HN51 aware?
 

The alarm won't go away this time! Europe is finally switching on to the threat of highly human-infective HN51 (Bird Flu) as it gets closer and closer to our shores.

Predictions of 750,000 deaths in UK alone are putting this one on a par with the flu outbreak of 1918 (Spanish Flu) which claimed 200,000 lives in the UK and 600,000 in the USA. Vaccines that could protect against the curent strain have been developed, but time to market is likely to see these arrive too late to catch the expected epidemic and by the time it is here the strain will have mutated anyway rendering it useless (or so the medics say). Death occurs normaly within 48 hours of symptoms - the young seem mpore at risk than the elderly.

Our government is turning a blind eye to the current wave of publicity and has no battle plan in place or on the cards it seems.

How about in the USA? Ready or not? Generally aware or uninformed?

Well, I hadn't heard of it until reading your post. Out in my part of the world people worry about Hanta virus (carried by rodents like ground squirrels) and, yes, the bubonic plague which is endemic in New Mexico and also carried by rodents. Last year squirrels with the plague were discovered as far north as Colorado Springs.

I will now begin shooting all humming birds on sight. :eek:

Your hand-eye coordination isn't that good, but it might be a good excuse for when you decide to shoot the axe murderer. "But officer, I missed the plague-ridden hummingbird and he was just standing there."

Cycle, they said the same thing to us about SARS.

How this disease advances is rather interesting. It does not just move west or east. Birds carry it south where they infect other birds. These second birds return north next season, but a little more west. The next year those birds go south and infect more bird who, in turn, go back north but a little more west. IOW the disease tends to move north and south significantly while moving slowly east or west.

Activity has intensified in understanding bird migration patterns.

Yes, but you have to admit they took some extraordinary precautions with SARS. Plus it's easier to quarantine people than birds. :)

Indeed it has:

Green Card or Bird Flu ?!?! :worried:

Oh, and better watch out for your puddy tat , too! :mg:

H5N1 maybe instead of HN51 - Sunday paper comprehensive article (3 pages)
 

Allowing for some hyping by the media this article in yday's Sunday Times on the bird flu is reasonably factual - it runs to 3 pages - pages 2 and 3 give more solid background. Also references and links to other articles appearing in the paper on this subject.

Bird Flu
 

Hi. I'm concerned about the bird flu and have been reading about it for several years now. Last night on network tv, there was a story telling warning the US that is was coming - Prime Time / ABC.

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/Inve...1130392&page=1

Here's some more interesting links about the bird flu:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165009,00.html

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/cheal/message/279

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian.../en/index.html

hi there, new hippie. welcome to the cellar. I have a few questions for you:

1. How many roads must a man walk down?

7. What is the opposite of 'above me'?

5. Do think I'm pretty?

4. If there were no such thing as shoes, would we do more swimming?

2. What is the sound of one elephant clapping?

14. What's brown and sticky?

3,978,432. If you get 23mpg from high test gas at $3.39 per gallon, and 19mpg from regular at $2.99 per gallon, which is more cost effective?

9. Where's the beef?

C. What is your Quest?

XXII. Is a blowjob in the parking lot out of the question?

Got your canned tuna and powered milk stashed under your bed?

Ain't that lovely.

As far as I can tell, no one yet knows how and when (notice, no 'if') this strain will mutate such that it transfers as an airborne virus from one human to another (the worst case scenario).

Right now the strain only transfers between birds and aparently not all species - most susceptive are chicken, turkeys, ducks and other waterborne birds suggesting that it may transfer via water contamination. It has certainly moved quickly into Europe, with isolated (if we believe government reporting) cases in France alreday - some say it is already in the UK but a lid is on this fact being published.

Human infection so far has arisen through ingesting infected animal blood or other tissue, not from breathing the same air.

