does it strike anyone as odd that the various countries in Europe are competing with each other for drugs. Would it not make more sense to work out how much drugs would be need to to contain an outbreak in Europe and all chip in together to pay for it.

So if the outbreak happened in Spain, we could all send drugs there, and hopefully stop it spreading further, rather than hoarding drugs for ourselves.

What we need in Europe is some kind of Community where all the countries share and help each other. Some sort of European Union perhaps?!?!?

-Rd

 

[ophelia]

If battery-poultry was not reared in such appalling conditions of overcrowding, repeatedly dosed with antibiotics and after slaughter transported in often less than optimal conditions over vast distances there would be no danger of 'pandemic'! It amazes me these 'experts' keep referring to migrating wild birds which "might" (for God's saaaaaaaaaaaaake!) bring this to these islands from the Urals! Evidence-based science?

The thing is Marie 40 million died in 1918 long before antibiotics played a part in Avian flu. The only thing that stopped it then was because because it ran out of people.
My worry is that 60 deaths may well be WAAAAAAY of the mark. Chinese stats are historically inaccurate - or so the nice man on Sky News said. (Remember SARS).

 

[Purple]

This article from the New Yorker gives a good insight into the Flu and how the WHO and American Centre for Disease Control track the emerging virus strains.
Most Flu's originate in Asia and are derivatives of two genetic strains. The worry with the current strain of bird flu is that it is from another genetic family and so if it mutates into a human contagious form the base product that is currently used to produce flu vaccines will may not work.
Wild Ducks are the real bad guys here as they move all over the world and spread flu to domestic birds that can then infect mammals (particularly pigs). Once the virus has mutated into a form that affects pigs it is a small jump to humans.

While our ability to develop vaccines is hugely more advanced than it was in 1918 and the population in the western world is much healthier we must also realise that there is much more long distance mass movement of people so nasty viruses will spread faster.

 

[Sherman]

It should be remembered that the last pandemic was so devastating due to the populations of Western Europe being devastated by war, chronic food shortages, enormous numbers of war wounded, infrastructure in tatters, terrible hygiene, lack of antibiotics etc.

As pointed out above, we need to get real and stop getting ourselves into a tabloid/Murdoch-media induced panic about the potential of a pandemic.

I would call millions of Africans dying every year of Aids, hunger, and war a real and current pandemic. But of course they're not rich westerners who might possibly contract bird flu. Neither does their plight do much to sell newspapers or pull in the viewers.

 

[Bamhan]

Didn't avian flu kill more people than world war one in the early 1900's.
My grandmother aged 99 still refers to it.

 

[redstar]

Well said, Sherman, you've hit the nail-on-the-head there.

We've had all kinds of health scares recently - it seems that once any scientific research or concerns hit the mass media they get distorted for headlines and hijacked for political agendas.

 

[car]

Guy on dunphy this morning said the following.

The cure for the bird flu is being produced by one company alone. "Roche" ,(pronounced like roche in ferrera rocher), wont give the licence to other pharm companies to produce in its generic form and hence are the sole producers. Theyre dealing with the demand for the drug, called Tamiflu, on a by order basis and the Irish govt has apparently put in a large (about 25% of pop.) ahead of most other countries, 15% of the order will be delivered around the end of november, with the rest due next year.
See this for more details on roche and the cure.