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Bird Flu

  
  

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Our Lady Has Left the Building
19:23 / 21.10.05
A parrot that died in quarantine in the UK has tested positive for avian flu, the government has said. The bird was imported from south America and arrived in mid-September. It is the first case of avian flu in Britain - it has been found in Romania, Turkey and Greece after apparently being carried from Asia by wild birds.

Due to the unusual circumstances of this, the bird being imported and in quarantine, maybe the UK doesn't have to worry just yet. But on the other hand, it's from South America, which is probably not great news for those in the North end.
 
 
sleazenation
20:11 / 21.10.05
Yeah but it was also kept with suspect birds from southeast asia so the bird could have become infected whilst in quarentine...
 
 
Mourne Kransky
21:08 / 21.10.05
How many people die on our roads every day because of our obsession with the motor car? How many people starve to death in Africa every day because they didn't get a fair shake politically? How many people will die of physical conditions, directly related to the cold, in London this Winter?

I'm sure bird flu is going to be a monster when it hits but it does feel like something being hotted up by the press.
 
 
Char Aina
23:37 / 21.10.05
one GP i saw speaking on telly said she felt that the one good outcome of this entire campaign of fear is that many people are coming into her surgery for flu jabs.
she said that more had come in so far than normally do in the lead up to christmas and, as a result, more might survive the winter.

that has to be a good thing, if a little bit of a side effect.

she also made the point that she,. as a GP with a large elderly practice, had heard nothing at all from the government about bird flu and was instead relying on the media and her own research for her information.
her point was that if it was such a big deal, she would have been given some information by now.

add my vote to the 'big crock of shit' pile.
 
 
Char Aina
23:42 / 21.10.05
sorry, to be clear;
i do believe it exists, i do believe that it will make an impact on the poultry farming industry, and i do believe it is possible that it will jump to humans.
i dont think that it is all that likely to transfer, and i dont think that if it does as many will die as is suggested by some.

we will survive.
this is not 1918, much as alquaeda arenot the nazi war machine.
it sells more papers to threaten our very existence than it does to inconvenience us and harm a few in the process.
 
 
quixote
00:54 / 22.10.05
Sensible folk, we 'lithers. Yes, bird flu is dangerous. No, it's not dangerous to humans yet. Once a human-to-human transmissible form evolves (it's a matter of when, not if), it won't be a huge problem in the industrialized world if public health measures (vaccines, antivirals) are in place. So Europe won't be in trouble. The US may well be. It won't be anything like 1918, because many of the deaths then were from secondary (bacterial) pneumonia. These days we have antibiotics for that sort of thing.

The two biggest dangers are 1)commercial impact, and possible ensuing recession, due either to necessary quarantines or to stupid panic, and 2)breeding resistant viruses because people insist on taking tamiflu when it's not part of the public health measures and taking it incorrectly. Obviously, a resistant strain could infect the foolish folk who were trying to take care of number one just as easily as the rest of us.
 
 
The Falcon
15:58 / 22.10.05
What ever happened to SARS?
 
 
Supersister
16:39 / 22.10.05
I am even more cynical as I think that the entire furore has been whipped up to sell anti-virals and vaccines. It is also usefully distracting us from other news.
 
 
Char Aina
17:18 / 22.10.05
it's a matter of when, not if

i have been led to believe that it wasnt a certainty.
would you mind explaining the process a bit, and perhaps why it is so inevitable?
 
 
Evil Scientist
21:23 / 22.10.05
i have been led to believe that it wasnt a certainty.
would you mind explaining the process a bit, and perhaps why it is so inevitable?

The simple fact of the matter is that influenza mutates helluva quickly. It has already mutated into a form capable of hopping from bird to human. Having shown that it is capable of doing that means it is extremely likely that further mutation of it whilst in a human host could allow it to become transmissible person to person. Note that the Spanish Flu outbreak came from an avian strain as well and wiped out millions of lives.

So Europe won't be in trouble. The US may well be. It won't be anything like 1918, because many of the deaths then were from secondary (bacterial) pneumonia. These days we have antibiotics for that sort of thing.

Well, yes. But the current massive rise in antibiotic resistance could easily render our anitbiotics useless in treating the secondary infections. They will certainly be less effective than they would have been say twenty years ago.

I am even more cynical as I think that the entire furore has been whipped up to sell anti-virals and vaccines. It is also usefully distracting us from other news.

