September 4 Flu Update
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. It means a lot.In Japan, there's speculation that some recent cases of bird flu in chickens may have been from renegade vaccine efforts.
Recombinomics comments on this strange news.
ProMed on the Japanese vaccination snafu.
The Infectious Disease Society of America lists some web resources.
Wendy Orent has this in The New Republic. I don't have the full text version--perhaps others will. But the synopsis is this--don't worry, we'll survive the bird flu. She has written similar things before, though I don't remember anything this striking. There are a lot of Orent-haters out there in the flu-blogosphere.
Villagers in Thailand have joined the rapid response bird flu team.
Similar actions are being taken in the Philippines.
Here, the Thai announce a bird flu outbreak--only after they have "contained" it. Draw your own conclusions.
Bird flu outbreak seems to be ebbing in Russia and neighboring states.
You are aware of the ongoing sniping from ProMed, which says, "dead birds don't migrate. Show me a migrating bird shedding disease." You won't be surprised that Recombinomics has an answer.
The H5N1 transport and transmission in these countries was quite efficient, running along the border shared by Russia and Kazakhstan to the west and by Russian and Mongolia to the east (see map). Now as the temperature in these areas falls, a further migration into Europe, Africa, and the Americas is expected. The establishment of H5N1 in migratory birds virtually assures a worldwide distribution in the next 12 months.Here is the original Promed post.
This dramatic spread has touched off alarm bells worldwide, yet commentaries at ProMed suggests there is little new, citing prior reports of low pathogenic avian influenza in migratory birds.
Sequence databases have isolates as old as 1902. Prior to the May, 2005 Qinghai Lake outbreak, there had been no reports of the PB2 mutation E627K in birds. The change is H5N1 was first reported in the 1997 human samples and it correlates with increased virulence in mammals. All of the Qingahi Lake isolates had this change and isolates from Qinghai Lake killed experimental chickens in 20 hours and mice in 3-4 days. The close homology between Qinghai lake isolates and Chany Lake isolates suggest that all of the H5N1 wild bird flu isolates have this change.
Thus, the dramatic spread of H5N1 into eastern and southern Asia in 2004 was without precedent and the likelihood that a similar geographical spread will happen in 2005 is high. Distribution of this virus worldwide increases the likelihood of a recombination event that will increase the efficiency of human to human transmission. Such a recombination could happen in avian or mammalian hosts.
The alarm bells are ringing loudly, but Alfred E Newman appears to be in charge at ProMed.
Recombinomics also had another post on the same general topic--a mod comment on ProMed.
The evil empire [flu] is alarmingly growing in size and geographical range, negative data from Mongolia not withstanding. H5N1 has recently expanded its range across Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Russia (see current map). There is no reason to not expect a dramatic expansion in the upcoming months.In fairness, here is the Promed version, in full, in context. To be fair, it does say this:
Migratory birds are expanding the geographical range of H5N1, regardless of the ability of scientists to detect H5N1 under a limited set of experimental procedures. The unprecedented geographical expansion is cause for significant concern.
Effect Measure has news from a USDA under-secretary saying the US has a broad-based plan to fight off a pandemic. He apparently took his hints from the FEMA director.Comprehensive surveillance is the key to this question.
Given the stakes, the collective effort in surveillance
has been weak. Additionally, surveillance should not be
limited to wildlife populations. We have already seen
this outbreak show up in commercial poultry in Kazakhstan
and various places in Russia. Surveillance will best tell
us how firm the H5N1 viral foothold is in both poultry
and migratory bird populations.
ProMed on Finland, correcting an earlier statement on HPAI.
ProMed on Thailand's recent "success."
Crofsblog has this on an expert in Thailand saying the pandemic is Stage 4 now.
Crofsblog has this, that says in Australia, as in Britain, government officials are first in line for bird flu meds.
posted by Orange @ 10:44 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for the Wendy Orent link. FYI, have you heard of bugmenot.com? It is a site where users share the username/passwords for registrations sites. If you use Firefox there is even an extension that makes getting into registration-only sites a simple right-click away.
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