April 18 Flu Update
Another outbreak reported in South Korea.Political recriminations are flying in India.
A committee in India is going to figure where in the heck that virus came from.
posted by Orange @ 10:25 PM
Saturday, April 19, 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.
Read the Most Influential Pandemic Book Ever Written
Bird Flu Death Toll
243
Technorati Bird Flu hits per day for the last 30 days.Get your own chart!
View blog reactions
Previous Posts
- April 18 Flu Update
- April 17 Flu Update
- April 16 Flu Update
- April 15 Flu Update
- April 14 Flu Update
- April 13 Flu Update
- April 12 Flu Update
- April 11 Flu Update
- April 10 Flu Update
- Hiatus continues.....
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;
How articles are written, and the tone of their content, pretty much defines the direction that the bird flu virus is most likely to take in the future. For example, in your two Indian articles, a couple of pretty revealing things are listed:
1) Culling has been for the most part in West Bengal, pretty superficial and spotty (they use the term “lackadaisical”)
2) “Not one human case of the virus has been reported in India” (or Bangladesh for that fact, two of the most densely populated areas in the entire world).
3) The immediate solution is to “set up a committee of four members”, to “go into the source of the virus, its spread , prevention and genetic sequence”.
4) A longer term solution will be “suggested by the centre”
5) The Animal Resources Development Minister said “he is not sure about the reasons for the large-scale spread of bird flu”.
One has to conclude that so far, surprisingly, the Indian government has acted along the same lines as Indonesia: pandering to politics, bureaucracy and ineptness, lack of commitment or empowerment by the veterinary authorities, and constant scape-goating and finger pointing. What’s more – no foreseeable national bird flu containment or realistic surveillance plan in sight, no poultry vaccination program and they can’t even seem to develop a consensus on where the virus is originating from (most likely, illegal trade and migratory birds - there you go – no charge for research).
One has to conclude at this point… both Indonesia and India are both in “state of denial” when it comes to H5N1… Indonesia’s denial seems to be based on anti-western Muslim philosophy and greed for viral sample compensation; India’s denial appears to be based solely on government bureaucracy so vast and inept that it defies imagination.
Wulfgang
Post a Comment
<< Home