The chance that the virus will mutate to become airborne between humans is a relatively big jump, as is the option that it mutates into something extremely fatal as opposed to having its potency alternatively reduced and becoming an extension of an existing flu virus, maybe more virulent but not as fatal as it otherwise could be.

What alarms everyone is that should the worst case scenario arise then it will spread like wildfire. Given that we cannot really begin to manufacture an effective vaccine until it mutates, that leaves our governments and scientists with a teensy-weensy little problem....

All still too many unknown quantities at this stage, and there's not much we can do to prevent its arrival anyway, only hope that where it is possible to take steps to reduce the spread amongst birds (such as keeping stock inside barns and therefore isolated) that these are strictly followed. Trouble is that there will likely always be some farmers of chickens, turkeys and the like who will fail to do this - that's what feeds the concerns that it will get out of control. And we have only just about recovered from the BSE epidemic that spread because of such a problem a few years back....

True on both counts, but having its potency reduced isn't necessarily a good thing. Right now, something like 50-75% of the people infected can expect to die a fairly rapid death. But at least they if they die quickly, they won't go on to infect others. If the potency drops down to something like 5%, which is what the Spanish Flu was, then you can expect those 95% who don't die to walk around infecting others. The percentage of those who die of the infection may be lower, but the total number of dead can be much much higher.

Also, the chance that the virus will mutate so it can spread between humans is a huge jump, as you said. But the real danger isn't that it will happen once the birds in the West get infected. Here in the West, we keep our poultry in barns and can isolate them pretty easily. In Asia, the poultry is kept outside a lot more. And there are millions of domestic fowl in Asia. You can think of each one as a petrie dish, where an experimental strain improvement program is going on. If it mutates in Asia, it will spread from human to human like wildfire. No part of the world will be safe.

It really doesn't look too good.

I spend a fair bit of of time wondering if I should stock up on food. I figure I'd need about 2-4 months worth. That's a lot of food. And it ain't cheap. If I go that route, then I have to consider how much I'd be willing to defend that food in a real crisis, and do I plan for that by going out and getting a gun today? It would make sense to. I just really don't want to start down that path. I'm not the loony survivalist type.

That's a bit much. Even the people that survived the pandemic of 1918 didn't survive because they holed up with a gun and food for months. Just wash your hands, man, and no more stealing that random kid's candy unless they haven't shoved it in their mouth, yet.

Or, in layman's terms: "chicken = daycare center"

If it's the same in the USA as here in the UK, then there are many individuals around who keep chickens, ducks and geese in very small numbers and these tend to roam outside. It's knowing that the message and instructions to isolate such collections, keeping them under cover, could fail to be acknowledged or heard that presents the achilles heel here.

Most UK commercial poultry farmers have too much to lose to ignore government instructions and recommendations - in fact those that normally would have to protect their organic and free range status by allowing their birds to roam have already been given dispensation to keep them under cover without affecting this status - a safeguard to address this otherwise high-risk categorisation requirement.

The 10 second rule is repealed.;)

Between this and the recent mad cow sighting, I can only ask:

How's being vegetarian sound?

;)

A bear and a chicken were arguing in the woods,
Bear "I'm the toughest in the woods I growl and the whole woods shits themselves in fear".

Chicken " That's fuck all,I sneeze and the whole country shits themselves in fear".

:D

It's the same. I've got a flock of chickens here doing the free range thing. I'll have to off the whole bunch if things get ugly. :( This is that weird case where the pathetic chickens stuffed in little cages with their beaks ground is healthier than running around in the grass. We've never had migratory fowl in close proximity so we're probably cool but I'm going to stay educated on it. We already do the barn boots don't leave the farm thing...

The Tower of London Ravens have been moved indoors.

Apparently, if they die the sun sets on the British Empire or something.

