July 17 Flu Update
Relatives say a man died of bird flu in Indonesia.In the news that is all over the place this morning, Vical says its DNA vaccine does stimulate sufficient immune response.
Two studies, reported by CIDRAP here, look at the reasons behind Indonesia's staggering fatality rate with H5N1. The ultimate question is this? Is it the virus, or is there something in that country's system that would mitigate the fatality rate in other countries, even if the exact same virus went to a pandemic level.
According to the second report, Indonesia, like most developing countries, has few primary or secondary care hospitals with the protocols, isolation rooms, or cardio-respiratory support equipment to treat patients critically ill with H5N1 influenza. "This is probably the largest single contributor to the high mortality recorded," says the report, written by Sardikin Giriputro, MD, and colleagues
Bird flu hits Vietnam, but with a twist---the birds were vaccinated against bird flu. Obviously, this will get people to wondering about whether this is tangible evidence of a virus mutating in a significant way.
Don't recall seeing this before, but this article appears to indicate that Turkey had seven animals cases in the first third of this year.
They are holding a flu summit in West Virginia.
A flu drill was held in Dalton, Georgia.
Like many states, Indiana is going to do a pandemic drill and flu shot drive at the same time.
Article from the Philippines details what author learned at flu training for journalists.
posted by Orange @ 8:57 AM
1 Comments:
Orange;
It’s really fairly easy to see through the Indonesian bird flu mess, from your AP and CIDRAP articles: Siti Supari wants to control all of the critical H5N1 human infection information (including her arbitrary lock-down of samples), in order to manipulate the case-fatality-rate (CFR) down to the lowest levels possible. Also, reading between the lines of the CIDRAP report from the journal “Annuals Academy of Medicine Singapore”, the blame for their high CFR rates over the last three years is attributed to three main things; “difficulty of diagnosing the disease, late treatment of Tamiflu, and shortage of well-equipped hospitals”.
No mention, nor one single word made in the Singapore report about Indonesian government and health department’s responsibilities, or the preventative social, medical and cultural changes enacted, or corrective measures taken. Their switch to a “blind man’s bluff” disclosure and reporting policy will only work so long, that is, until their human-to-human H5N1 transmissions start multiplying to the point that they will ultimately wreck their economy and tourist industry. Their intransigence over providing samples and critical H5N1 information is not a matter of “sovereignty”, it is a matter of purposely and willingly suppressing valuable and critical data, which if released publicly, would serve to indict them in the world health and scientific circles.
The information you posted from Vietnam, about the hundreds of vaccinated chickens dying from bird flu, is equally as concerning: either the chickens were not vaccinated at all, or the virus has mutated to become more virulent, or the vaccine that was used was substandard or ineffective. Something is wrong with the picture.
The surprising news of seven bird flu cases reported by Turkey between January and April 2008, is definitely news to me. Like you and many others, I comb the news networks daily for bird flu news and I don’t recollect any news reports reflecting these outbreaks.
Oh well, I guess this all goes to point out that there is probably a lot going on in these third world countries that we don’t know about, and of course the WHO isn’t telling.
Check out the following Directive: looks like the “Coasties” are taking the bird flu threat pretty seriously all of a sudden. (They fall under the umbrella of DHS… don’t tell anybody about this link).
Link: http://www.uscg.mil/directives/cim/6000-6999/CIM_6220_12.PDF
Wulfgang
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