HN51 aware?

[glatt]

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.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by glatt

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:

Global mortality rate from the flu was estimated at 2.5%–5% of the human population, and 20% of world population suffering from the disease to some extent. It spread across the world killing 25 million during six months; some estimates put the total killed at over twice that number, possibly even 100 million.

An estimated 17 million died in India, about 5% of India's population at the time. In the Indian Army, almost 22% of troops who caught the disease died of it. In US, about 28% of the population suffered, and 500,000 to 675,000 died. In Britain 200,000 died; in France more than 400,000. The death rate was especially high for indigenous peoples; entire villages perished in Alaska and southern Africa. In the Fiji Islands, 14% of population died during only two weeks, and in Western Samoa 22%. In Japan, 257,363 deaths were attributed to influenza by July 1919, giving an estimated 0.425% mortality rate, much lower than nearly all other Asian countries for which data are available.

The Spanish Flu may have killed 25 million people only in the first 25 weeks beginning in September 1918, while AIDS killed as many in its first 25 years.

Many cities, states, and countries enforced restrictions on public gatherings and travel to try to stop the pandemic. In many places theaters, dance halls, churches and other public gathering places were closed for over a year. Quarantines were enforced with little success. Some communities placed armed guards at the borders and turned back or quarantined any travellers. One U.S. town even outlawed shaking hands.

Even in areas where mortality was low, those incapacitated by the illness were often so many as to bring much of everyday life to a stop. Some communities closed all stores or required customers not to enter the store but place their orders outside the store for filling. There were many reports of places with no health care workers to tend the sick because of their own ill health and no able bodied grave diggers to inter the dead.

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.

[Kitsune]

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."

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

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.

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Obviously, H5N1 is so nasty that it would be better to take the shot,

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

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

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

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And third world?

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.

[busterb]

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.

Uhmmmm, PORK chops! 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?

[tw]

Originally Posted by tw

... 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. ... So where will the disease be a greater problem.

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.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by marichiko

I dropped in on it and people are talking about fleeing their homes! HUH?

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).

The boat is camo'd by some tomato plants I wisely planted on top last week. I must admit the anti fowl made it a bit hard for the roots to take so I may replace these with an old car wreck at some stage.

...

I have taken my kids out of school now and my wife has quit her job at the local chicken processing factory and we are hunkered down. Just in case we run out of supplies and have burried several caches of food magazines books etc about 50 miles in the bush away from our yard.

...

On top of the gate I have set a trap, a piece of board with nails sticking out of it that falls with gravity off the top of the gate if anyone trys to open it.

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.