I think our current government have already beaten them when it comes to to achieving that

Anyone who is worried about bird flu and who has a domestic cat that they allow to roam out of doors might want to take a lesson from the Tower of London's ravens and, also, confine kitty indoors. Bird flu has already been discovered in the cat-like civet and could easily spread among populations of domestic cats both here and in Europe. I wanted to make my little (well, now Big!) Siamese an indoor cat, but he's quite the sly escape artist and sometimes eludes me to go out on adventures. Yesterday he made an escape and returned with a single downy bird feather stuck to the corner of his mouth. The little rapscallion!

If he starts sneezing, run.

That could just be feathers up his nose.;)

[Tyler Durden voice] Sticking feathers up your butt does not mean you have bird flu [/Tyler Durden voice]

Ref link

I'm pretty close to ordering 4 N100 filter masks just in case. Otherwise, if there were an outbreak, it could be weeks before anything beyond those cheap disposables would be available.

I'm thinking about getting home delivery for beer :smack:

It's called H5N1
 

It is a good thing that governments are taking care to prepare for a possible threat. But then we have to put that threat into perspective. Previous versions of the disease that did pass into to humans were the types H1, H2, and H3. They caused humans to get sick in 1918, 1957, and 1968. What was the solution? Better health practices. Wash hands. Wash down things that people touch. When the epidemic was so catastrophic, people also did not practice these essential cleaning practices.

So where will the disease be a greater problem. Obviously among those who daily work with birds. But also where good health practices are not exercised. The H5 type could be a problem. But moreso, it will show us where we are not down our jobs to stay clean and healthy. That this virus would be any more disastrous than others is mostly about getting people to practice normal precautions.

I've been wondering about this, myself, and I've noted that no media coverage has discussed the sanitation differences between 1918 and today.

An interesting tidbit I gathered from the PBS documentary on the 1918 flu: the reason the most affected people were healthy, young adults was not because the virus somehow targeted these people, but because it was most likely that the elderly had developed a resistance to that strain of flu thanks to an outbreak of a similar flu several decades earlier.

A common thread in these calming replies is that we all just need to wash our hands and we will be fine. That's obviously good advice, but if it's airborne, washing hands won't be enough. Especially if you find yourself out in public.

I ride the Metro to work every day. I'm stuck in a large tin can with about 50-100 strangers for about 15 minutes each morning and evening. I would either need to stay home, wear an N95 mask, or ride my bike to work. I already have a box of 20 masks, which will get me through about one month. I probably need another two boxes to be safe. When I get to work, I'm in a building with about 750 people. The hallways aren't mobbed or anything, but the possibility of running into an infected person would be real. So do I leave my mask on all day long? I guess so. It would suck.

The other options? Staying home is probably crazy, but that's where the food horde would come in handy. Riding my bike would mean tuning up my old Schwinn Varsity and taking my life into my hands. Plus, I'd still need a mask at work.

The 1918 flu took 18 months to run its cycle. Staying home that long is not only an unpleasant experience, I'm also not sure that it is really possible.

Some really impressive figures on the 1918 H1 strain:

But, hey, let's keep this happy. H5N1 has been around for more than ten years and we still haven't seen a shift to humans or swine, yet. It may never happen. H5N2 came and went in 1983 and forced the US to kill millions of poultry in farms, but few people took notice.

The bottom line is that its a virus, and science is still not very good at fighting viruses yet, although new discoveries are being made all the time. I think public awareness is vital, but public hysteria is counter-productive. All one can do is to take the necessary precautions - washing hands and possibly wearing masks if there is an actual out-break and assume a fatalistic attitude. A pathogen which kills its host is not a successful organism. Viruses mutate at an astonishing rate and strains which are the least virulent will actually be the ones that get selected for. Hold on to that hopeful thought.

Something to consider:

Each year, the flu comes around and everyone rushes around in an attempt to get a vaccine. I did the flu shot for two years and you end up feeling like crap for a couple days. Out of all my other years without the shot, I've only had the flu twice and I've elected to just let the fever climb and burn it off. You're miserable for a couple days, but I find it better to be extremely miserable for a couple days rather than drag it out to a full week by popping aspirin and such. I opt to bypass the shot because of the effects and I would just rather deal with the low odds of actually catching the illness.