Which is, of course, your choice. However the fact is that an influenza pandemic has decimated our species in recent living history, and it would be naive in the extreme to assume that we're never going to have another one. If avian flu manages to jump the species barrier completely then it's going to spread extremely rapidly. Migratory birds can carry it across borders with frightening ease (as we have seen). Plus travel is a lot easier than it was in the 1910's, if we don't halt flights quickly enough in an infected region then the disease has another easy way to cross to new victims.

What ever happened to SARS?

Seems to have been a bit of a flash in the pan really. People were right to be concerned but it hasn't spread any further and as far as I'm aware there have been no new cases of it recently.

If avian flu goes full-blown it will be more dangerous than SARS (which is primarily lethal to the elderly). Avian flu affects healthy people between 25-40 the worst.
 
 
w1rebaby
23:18 / 22.10.05
It wouldn't necessarily be naive. There's no reason to suppose that flu pandemics are regular unavoidable catastrophes, like ice ages. Of course, there's no reason to suppose that it won't happen either, and even if only a fraction of the deaths occur that did in 1918 that would still be considered practically the end of the world (declare war on Turkeystan!)

For the record, the last estimate I heard said that a transmissable mutant flu outbreak would cause 50,000 deaths in the UK over winter, rather than 12,000 which I believe is the current figure. That's not the same as the 1918 version. I don't know whether anyone has any other estimates knocking about.

In any case, what do we do? Stockpile vaccines against a virus that we don't know about yet? Shoot all migratory birds? Lynch anyone coughing publicly? Building up the health service would be a good idea but then it's a good idea anyway. And, as has been pointed out above, disease continues to kill millions across the globe anyway, much of it preventable with things like sanitation and cheap drugs, the presence of which we continue to hinder through enforced economic liberalisation. Fine, this doesn't make casualties from a flu pandemic any less tragic, but it does make us look just a tad hypocritical and selfish. Because we are.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
23:40 / 22.10.05
I'll try and scare up some sources, but the general line in the UK seems to be 50,000 likely, with a worst-case scenario of 700,000. All, most likely, in the few months it will take between the emergence of a pandemic strain and the production of a vaccine targeting that strain.
 
 
quixote
00:52 / 23.10.05
The Evil Scientist beat me to it. (As is so often the way.) S/he's exactly right about why eventual human-to-human transmission is inevitable: flu viruses mutate so quickly that at some point, one of the mutations will have what it takes to "stick" to us. The current strain of bird flu may never manage it, but some lethal strain of flu--a bat or rat strain, for all we know--will adapt to humans. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen fifty years from now.

And as another commenter wrote, the speed with which vaccines can be produced and distributed is the most critical factor of all in preventing epidemics. In that context, it's important to remember that the process does NOT have to take months, as it does using the currently approved method (incubation in chicken eggs). DNA-based methods could make totally new vaccines in weeks, but they're not yet approved for general use. Getting that approval as soon as possible is the single most important preventive measure governments could take.
 
 
Evil Scientist
08:20 / 23.10.05
Also, we should remember that the speed with which influenza mutates means that the effectiveness of vaccination is also limited. Once the virus has undergone an antigenic shift then the antibodies the body produced to identify the virus to the immune system are useless and you have to start all over again.

And, as has been pointed out above, disease continues to kill millions across the globe anyway, much of it preventable with things like sanitation and cheap drugs, the presence of which we continue to hinder through enforced economic liberalisation. Fine, this doesn't make casualties from a flu pandemic any less tragic, but it does make us look just a tad hypocritical and selfish. Because we are.

Well yes there are certainly other diseases in the world which cause massive amounts of pain and suffering. Malaria and the HIV pandemic are but two. However, the concern is with the speed that a human-pathogenic avian flu virus would cut through the population. The damage would be done much quicker than HIV which takes years to result in AIDS. A flu virus would hamper even the most basic support systems put in place to aid it's victims.
 
 
Slim
16:02 / 23.10.05
Not to mention that if we ever decide to dedicate our resources to it, AIDS can be somewhat controlled. The same cannot necessarily be said for an avian-human flu.
 
 
Evil Scientist
16:17 / 23.10.05
AIDS can be controlled with drugs true. HIV itself mutates even faster than a flu virus, also true (and rather scary).
 
