August 13 Flu Update
More from Bali. A 29 year old woman died, and one of her kids died. Also, a neighbor child might be sick. This could be alarming--is it a family, H2H cluster?This same woman apparently also died. However, she was cremated prior to sampling. (ProMed)
ProMed on Bali....
Also Bali--making Australia nervous. Also, this bird flu has hit a serious tourist area.
Effect Measure says this is probably noise, not signal...but how sure are you? (Do you feel lucky, punk?)
Todays's other lead story--Indonesia is still not sharing samples with WHO.
The US Treasury is urging banks to participate in an pandemic exercise this month. Is this another example of the officials taking this more seriously than we do.
India is setting up two bird flu labs.
Officials in India are briefed on the bird flu.
CIDRAP on yesterday's story on non-drug interventions helping with the 1918 pandemic.
Hong Kong is now importing poultry from Suffolk (??)
Company announces business results, including on an adjuvant patch.
posted by Orange @ 10:08 PM
1 Comments:
Orange;
Well there Orange, scratch Bali off the old vacation destination list for the future (not that it was ever on mine).
Of course, the scuttle butt on all the boards is two fold: (1) that between the daughter and mother who died in Negara, and now the sick neighbor child, this represents a H2H cluster. And (2), the unbelievably ignorant practice of “throwing dead H5N1 infected chickens” into the rivers, rather than burn and dispose of them properly, and feeding the carcasses to the pigs – will undoubtedly cause more mutation problems. Trouble in paradise.
( Incidentally, I like your quote: Harry Callahan is one of my all time favorite inspirational characters. We need about 1 million more like him in the US)
Regarding Indonesia and its continued refusal to share virus samples- it’s all about politics and money. Think about this: Indonesia doesn’t even blink an eye when it comes to millions of dollars to purchase large quantities of poultry vaccine (many millions of doses) from foreign nations to stick their infected chickens with. You really don’t want to know where I believe they can stick this country and their health minister. My solution: when the avian flu breaks out there wholesale (and it will eventually), quarantine and isolate the entire country, then auction off what’s left to the highest bidder.
Your article about the Treasury Dept conducting the largest pandemic planning and preparation exercise in the US, in my view, points out the seriousness of what we are facing. The Treasury Dept is the “CDC” (if you will) of the entire financial infrastructure of the US – it is the engine that drives the banking and liquidity forces. It better damn well work during a pandemic or we are really screwed. People will be selling their gold fillings and silverware if they can’t get their money out of the teller machines.
Your question: is the Treasury Dept taking this more seriously than most individuals ?
Yep. This is just another signal from our government that they are getting ready, as I said yesterday. The real question is this: how many more articles and warnings from government officials does it take to get peoples interest ?
I guess as long as the soccer practices are still scheduled for the kiddee’s , the fast food restaurants stay open, and the people can still gas up their gas-guzzling SUV’s and there are constant reality TV shows to entertain them … people simply don’t care.
Wulfgang
Post a Comment
<< Home