September 14 Flu Update
More than 22,000 chickens are dead of bird flu in Indonesia.Vietnam says local authorities must complete its next round of bird vaccinations by the beginning of October.
Crucell says it has developed a bird flu antibody.
Perdue farms has heightened its bird flu prep measures.
In Utah, the pandemic plan would limit public gatherings.
As quoted in Russia, David Nabarro says that a pandemic is still inevitable.
Revere is interesting as always. If we know pets can get bird flu, and if we know people will protect their pets, then shouldn't we prepare for what we know in pandemic plans?
In the interests of openness, Michael Fumento is back in American Spectator with a withering critique of those who are urging pandemic prep.
posted by Orange @ 12:18 PM
3 Comments:
Orange;
Your story from Vietnam doesn’t look too bad on the surface, with only 22,580 chickens having died since Jan 1 with H5N1. Until that is, one realizes that Vietnam has a total of 59 provinces and 5 centrally-controlled municipalities. My guess is that the grand total number of infected poultry in that country that have died to date (in all the provinces), is probably in the range of a million (conservatively). The fact that they are ordering an additional 100 million poultry vaccine doses, likely from China (where we saw a large die off just this week in Guangzhou, which is only several hundred miles from their border), doesn’t give me any comfort at all.
So Orange, who you going to believe, David Nabarro, WHO UNSIC Senior Avian Influenza Coordinator, who continuously says an influenza pandemic is “inevitable” – or Michael Fumento, unemployed lawyer and self-styled fiction writer, who insists that the world’s most brilliant scientist and virologists have got it all wrong ? (Easy choice I would imagine).
I’ll help you out with your decision: within the last 90 days, the USDA has issued official guidance to all US states and regions to begin pandemic preparations and to consider arrangements to feed extremely large numbers of people during a presidential declared pandemic national emergency: website documents are here if you don’t believe me:
• http://search.usda.gov/search?q=cache:bUrDFX4YGsgJ:http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/summer/Administration/Policy/2007/SFSP_08-2007.pdf+pandemic&access=p&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&client=usda&num=10&proxystylesheet=OC
• http://search.usda.gov/search?q=cache:oMdGa4oqv5kJ:http://www.fns.usda.gov/disasters/pandemic/062707.pdf+pandemic&access=p&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&client=usda&num=10&proxystylesheet=OC
• http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Governance/DisasterResponse/CNDisasterAssistancePandemic.htm
Finally, when it comes to pets, Revere as usual has hit the nail on the head – people everywhere need to consider their pets in their emergency planning efforts. Abandoned pets during Katrina were a real problem, and that would pale in comparison to a pandemic situation.
I can tell you all: I have read the USDA food nutrition pandemic planning instructions above very carefully. They do not take anything into consideration for pets.
Better plan on either letting Fido or Tabby loose, or better still, have several months of food available for them.
Wulfgang
I recommend checking out the links that Wulfgang has supplied. Interesting.
"So Orange, who you going to believe, David Nabarro, WHO UNSIC Senior Avian Influenza Coordinator, who continuously says an influenza pandemic is “inevitable” – or Michael Fumento, unemployed lawyer and self-styled fiction writer, who insists that the world’s most brilliant scientist and virologists have got it all wrong ? (Easy choice I would imagine)."
Well, insofar as it appears Orange actually read my piece and you didn't, I'd say that puts you at something of a disadvantage. It also doesn't help that you make false claims such at that I'm "unemployed" (I'm a fairly well-paid freelance writer and author of five books who, yes, is a member of the bar) and I've never claimed to have written fiction. That makes you the fiction writer.
As far as all your experts go, again if you'd bother to read my articles you'd find that the experts who agree with me simply aren't the ones getting quoted. They aren't widely quoted precisely because they aren't alarmists.
Finally, if you knew of my career in embarrassing "experts" on epidemics ranging from AIDS to Ebola to SARS to even the avian flu breakout in 1997, you might be a bit more humble.
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