June 5 Flu Update
Chinese comment on soldier's death. Due to military secrecy, no information is being suggested on his exposure.Revere reveals the secret. What can we learn from the TB situation that we can apply to bird flu?
I don't think there is any significance for pandemic prevention because at the moment we have no way to prevent a pandemic.
APEC ministers are meeting to discuss bird flu plans.
A panel discussion is being held in Greater Portsmouth on a pandemic.
Vet foundation funds work in preventing pandemic through animals.
Are British docs complacent about the bird flu.
ProMed inquiry on recent report on vets being at risk for bird flu.
The University of Iowa is preparing for a pandemic.
Researchers are looking for a quicker way to determine bird flu.
Ghana says it needs $14M to prevent spread of bird flu.
The Welsh outbreak appears to be over.
Unicef is distributing bird flu kits in Indonesia.
posted by Orange @ 9:16 PM
1 Comments:
Orange;
Very good – you’ve captured Revere’s message well. This particular article is probably one of the most succinct and significant commentaries he’s published in a long while. There is no way to prevent a pandemic at the present time, once it gains high transmission rate, human to human. In fact it will be impossible to stop, and border security, airlines, airports, ports of entry, as well as imposed quarantines, would be ineffectual.
Revere sure nailed this one accurately.
Regarding the Chinese soldier’s death and circumstances, I guess one could draw a pretty simple conclusion from the event: it must have been a very aggressive H5N1 virus strain that killed this young man. Notice – he developed a fever, cough and pneumonia on May 9th, was admitted to the hospital on May 13th, and expired on May 18th – a grand total of nine days. This occurred, despite the efforts of “a group of medical experts who failed to save him from physical deterioration”. Sounds like John Barry couldn’t written the article.
The reports coming out of Indonesian from their head of commission on bird flu today, indicate that the H5N1 virus may have undergone a mutation there, that allows it to jump more easily from poultry to humans. Those of us who have follow the daily machine-translated reports from the newspapers there are not surprised at this news. What’s surprising, is that the WHO is surprised.
I would submit that Revere’s excellent commentary, along with the news out of China and now Indonesia today (suspected mutation), is not good, taken collectively.
Maybe UNICEF ought to start stepping up their distribution of bird flu kits in Indonesia, and add a translation of the directions (in Chinese and Vietnamese), just to be safe ?
Wulfgang
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