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Underground > Laboratory >

Asian Bird Flu.

09:43 / 04.08.05

Just read this on New Scientist's website. So it's now looking like a matter of when, rather than if, ABF becomes a problem for everyone.

I've been watching this situation develop over the past year and have been growing gradually more concerned about the apparent lack of action being taken by the international community. What do others think about this?

20:30 / 04.08.05

While I agree that the Bird Flu bears watching, I'm under the impression that, short of a preventative quarantine of the Asian subcontinent, there's little we can do until the jump from avian to human is made. Flu vaccines have to target specific strains of the virus, don't they? Wouldn't the mutation required to jump species render any vaccine we made now unusable?

21:29 / 04.08.05

No, vaccines can work across flu strains, I believe -- that seemed to be implied in the article. I think they're just more effective against the strain (or family of strains, if that's the right terminology) they're made from.

06:50 / 05.08.05

Actually the jump from avian to human has already occured, although it has only happened in relatively few (from an epidemeological perspective) instances. What has yet to occur is the transmission of the virus from human to human, and this is the big concern as flu viruses mutate extremely quickly.

A quarantine of the Asian continent wouldn't really be practical, what would be needed is some type of international effort in place to respond in the event AFV becomes an effective human pathogen. Even today's flu vaccines aren't a sole solution against the disease as it's rapid mutation quickly renders one ineffective, forcing another to be prepared.

12:45 / 23.06.06

This thread was started in August 2005. Know what?

The first human to die of avian flu in China had already been dead for two years.

They're only finding out about it now.

From an epidemiological standpoint, this is crazy-making, and I also take it pretty personally. Here's why. The dude shows up in a Beijing hospital with pneumonia in November 2003 and kicks it. They think it might be SARS, so they analyze the heck out of him. In December 2003, I go to Beijing (way up north). I cross the country, stay in Chongqing (the center) leave from Guangzhou (the south). I develop pneumonia - bad fever, congestion, body aches, the works. Visit a hospital in Chongqing. I sneak past the thermal scanners (for the SARS) that customs & security had set up in the Guangzhou airport... using a trick that had been broadcast on CNNAsia, I might add... and land in LAX, Los Angeles Int'l Airport, on New Year's Day -- a busy holiday weekend in one of the busiest airports in the world. I sneeze while I'm there, I wash my hands at the public restroom sink, I touch door handles, whatever. I'm a vector, and I know it.

So, it was just an average upper respiratory infection (as far as I know). I get put on antibiotics, lots of bed rest, eat as well as possible and eventually get over it.

But if it had been, what, a different gust of air, or if I'd been to a hospital in Beijing instead of Chongqing, or traveled a month earlier, or a bajillion other weird little things, I could've been involved in a pandemic and never known it. Anyone could have.

The WHO, needless to say, is investigating, and I'm betting they're really ticked.

15:01 / 27.06.06

Oh, and the cover-up gets worse.

Someone posed as the scientist publishing the paper to try to have it withdrawn from publication.

14:38 / 29.06.06

I'm going to be a bit put out if this bird flu ends up being like the SARS epidemic that was supposed to end the world a while back. I want to live underground with the last dregs of society fighting off the flu zombies dammnit!

05:08 / 02.07.06

I can't say that I am too worried. Twenty years ago we were all supposed to die of AIDS. Then unspeakable dangers came from SARS, Ebola, a plague outbreak in India, Saddam's WMD, the Marburg virus, Islamic terrorists, followed by the Birdflu. Bread and circuses... The Birdflu is just the spice of the season.

16:00 / 02.07.06

Well... the science-heads I know say they know Ebola was never really a big threat, because it kills hosts too quickly. (The fear with that one was that it would be altered & weaponized, which for all we know has already happened.)

AIDS, on the other hand, is already living out the worst predictions, just mostly in places like Swaziland and Zambia. Here's one statistic from the UN: Sub-Saharan Africa has just over 10% of the world's population, but is home to more than 60% of all people living with HIV

More here and in wikipedia's overview here, with handy comparison tables.

The HIV infection rate in Swaziland (which is one of the tiny countries essentially surrounded by South Africa, a relatively developed nation) is more than 33 percent.

So just because you can't see the epidemic doesn't mean it's not actually destroying the world.

20:49 / 12.07.06

Here is a fairly recent development -- a new way of making vaccines that will be faster, cheaper and cleaner than by doing it with eggs. And by not using eggs, there'll be no problem with people who are allergic to eggs.