Anyways, if they did develop a vaccine, would you take it? Flu shots have a certain rate of complication, some of them severe, and sometimes taking the shot is worse than actually catching the illness. Obviously, H5N1 is so nasty that it would be better to take the shot, but what if everyone takes it, a certain percentage of people die from it, and H5N1 never ends up posing a threat to humans? Should we delay the shot until we see the flu being passed from person-to-person, or is it possible that we'll not have enough warning to give it out, in time?

Frankly, I am not that impressed by flu shots. People die from the shots, too, and by time the pharmaceutical industry has ramped up to provide enough vaccine against the latest virus, the virus has mutated again. I've taken the shots a couple of times and gotten sick from them both times. I've avoided the shots and not gotten the flu. At this point I prefer to play the odds and avoid the shots.

BTW, my new nickname for my kitty after that feather incident is "Typhoid Tabby."

National Geographic did an excellent article on this last year. They had a graph that showed the spread in various cities and the number of dead in each city over time. The entire epidemic took 18 months or so to run it's course globally, but each individual city went through a peak of infections and deaths that lasted about 2 months. You could easily see how the cities fell individually like dominos.

That was before airlines and widespread world travel. I predict that a global outbreak would take a couple of weeks to spread to all cities of the industrialized world, and then about 2 months or so in each one of those cities to run its course. It would be a whirlwind.

Nasty, yes. But isn't it the very old and very young that are likely to die, like other flus?:confused:

Supposedly 50%+ mortality rate for healthy adults, but the problem these numbers are probably skewed since there are plenty of people that got sick from H5N1, got better, and never sought out the help of a doctor.

And third world? :confused:

So far, people are NOT catching it from other people. According to the CDC there have been isolated instances of one person catching it from another, but the spread seems to stop with that. No one has gone on to catch it from a second person who was infected. Some folks in Vietnam, I think, caught it from eating uncooked duck's blood (yuck!), and a few poultry handlers have caught it. Civets have caught it (also in Vietnam), but the Civets in the next cage didn't. Go figure. So far, the virus is NOT doing well in spreading to human hosts.

Hey Mari. Who does the CDC work for, Bush or the VP? Hell Iraq had it all a long. Hey I know that was a shitty shot, so I'm headed to cook pork chops. the other white meat that can't fly. BTW I just stopped in to look at one post. But that never happens. :smack:

Uhmmmm, PORK chops! :yum: I dunno who ANYONE in the gov't works for these days! However, if you want to join a discussion group that covers everything you always wanted to know about bird flu and more, there's one out there. I dropped in on it and people are talking about fleeing their homes! HUH? :crazy:

So many people did not die in 1957 and 1968 because we hyped the end of the world? No. So why do we hype Armageddon today? Maybe because English majors posing as reporters cannot put science into perspective? Or maybe because religious extremists look forward to a second coming of Christ?

H5N1 is an interesting story of something that the medical profession must watch and make preparations for. How serious is it? We have previous data - 1957 and 1968. It is not the disease that we should worry about. Again return to lessons from history. After being told the levees would be breached and with a hurricane bearing down on New Orleans; what did this president do? He went to California for a campaign fund raiser. With the USS Bataan sitting off New Orleans waiting to rescue Americans, then how long did it take this leader to make a decision? Five days the Bataan waited for a presidential decision. Five days for a president to decide people needed rescue. Therein lies any threat from H5N1. Don't let the hype fool you. History says danger *lies* from where 85% of all problems are created - and where PDBs warning of 11 September don't even get read.

