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Source: http://www.todayonline.com/articles/248848.asp
Singapore News // Thursday, April 17, 2008
More worrying than Al Qaeda
Pandemic could spark doomsday scenario: Expert
Sheralyn Tay
sheralyn@mediacorp.com.sg
FORGET bombs and bullets — widespread death and panic is more likely to come from non-traditional sources.
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Already, small-scale examples surround us — just look at the ongoing hand, foot and mouth disease outbreak, dengue and the rising cost of rice.
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Speaking at the second Asia Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers yesterday, award-winning journalist Laurie Garrett (picture) said that a bird flu pandemic could trigger such a Hollywood doomsday scenario.
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"Personally, I am a lot more worried about pandemic flu than Al Qaeda," said the senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
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Ms Garrett, the only writer to have won the three Big "Ps" of journalism — the Pulitzer, Peabody and Polk Prize — said a pandemic of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus would cause disaster on a scale far bigger than the world has ever known, surpassing even the greatest flu pandemic of 1918, which claimed an estimated 100 million lives worldwide.
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Then, the virus' fatality rate was 2 per cent — H5N1 has killed 77 per cent of the people infected with it.
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The H5N1 is believed to be similar to the 1918 flu virus, but is considered by experts to be the worst to have ever surfaced, said Ms Garrett, who described it as being able to cause a fatal "thermonuclear" reaction in the body.
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In chickens, for example, the virus causes massive internal bleeding, turning the combs on their heads black.
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The world is only beginning to understand the problem, she said. For one, countries are still responding only at the local level, said the author of The Coming Plague and Betrayal of Trust.
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"We have yet to react on a global scale and global infrastructure is not even there yet," she said. "For example, we don't have the capacity to mass vaccinate the whole population. Just look how hard it is for us to do measles and polio, the routine child vaccinations."
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There aren't enough sterile syringes to go around, she added.
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Petrol, manpower and other logistical infrastructure are also inadequate to execute mass vaccine campaigns, while containment and quarantine facilities are sorely lacking.
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The worldwide shortage of healthcare workers and the lack of understanding about how the disease is transmitted and prevented will only exacerbate these problems.
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The solutions to these gaps are multi-level, said Ms Garrett. But some valuable lessons from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) outbreak underscore the importance of infection control and preparedness.
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"What's already in place on a day-to-day basis for routine threats is important, but will not be able to deal with the flu pandemic," she said.
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If countries are unable to respond to small outbreaks, such as a rise in flu cases or dengue fever, the effect of a flu pandemic would be "devastating".
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"Much more" is also needed to guide the public health responses, she added. For instance, do masks really work, and is hand-washing the best way to stop transmission?
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Ultimately, "low-tech" solutions — basic hygiene, personal responsibility, social resilience and community solidarity — remain critical in the face of disaster, she said.
I found the way Laurie Garrett write such penous things like scary illnesses and dead animals, and humans, inserted in the historical environment when they prevailed, amazing.
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A book "The Coming Plague" depicted well the real situations and why in this world many health issues starts to be resolved in a wrong way.
From the book we can see historicaly that many times we must thanks an esigue research team of entusiasts and humanitarians, who endangering life, saved the population, instead of the estab.
Today we have the unknown answer for the Ebola first vector, which search are also displayed in that book - the fruit bats.
Like for that, there are many unanswered answers about the flu pandemics at this moment.
IMO, thinking that the whole world countries would prepare itself realy, with the necessary goods, meds, etc., at the same time when the country estab. officials insisted on the max. planned projections of "only" 2%CFR, is illusory.
The same illusory thinking like that those proliferation of so much patented genetic changed microorganisms in so many various labs throughout the world with additionaly deminished lab biosecurity standards for experimenting, will not one day release out the ghost from the bottle, like it was many times in history with other things, from the founding of black powder up to the H.
Like the H for the Earth, the same is this bleeding flu for the earth creatures. As Ms Laurie said:
"The H5N1 is believed to be similar to the 1918 flu virus, but is considered by experts to be the worst to have ever surfaced, said Ms Garrett, who described it as being able to cause a fatal "thermonuclear" reaction in the body.
In chickens, for example, the virus causes massive internal bleeding, turning the combs on their heads black."
The flesh melting, and bleeding. It's own late overreaction.
This are not enaugh scarring? It's because the vast majority thinks that's no way this will ever happen widely. But that's only an irrational feeling of security.
The city guys are so much distanced from the butchering of "domestic" animals, whose killing atrocity is passed from the individual farm, to eye-distanced megacomplexes, that such an anomalous dying of the whole "country" of poultry (milions) in a few hours with horror bleeding, not even distracted that guys - because those poultry must already be dead to became procesed meat for our feeding.
The TV, and paper news stay enaugh away from those pictures - this way the citizens will not be disturbed so much because of the events.
The editor's phrase can than be paraphrased in:
"'If it bleeds it WOULD NOT leads IN THE NEWS''.
And, subsequently, nothing will change.
Nothing would be pandemic prepared realy until something bad would start to happens, unfortunately - that's the way the human civilization do.
Cut the real world into too fine slices may result in a imaginary world, a literary world. In the meantime, evolution continues, wars continues and famine and riots and racism ....
You are on fire ironorehopper, might be Cavaliere effect ??:cool:
:tiphat:
Before bacteriology era no investigation was possible on causative agents for majority of diseases.
Perhaps, a number of pathogens are now extinct. No one know exactly the source and the characteristics of such bacteria and viruses, that plagued humankind since the beginning. But it is otherwise true that men and women strictly co-existed with animals for centuries and no phisical and hygienic barriers were in use: bugs evolved with humans and and animals and they will continue as life exists on the Earth surface.
Since no specimen are available for such archaic pathogen no speculations may be drawn about the virulence and other antigenic and genetic specs.
Whether the Great Plague of Middle Age was caused by Yersinia Pestis or not no one could answer with certainty.
Influenza viruses didn't appear on the Earth with 1918 pandemic and the 'spanish flu' origin and natural reservoir is yet unknown.
Modern bacteriology first and virology then can trace evolution of the pathogen with some difficulties even for contemporary pathogens.
It shouldn't be assumed that everything is known and more and more remains to discover.
Cut the real world into too fine slices may result in a imaginary world, a literary world. In the meantime, evolution continues, wars continues and famine and riots and racism ....
Basic hygiene measures don't stop seasonal influenza and other communicable diseases as measles and chickenpox.
At this point, ''with a CFR of 77 per cent'' it is more useful to close all activities and rests in peace until the time.
Case fatality rate of H5N1 is not a measure of its future evolution.
The WHO case count and statistics mix cases from geographical area well distinct with involve distinct H5N1 lineages with antigenic and genetic properties quite different. The low CFR in Vietnam in the past is mixed with the higher CFR in Indonesia so the 'mean value' resulting is around 66 per cent. But if one has in the mind the Pulitzer Prize, this is of no usefulness. A Black Death or Red Death (as bleeding suggests) is going to wipe out humankind...
You are on fire ironorehopper, might be Cavaliere effect ??:cool:
:tiphat:
Undoubtfully. The poll results are - for me - terrific!
...or as some editors put it
''If it bleeds it leads''
Snowy
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