July 20 Flu Update
The big "news" today is that the National Academcy of Science says that ducks might spread the bird flu--silently, like trojan horses (or ducks, says the wags). And their migratory patterns make them excellent spreaders of virus.CIDRAP on the ducks.
The Indonesians are talking about containing flu on farms where it has been found.
Meanwhile, the nation's leader is downplaying the threat.
And in the Philippines, they say they have the flu under control.
This report says 5,000 birds have died in Tibet from the flu. Reliability is unknown.
In Indonesia, there's 9.5 million dead chickens in the past couple of years.
Even in China, the Wall Street Journal is the voice of the establishment, here allowing a high government official to respond virtually unchallenged to stories of supressing information.
As if on cue, Recombinomics steps in and notes that China is avoiding requests for H5N1 flu information.
Chiron is scaling back vaccine production for this year...highlighting a critical weak link in any pandemic response plan.
Another report says US supply of antivirals is "totally inadequate."
I could have posted a dozen links proudly proclaiming that Tamiflu is effective against H5N1, but we did that yesterday. Recombinomics says it isn't so simple.
ProMed also has this story. The Mod comment contains a caution at the end about how practical it really is, giving the dosing requirements, to use a neuramindase inhibitor on pandemic protection.
Effect Measure on an interim report from Indonesia.
Effect Measure also details the flu planning in Seattle--which could be a model.
Crofsblogs has a nice post on what it will take for MSM to pick up the flu story, and what role we can play.
posted by Orange @ 11:15 PM
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