With responsible leadership and a medical community that has already studied and prepared for H5N1, then risk should not be significant. But planning requires assistance from responsible leadership. What do we call a ship without a rudder? Well, hell - this one does not even have a sane captain. Who cares about a missing rudder? The threat is a captain who invents enemies where they don’t exist and who cannot even acknowledge reality - that levees will be breached. This is a leader who will respond to an H5N1 threat? Only if god tells him to. After all, does the president even know the difference between a virus and bateria? History says probably no. And since we are all heathens, therein *lies* the real threat from H5N1.

Not for one minute am I facetious. There is only one reason to worry about H5N1. From history, the disease should be trivial. But then we have this leadership with history that says, “Worry not about the disease”. Worry about why failure happens - and those who would vote for such people. These are the same people who say only god can decide whether you have children and when you can die. Worry about the real reason why H5N1 could be a problem.

Thank you, Mari, for a great source of entertainment. The people on that forum are... a bit "out of it". This guy is talking about how he has an overturned boat he's planning to hide his family under when the "shtf" (you'll see this acronym at least five times in each post).

I wonder if my boss would be okay with me taking an extended vacation for H5N1 or maybe Peak Oil...

H5N1 becomes a problem if two things happen: The virus mutates to the point where it can easily replicate in a human host, and the virus mutates to the point where it can be transmitted via the air. Right now, the humans who have contracted the disease have practically had to beg on bended knee for the virus to come on over for a visit. They've had to ingest raw poultry, muck around with feces and intestines, and french kiss mallards. Once they've finally contracted the disease, they've had to do much the same sorts of things with their own bodily fluids to convince the pathogen to take on a second human host, At this point, the virus says, "No more humans for me, give me a nice, tasty coot!

Certainly, the virus, being a virus, could change its modus operandi. Scientific and health organizations world wide are monitoring the critter to see what it decides to do. If you think Bush is forcing scientists at the CDC to fake their data, you can alawys check out the WHO website, or the Brits or Scandanaviams. The Swiss would probably be safest of all, and every global group is so far in agreement with the CDC, as far as I can tell.

Avian flu may or may not turn out to be a problem. There are also a zillion to the Nth degree pathogens out there in the big wide world, one of which, may actually one day become responsible for the next pandemic. After all, who would have ever imagined that a few monkeys in Africa and a French gay airline steward would be responsible for all the suffering and deaths of the AIDS epidemic?

Lets say for the sake of argument that bird flu did mutate and was 50% lethal. Flu does not have that long an incubation period. The epicenter of the new strain is, lets say, Istanbul. For two days international travelers fly out of Istanbul, then the grim reaper hits. Passengers from those flights are quarantined at once. Anyone who has come into contact with those passengers is quarantined, also.

This is where Bushco's government comes into play. Modern communication techniques, adequate numbers of hospital beds, public awareness - could all limit the damage done by any possible out-break. Will our leadership act decisively in the event of such an occurence? Good question. Katrina and 9/11 do not exactly inspire me with confidence.

Much as I love blaming the French for anything, Gaetan Dugas, widely identified as "Patient Zero" was French Canadian.

The French end up being as close to good guys as you can get in the AIDS story, being the first to successfully isolate and identify the virus.

Ebola is probably higher risk than H5N1, unless the Avian flu gets better at crossing the species barrier. That eola shit is really a lot scarier, even given that the infectious process tends to burn itself out rather quickly once it's identified and infection control procedures are followed to the letter. At least Ebola isn't airborne.

Ebola while horrifically contagious is easy to contain since the incubation period is so short. Its those looooooooong incubation period diseases that are cause for concern.

I have to confess that I haven't really kept up with this thread except to note that H5N1 is pretty much going to spread itself everywhere. How "incurable" is it and how "fatal" is it. I have trouble comparing it to the 1918 epidemic since, back then, some - maybe even a lot - regarded epidemics in certain areas to be "nature's housecleaning." I'm not sure the conditions which allowed that to happen exist anymore.

Depends on whether it's "us" or "them", that's dying.;)

They don't exist at all, I would guess. We tended to stay put in our own countries back then - hard to see how containment will be achieved with very man and his uncle flying left, right and centre these days....

