May 1 Update--Early reports from the Wall Street Journal
Nick Zamiska is back in the WSJ with reaction to his China story.
posted by Orange @ 9:25 AM
Monday, May 01, 2006
The Coming Influenza Pandemic?
Is a global influenza pandemic on the way that could kill millions of people? Are we going to relive the horror of 1918? If it happens, are we even remotely prepared to save ourselves? Scientists from around the world are concerned about bird flu...since 2004 our site has tracked news of H5N1 influenza from around the world.
Read the Most Influential Pandemic Book Ever Written
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Previous Posts
- April 30 Flu Update
- April 29 Flu Update
- April 28 Flu Update
- April 27 Flu Update
- April 26 Flu Update
- April 25 Flu Update
- April 24 Flu Update
- April 23 Flu Update
- April 21 Flu Update
- April 20 Flu Update
Links
- FluWiki online.
- Wikipedia on Influenza
- CDC Flu Page
- WHO Flu Page
- CDC Avian Influenza
- New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell on the search for the flu in permafrost
- New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell on Flu as our most deadly contagion
- The Planning and Politics behind the flu from Greenhammer
- Preparing for the Next Pandemic
- Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H.
- New England Journal of Medicine, May 5, 2005
- Is there anything we can do to avoid this course? The answer is a qualified yes that depends on how everyone, from world leaders to local elected officials, decides to respond. We need bold and timely leadership at the highest levels of the governments in the developed world; these governments must recognize the economic, security, and health threats posed by the next influenza pandemic and invest accordingly. The resources needed must be considered in the light of the eventual costs of failing to invest in such an effort. The loss of human life even in a mild pandemic will be devastating, and the cost of a world economy in shambles for several years can only be imagined.
- ABC Primetime, September 2005
- "Right now in human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects," says Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow on global health policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That makes it the most lethal flu we know of that has ever been on planet Earth affecting human beings."
- Dr. Robert Webster
- Society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. And I think we have to face that possibility," Webster said. "I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role.
- Dr. Robert Fedson
- "There is nothing in Darwinian evolution that says that our DNA has to survive compared to say the DNA of an earthworm. I mean Darwinian evolution is completely indifferent to which DNA happens to persist. We are not necessarily unique as a species as far as evolution is concerned and we can disappear like other species have already disappeared."
2 Comments:
doesn't the vaccine if found to be the right 1 against this unforseen flu take 6 months to create and start mass production > I think they need eggs to produce it.. so if it came here and formed into this flu that kills and jumps to others quickly imho vaccines won't help you..and if they kill all the birds including chickens where will they get eggs ? my understanding of what caused the spanish flu of 1918 was that us government during the war vaccinated our soldiers with as many as 17 vaccines at 1 time and the human body goes whacko with all those created minute diseases that the immune system has to create anti bodies to fight them off .. a lot of young soldiers returned real sick back to the usa from spain {spanish} and spread to others this killer flu.. i read where healthy people would start to feel bad in the afternoon-for instance- and get real sick by evening having great difficulty breathing and spitting up thick black mucus thru the night and by noon the next day would be dead.. if that is true then we are in some big trouble im thinking.. the only way to live would be to stay away from civilization until it dies and moves on..what a thought. am i being paranoid to think that maybe it will happen ?? tks for this site to keep up on the latest news... a life saver !!
Thanks for reading....
Here's a link to the flu wiki on vaccines which might help to answer your questions about the vaccine....
http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki.php?n=Science.Vaccines?from=Consequences.Vaccines
Finally, on your note about leaving civilization, in 1918 the flu reached the most remote parts of the planet. We are all in this together.
Keep in touch.
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