The Coming Influenza Pandemic?

1 Comments:

At 6:25 PM,  Wulfgang said...

Orange;

I see from your news articles that Indonesia is “going to launch an influenza pandemic plan later this week, followed by a three-day simulation on the resort island of Bali” (note: no details offered, but they should have a good time). Wow, in view of their marvelous track record containing H5N1 over the last three years, this ought to really rectify things. I can tell by the projected fatality numbers of 250,000-500,000 deaths (5-10% of 5 million ill) that Heru Setijanto, head of surveillance and monitoring for Indonesian bird flu, doesn’t have a clue: The Great Influenza of 1918 exhibited an actual CFR of approximately 2.5%. Assuming a realistic attack rate of 40% across the board applied to Indonesia’s 234.7 million population, equates to about 94 million Indonesians most likely falling sick with pandemic flu. Using the 1918 CFR of 2.5% against this number, translates into 2-3 million probable fatalities at minimum - not “hundreds of thousands”. And this isn’t even a worst case scenario in my opinion.

Indonesia’s actual CFR (death rate) so far is hovering around an astounding 81% (the highest in the entire world) … they better hope and pray to all mighty Allah, that the disease attenuates significantly, otherwise, there wont be enough backhoes in the world to dig the graves that will be necessary to bury their dead.

Indonesia has always only provided token assistance and minimal effort when it comes to implementing any kind of bird flu control or pandemic planning and preparation. Money given to Indonesia for bird flu containment is about as wasteful as the dollars being spent on the war effort in Iraq: there is a total lack of commitment on the part of the government, coupled by rampant government corruption, distrust of the west, open animosity, and no beneficial outcome or end in sight. In my view, money given to Indonesian could be better spent drawing up plans to quarantine and isolate the entire island chain for when a pandemic emerges. Health minister Supari suffers from megalomania, and is a schizoid Islamic religious zealot, who has made it a her lifelong ambition to defame the west and destroy the 60 year old WHO vaccine sharing arrangement. Her actions to date are only a subterfuge to deflect criticism against her own mismanaged health ministry.

The longer that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian retired military general and the sixth President of Indonesia allows her to stay in office and she continues to refuse to cooperate by providing bird flu virus samples, the more destructive the final outcome for that entire country and his administration will be. Too bad he can’t see what station the pandemic train is slowly chugging into. It’s in his own back yard.


Wulfgang

 

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