Unfortunately, when too many reporters use English major logic rather than principles taught in junior high school science, then we have a history lesson. BTW, this is also why we have editors and anchormen - to hold those reporter's 'feet to the fire'. Early 1980s projections said we would all be dead today. IOW English major logic used linear estimations. We know the world is exponential. Aids followed the exponential curve which is why Aids deaths leveled off.

Unfortunately, the level defined for Africa has not yet reach equilibrium AND is much higher than compared to more educated nations. With even the George Jr administration now banning condom distribution in Africa as a condition for assistance, this has only increases what should be the leveling point.

The point being that those details must be understood before a reporter can accurately report. Too many English majors don't have sufficient grasp of logic to accurately report on AIDs - or on H5N1. Their inability to grasp the details results in hype.

I take your point TW, but there is the question: is AIDS directly comparable to a fatal air-borne/spread virus?

True we don't have air-borne H5N1 yet, but that is the scenario that frightens most. Under those circumstances it's hard to see how the exponential curve would mirror that of AIDs both in volume and in timescale, the difference being that a disease that can be curtailed by the direct influence that the educated individual can self-impose on their hygiene and living habits is different from that where the virus will not permit itself to be discriminated against in such a way.

I can see that imposed incubation would have the ability to flatten the curve over time, but set against that is the immediate and rapid increase in damage and spread that would result from an air-borne virus. The way we live our normal lives is counter-active to containment. Humans mix too much both nationally and internationally.

The curve would certainly flatten on three counts: as a result of the number of fatalities reducing the pool of susceptible hosts, upon the introduction and dissemination of a workable vaccination, and through incubation where this was viable/possible - but all this would take time. If the virus turns into something both instantly transmittable and at the same time is extremely aggressive, it looks to me that the ride would be a very ugly one for some considerable time. But once again I admit, this is worse case scenario.

More than happy therefore to have the above interpretation and resultant concerns grounded... (maybe I shouldn't have read Stephen King's 'The Stand')

Even if airborne, there's not a really good comparison ... AIDS kills over a span of years, H5N1 over a matter of days or weeks.

A paper from the New England Journal of Medicine on H5N1 that's actually fairly readable.

Yet another reason for eschewing civet cat "coffee".
Somewhere in this meaty thread someone did mention that Rumsfeld owns major stock in Tamiflu? He is like the Cigarette-Smoking Man in the X-files series--going to profit from the demise of civilization. anyway--I'm not too terribly worried about the birdflu. I'm more worried about driving in this snow we are getting right now.

Which only changes time scales and does not change the trend. The trend - whether by airborne or by contact - whether it is a fast killer or takes years - is still an exponential curve. Not a linear curve as the naive insisted. Again, using projections that were linear, then we are all dead from AIDs. That is the problem when reporters do not approach logic with what was taught in junior high school science. That is the problem when logic sufficient for fiction novels is used to report on science and reality.

Little details that some reporters never quite understood during AIDs predictions are that disease, like most things in nature, follow exponential curves. Diseases would be exponential whether transmission is airborne or other. To deviate from those exponential trends would require other outside influences. For example, a miracle drug would sharply change that curve. But the naive, instead, jump to linear assumptions.

I, for one, will be forsaking sex with poultry for the duration of this emergency.

And what about those meals that are better than sex? ... (A sign of age.)

A sign of age, indeed. I can think of at least two meals that are better than sex. I can't wait till I can think of ten. I can't wait until I no longer CARE about sex. Old age--freedom!

Depends on the meal, and depends on the sex, has nothing to do with age.

H5N1 is killed by cooking, anyway.

Well that goes without saying. Anyone who has the guts to fool around with you isn't chicken.:lol:

Did I miss something here? Did wolf just say she is looking forward to menopause? (Question asked safely out of sniper range.)