 
Slim
20:13 / 23.10.05
I was referring to the fact that it's known how you generally contract HIV- sex or drugs. There are measures that can be taken to significantly slow the spread of HIV. I don't know if this is true for a new strain of bird flu that can spread to humans.
 
 
quixote
23:53 / 23.10.05
If people behaved with compassion, HIV could be completely stopped from spreading, immediately. Slim is right that the same can't be said of flu (or colds). But even there, if everyone started wearing gloves and face masks at the first hint of having symptoms, transmission could be slowed way down. (Face masks are useful because they stop you from touching your face, not because ordinary ones stop the virus.) In an ideal world, sick people would take it upon themselves to let everyone know they're contagious and to reduce contagion.

And, in the same ideal world, the rest of us would not start acting hysterical at the sight of a mask. Further, if everyone washed their hands every couple of hours and kept surfaces disinfected, transmission would go even further down.

The statistics on transmission indicate that precautions against touching virus-laden surfaces would get it down to about 20% of the no-precautions level. Probably low enough to prevent much spread. So, yes, even with flu, we can make an eventual epidemic either much more or much less serious.
 
 
sleazenation
07:24 / 24.10.05
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the real concern with avian flu not its current form, transmitted from birds to humans and requiring close contact with birds of a kind not usual in industrialized western societies, but from its potential future form transmitted from human to human...
 
 
bjacques
10:09 / 25.10.05
All this excitement over a parrot that is not in fact dead, but merely resting. And pining for the Andes.
 
 
Supersister
16:34 / 25.10.05
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the real concern with avian flu not its current form, transmitted from birds to humans and requiring close contact with birds of a kind not usual in industrialized western societies, but from its potential future form transmitted from human to human...

Precisely. Mr Evil Scientist referred to a possible recurrence of the decimation of our species caused by the flu in 1918. In fact the main cause of any decimation was war, which wiped out an estimated 37 million, compared with the 1.5 million flu victims. Our species is presently being decimated by AIDS. Recent statistics; 1 in 6 children in Malawi is an orphan and 1 in 10 in Kenya. Three million have died in the past year.

Why on earth is there this panic over a not yet existent disease? Whilst I'm on a roll with the statistics, and yes I know that 78% of them are made up, but I couldn't help noticing the reports this week that Roche, manufacturers of Tamiflu, report a 263% sales growth in 2005. I don't know about coughs and sneezes but it certainly made me snort.
 
 
Elbereth
17:50 / 25.10.05
I think that the deal with the Avian flu and SARS and fears of other epidemics like that is that people who work in disease control realize that with overdependance on antibiotics in some place combine with high populations in concentrated areas, ineffecient methods of distributing and making vaccines its easy to see that an epidemic of some kind will likely strike in the next ten or twenty years that, while it won't destroy the human race, will be very devastating. In my community I know that MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus
aureus) is very common. And aren't antibiotics mixed into cow and chicken feed regularly whether they need it or not?I know that distributing a vaccine under epidemic conditions would be very difficult. So I think it is one part is foresight and the other is mediahype/guesswork. No one knows whats going to strike next so they are trying to hype up everything. Also airborn transmissions of a disease are much more dangerous in terms of an epidemic than HIV which becasue of where it is and how it behaves has very little chance of mutating to a quick and scary airborn form. (not to say that it isn't important just not the same in the way it spreads).
 
 
quixote
02:44 / 27.10.05
Sleazenation: yes, absolutely, the current form of bird flu is not a big problem for people. The worry is about when it (or another strain of lethal flu) mutates into a form that can pass among people as easily as a cold.

Because that form has not yet appeared, we can't make vaccines against it. Once it does appear, as a commenter above said, it'll be very hard to make and distribute the vaccine effectively. Making matters worse is that the currently approved method, which is decades old, takes months. Intelligent governments would be working to get approval for DNA-based methods that take only weeks.
 
 
rizla mission
07:59 / 27.10.05
Mr Evil Scientist referred to a possible recurrence of the decimation of our species caused by the flu in 1918. In fact the main cause of any decimation was war, which wiped out an estimated 37 million, compared with the 1.5 million flu victims.

Not to be unduly cantankerous, but are you sure those figures are accurate?

I've always been led to believe that significantly more people died from flu than died directly from combat (in fact it's been a fairly solid history teacher / pub bore "did you know.." line for years). And 37 million seems a staggeringly high figure for death-by-war, even by WW1 standards.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
18:22 / 27.10.05
Here they put it between twenty and forty million... I've seen it as high as fifty elsewhere.

