Happy Thanksgiving
You cannot be at peace until you can be thankful. Happy Thanksgiving.
posted by Orange @ 8:43 AM
Thursday, November 23, 2006
You cannot be at peace until you can be thankful. Happy Thanksgiving.
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
Bird Flu Death Toll
243
Technorati Bird Flu hits per day for the last 30 days.Get your own chart!
View blog reactions
Previous Posts
- November 22 Flu Update
- November 21 Flu Update
- November 20 Flu Update
- November 19 Flu Update
- November 18 Flu Update
- November 17 Flu Update
- November 16 Flu Update
- November 15 Flu Update
- November 14 Flu Update
- November 13 Flu Update (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:
Orange;
And a happy Thanksgiving indeed to all. I like the picture.
My vote on yesterdays article entitled "Outbreaks show virus is changing", goes to Drs Robert Webster and Elena Govorkova, who believe that the H5N1 mutations are making human transmission more likely. They also stated "clearly we must prepare for the possibility of a pandemic. I implore readers not to be further lulled into complacency by the comments of Marc Siegel, of the NYU School of Medicine.
I can tell you that the U.S. Government, and all governments of the world for that matter, are steaming agead full bore, on the assumption that a pandemic is an eventuality. The prevalent consensus is that it will occur, the question is when, how severe and where will it start.
As always, I recommend your readers use their intuition and common sense in evaluating articles like these. There are literally armies of people in the scientific and defense areas of government evaluating the risks and probabilities of a pandemic, whose opinions and beliefs have to be interpreted by the actions being taken.
Read between my lines.
Wulfgang
Well, Wulfgang, there is always a market for telling people not to worry. Siegel and Revere got in a heated and pretty tough debate sometime this summer, which was on both the Effect Measure site as well as mine, if you didn't see it.
There is no doubt we will eventually have a flu pandemic. The questions are as you say, plus one more--will it be this virus?
Post a Comment
<< Home