December 29 Flu Update
China's latest bird flu patient is discharged after 20 days in the hospital.Hey Azerbaijan is monitoring bird flu and there isn't any.
The Philippines are also bird flu free.
posted by Orange @ 11:07 AM
Sunday, December 30, 2007
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
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Previous Posts
- December 28 Flu Update
- Christmas Break
- December 22 Flu Update
- December 21 Flu Update
- December 21 Flu Update
- December 19 Flu Update
- December 18 Flu Update
- December 17 Flu Update
- December 16 Flu Update
- December 15 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."
1 Comments:
Orange;
Not a day goes by without a well deserved comment.
I am quite skeptical about Azerbaijan’s State Veterinary Service press release which affirms that no bird flu was present throughout all of 2007, according to their 12 monitoring exercises. Iran also denies any existence of H5N1 in their fowls, but local media reports there (Etimad Newspaper) are stating they began a large culling operation this month in Tehran, Eastern Azerbaijan and the Zangan Province. It’s also noteworthy to note that the Azerbaijan has not imported any chicken or poultry products from Iran in over six years, according to their Ministry of Agriculture. Wonder what gives here ? I thought all countries pledged to be transparent.
Notice also in your Chinese article about the 52 father, surnamed “LU”, who was just officially released from an “unnamed hospital”, we have a similar denial: that “no bird flu has been discovered in the Jiangsu Province” and the “means of transmission of H5N1 involving the two family members (i.e. son and father) remained unknown”. Wonder what gives there ?
Maybe all three countries need to play their transparency cards a little better and say that “only LPAI was discovered and not to worry”, and they are conducting culling operations, just “to be on the safe side”, like the US. With Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Pakistan and Jordan on “high stage medical and pharmaceutical alerts” due to the spread of H5N1 in poultry and humans in the entire Middle East Region, Azerbaijan’s and Iran’s sudden denials of bird flu seem questionable. As far as China’s perpetual confusion on how its citizens acquired H5N1 when very few poultry infections or outbreaks are ever reported… well I guess that is one of the chief benefits of operating in a totally closed and highly controlled society.
I guess in China you get the opportunity to die from a avian influenza disease that doesn’t officially exist and donate your body to science. I wonder if their scientists ever heard of the Fujian strain?
Wulfgang
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