Not sure on the WWI 37 million thing. As Rizla says, sources?
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
23:42 / 27.10.05
Working on a veterinary magazine, I can tell you that there's a fair amount of polemic on both sides of the argument - but Biosecurity Australia and the Department of Health here are fairly concerned about it jumping to humans, largely because the amount of infections that've occurred in humans has been increasing steadily throughout Asia.

Add to that the apparent concern the govenment has - they've suggested innoculating every person in Australia against it (though that would seem a logistical nightmare and a bit strange, given the virus' mutative qualities... and also the fact that the current proposed vaccine hasn't been cleared for use with humans yet) - and I think that people are rightly worried about it.

Mind you, we had it here in 1997, and that didn't bring about The End Of The World As We Know It.
 
 
Evil Scientist
06:42 / 28.10.05
Why on earth is there this panic over a not yet existent disease?

Umm, perhaps because it IS an existing disease. It's lethality when contracted by humans is proven, and the only reason we shouldn't be too worried yet is that it hasn't completely crossed the species barrier yet. But the fact that it has already crossed partially makes a total cross-over all the more likely.

Mind you, we had it here in 1997, and that didn't bring about The End Of The World As We Know It.

Was this the same strain of virus though? Presumably at that point it hadn't crossed the species barrier so wasn't a threat to humans. Remember that not every strain of human influenza is necessarily lethal. Some are however, and this current avian strain seems to be particularly nasty.

Don't worry though, we'll all be safe at the Boulder Free Zone, heh.

In fact the main cause of any decimation was war,

No argument that WW1 resulted in a truely titanic number of deaths. However the Spanish Flu pandemic still killed 50 million people worldwide so I'm not sure exactly what your point is there.
 
 
Supersister
10:04 / 28.10.05
Sorry - those were figures I remember from unischmersity. If I get a chance I'll look up some sources. I'd think any official figures would have been compiled by the British Govt at the time or maybe the League of Nations afterwards, so who's to say how accurate they are? I imagine there is no real way of knowing.

I was certainly taught that the war led to poverty, malnutrution and mass movement of people which contributed to the spread of disease. It seems the most plausible explanation to me. It would provide one, less sinister, explanation for the reason why certain parts of the world still battle with widespread disease, however transmitted.

I'm not a biologist or diseasologist so please feel free to enlighten me with your expert perspectives. I can certainly see the point about an airbourne disease spreading quickly and so being much more of a threat, but surely we have much better understanding about the way viruses are transmitted than folks did in 1918?

I seriously question any source which claims to be able to identify exactly which strain of disease people were dying from at the time, more still any which claim it was an unrelated outbreak of disease that brought an end to the war. It stands to reason that the spread of disease was brought about by the war.

It was the humans, not the parrots!
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:44 / 28.10.05
I was certainly taught that the war led to poverty, malnutrution and mass movement of people which contributed to the spread of disease. It seems the most plausible explanation to me. It would provide one, less sinister, explanation for the reason why certain parts of the world still battle with widespread disease, however transmitted.

This is all true, immune systems already weakened by malnutrition are more vulnerable to disease. Mass movement of people helps to spread the disease to uncontaminated regions. People stricken by poverty are, in some countrys, unable to access appropriate health care. Certainly no argument from me there.

I can certainly see the point about an airbourne disease spreading quickly and so being much more of a threat, but surely we have much better understanding about the way viruses are transmitted than folks did in 1918?

Yes we certainly do. But the problem is that viruses are extremely hard to treat without resorting to rather expense antiviral agents. Vaccination has long been the preferred weapon against viral disease purely because it is the most effective weapon in our arsenal. As has been mentioned above, influenza is less vulnerable to vaccination due to it's ability to rapidly mutate into a form not recognised by the antibodies produced by vaccination.

I seriously question any source which claims to be able to identify exactly which strain of disease people were dying from at the time, more still any which claim it was an unrelated outbreak of disease that brought an end to the war. It stands to reason that the spread of disease was brought about by the war.

Well it is more than possible to sequence the genetic information of the 1918 influenza strain from samples kept since that time. The recent reconstruction of the Spanish Flu virus was achieved by using genetic information gained in this way.

I don't think anyone suggested that the pandemic was the sole reason for the end of WW1. However it is possible that it, as well as being exacerbated by the war, was also a factor in the ending of it purely due to the fact that it was begining to adversely affect any particular side's ability to fight the war (it's tough to fight when all your soldiers are dead from flu).

