March 9 Flu Update
Bird flu is back in West Bengal....Despite massive culling, bird flu is back in a Bangladesh region.
A farmer in Bangladesh was quarantined, but is said not to have bird flu.
posted by Orange @ 9:21 PM
Sunday, March 09, 2008
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.
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Previous Posts
- March 8 Flu Update
- March 7 Flu Update
- March 6 Flu Update
- Not today.....
- March 4 Flu Update
- March 3 Flu Update
- March 2 Flu Update
- March 1 Flu Update
- February 29 Leap Day Flu Update
- February 28 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;
I still find the news reports of “no human cases of bird flu” coming out of India and Bangladesh, quite incredible. This is even as the H5N1 still continues to rage on through the poultry and cullers are in close contact with the infected birds. Let’s look at the population statistics and see if it makes sense:
Top 15 most populated countries and their percentage of the world’s population:
1. China: 1.32 B, 20 % (both a & b)
2. India: 1.12 B, 17% (a only)
3. United States: 300 M, 4.6% (neither a or b)
4. Indonesia: 225 M, 3.5% (both a & b)
5. Brazil: 186 M, 2.8% (neither a or b)
6. Pakistan: 165 M, 2.5% (both a & b)
7. Bangladesh: 147 M, 2.3% (a only)
8. Russia: 143 M, 2.2% (a only)
9. Nigeria: 135M, 2.1% (both a & b)
10. Japan: 138 M, 2.0% (a only)
11. Mexico: 108 M, 1.7% (neither a or b)
12. Vietnam: 87 M, 1.3% (both a & b)
13. Philippines: 86 M, 1.3% (neither a or b)
14. German: 82 M, 1.3% (a only)
15. Egypt: 75 M, 1.2% (both a & b)
Footnote: (a) has reported bird flu in poultry, (b) has reported human cases of bird flu
This simple summary shows that 4.3 billion people live in these 15 most populated countries, and represent roughly two-thirds of the entire world’s population. Asia accounts for over 60% of the world population with almost 3.8 billion people, and China and India alone comprise 20% and 16% respectively. Bird flu in poultry (infestation) has been reported in eleven of these countries, and human infections have only been reported in six countries. Note that India and Bangladesh have reported and continue to report extensive and repeated poultry outbreaks, massive culling operations, but not one human infection.
I doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that something is wrong.
Around 27% of the world’s entire population falls in the 15 years-of-age, or younger age group, and nearly all of these young people live in the Asian area, within these top fifteen countries.
In my view, the Asian area is a not only a hot spot for a pandemic, it is ground zero: it has the highest population density, the most reported infected poultry, the largest number of fowl living in close proximity to humans, and the most human illnesses from H5N1 (those that have reported accurately).
And Asia has the largest number of young people, which H5N1 prefers to infect the most.
Wulfgang
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