It was a factor. Not the sole cause.

In some ways we're even more vulnerable to a flu pandemic than we were back then. The world has become a much smaller place due to the sheer density of transportation. It's more than possible for a virus to be in the heart of China one day and get carried to central Europe on a passenger jet the next.
 
 
Supersister
11:50 / 28.10.05
It is more than possible to sequence the genetic information of the 1918 influenza strain from samples kept since that time

Samples of what?? Who has lovingly kept them all these years? I don't believe it. Unless someone brings me that 85 year-old hanky from the Algarve or bloodstained bandage from Flodden Field, I maintain that this story is most likely a sales pitch for Tamiflu. Even if a sample kept from 1918 shows a certain virus present, how can we deduce the subject died as a result of carrying that virus and how can we possibly then deduce that the remaining 1,499,999/ 19,999,999/ 39,999,999 or 49,999,999 died from the same cause? I'd believe it if this turned out to be the first biochemical weapon. Otherwise I can't believe that with all the war and pestilence enough accurate data was gathered to tell us with any certainty.

Something about this story just doesn't make sense and I will put my finger on it sooner or later.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:42 / 28.10.05
Samples of what?? Who has lovingly kept them all these years? I don't believe it.

Samples of lung tissue, for example, lovingly kept by hospitals and universities who do that kind of thing in the event the samples will be required by future researchers.

I maintain that this story is most likely a sales pitch for Tamiflu.

You, of course, have evidence for this? It's an interesting supposition, but probably unlikely. Tamiflu does little other than lessen the symptoms of flu in the first few days. It's not a magic bullet against flu. At best it would give someone a slightly better chance of recovery.

how can we deduce the subject died as a result of carrying that virus and how can we possibly then deduce that the remaining 1,499,999/ 19,999,999/ 39,999,999 or 49,999,999 died from the same cause?

Pathology, epidemiology, microbiology, scientific analysis of the facts. Also the fact that 50 million people developed the same symptoms and died. Y'know, the usual. The stuff that works.

I'd believe it if this turned out to be the first biochemical weapon. Otherwise I can't believe that with all the war and pestilence enough accurate data was gathered to tell us with any certainty.

Actually first recorded use of bioweapons was waaay earlier. Catapulting plague victims into a beseiged city.

Hospitals again were invaluable at collecting this information. An important part of fighting a war is maintaining your country's infrastructure, so that's how.

Something about this story just doesn't make sense and I will put my finger on it sooner or later.

Well let me know as soon as you figure it out. Perhaps you ought to check that the big conspiracy actually exists before coming out with a sweeping statement that this is all to sell Tamiflu? That's just my opinion, I could be wrong (it's been known).
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:57 / 28.10.05
Ahh, the benefit of working in the industry. Couple of bits of news for you all.

What of the scientific response?
Results of clinical trials for sanofi-aventis’s prototype human vaccine against bird flu will be published by the end of this year. Further clinical trials will be conducted in 2006.
Scientists from Russia and Hungary each believe they are close to developing a prototype human vaccine against the H5N1 virus.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday 18 October, Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche agreed in principle to relax its monopoly on its antiviral drug Tamiflu. However, the group will only grant licences in return for significant financial compensation. The patent on Tamiflu is due to run until 2019.
(All national and European newspapers, from 20/10 to 26/10)

Taken from my company's weekly newsletter about events in the pharmaceutical industry.
 
 
quixote
01:07 / 30.10.05
Roche's attitude about tamiflu is sick. (Pun intended? Possibly.)

I read in some medical source that the majority of deaths in the big flu epidemic of 1918 was due to secondary infections with bacterial pneumonia. In the days before antibiotics, those were often fatal. These days, they wouldn't be.

The rapid spread in those days was due to the extraordinary (for the times) number of people travelling, such as soldiers going home from war--and taking the flu with them. That factor would be much more dangerous now.
 
 
Evil Scientist
07:08 / 31.10.05
In the days before antibiotics, those were often fatal. These days, they wouldn't be.

Except, as has been mentioned upthread, antibiotic resistance in bacterial infections is on the rise. Whilst we can most deifinitely treat the secondary infections, we are going to see patients who're untreatable.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
00:46 / 01.11.05
Relatedly, that's already happening with the golden staph infection rate in hospitals in Australia. Apparently, it's almost impossible to effectively treat, thanks to the application of broad-spectrum antibiotics.
 
  

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