New Flu From The Tsunami

[mikex]

The below can be found at forbes.com

I had nothing else to worry about so I found this.

Companies & People

The Next Big Killer

Robert Langreth and Tomas Kellner, 02.07.05

When a giant wave kills 200,000, the world is stunned and wonders what could have been done. But it is less galvanized to deal with a global catastrophe that could be much worse.

It is likely to kill many millions of people, sicken a quarter of the world's population and send the global economy into a tailspin. There is little we can do to stop this disaster from happening, and it could already be imminent.

The threat, obscured by the all-too-with-us aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, is a global influenza pandemic, the rapid spread of a deadly new strain of the influenza virus to which no one in the world is immune. Such a virulent strain unpredictably leaps from farm animals to humans every few decades, with devastating consequences. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the worst on record, felled 50 million people; it was particularly effective at targeting adults in the prime of life. Milder pandemics occurred in 1957 and 1968. Thanks to modern jet travel and densely packed Asian countries where millions live in close proximity to farm animals, the threat of a new pandemic is greater than ever.

"The influenza tsunami is coming. It is hard to say that the probability of its occurring is anything other than 100%," says Martin Meltzer, health economist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. The only real questions, he says, are how soon and how bad. A potential pandemic may already be brewing. The so-called bird flu, identified by virologists as H5N1 (a reference to the viral surface proteins hemagglutinin and neuraminidase; there are 15 types of ‘H' and 9 subtypes of ‘N' proteins), first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 and has spread among poultry populations in Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia. So far it has infected 47 people who had come in contact with sick animals, and killed 34 of them--a chilling 72% mortality rate. (By comparison, the SARS virus killed 10% of the 8,000 people it hit.) Unlike ordinary flu strains, which mostly vanquish elderly or other vulnerable populations through secondary bacterial infections or by exacerbating preexisting conditions, the bird flu appears to have a more direct killing effect on cells in the lungs and other organs; many of the fatalities were among previously healthy young people.

It may just be a matter of time before a new strain combines the high lethality of avian flu with garden-variety influenza's ability to spread through coughing and sneezing. (Recently a strain in Holland infected a thousand people, killing one.) Meltzer says it is virtually certain there will eventually be another lethal pandemic. What is the probability that H5N1 is going to be it? That's hard to judge. Still, says University of Minnesota infectious-disease epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, "this looks like the first chapter in the new flu pandemic. Even with moderate transmission and fatality rates, this could do in less than a year what HIV took 30 years to do."

Since no one would be immune, all 6.4 billion people on the planet would need a shot. But only 300 million flu shot doses are produced each year, a capacity that could stretch to 500 million or so doses in the case of a single-strain pandemic. In any case the shots may come too late: A special vaccine would have to be made, a months-long process that involves incubating influenza virus in millions of chicken eggs. "It will go around the globe, and nothing will stop it," says Klaus Stöhr, head of the World Health Organization's Global Influenza Program. "At best we can slow down the spread to give us a little more time to produce more vaccines."

The U.S. vaccine supply is particularly vulnerable, now down to a single main flu shot manufacturer, Sanofi-Aventis, after factory snafus this fall contaminated the entire supply at Chiron Corp., the other big producer. After giving lip service to the influenza threat for years, the U.S. government is finally getting serious. Federal spending on flu research, surveillance and vaccine procurement zoomed to $283 million this year from $39 million in 2001. But 20 state health departments still don't have pandemic response plans, and half don't have an online reporting system compatible with theCDC's national database, says Trust for America's Health, an advocacy group. Assuming that a pandemic hits once every 30 years, economist Meltzer calculates that $700 million to $2 billion in annual spending for vaccine development and response is justified.

The U.S. government has contracted with both Sanofi-Aventis and Chiron to produce a prototype avian-flu vaccine for large-scale trials that are expected to get under way very soon with healthy adults. It is not known how much protection the vaccine might provide. The government also plans to award contracts this yearto accelerate the development of a new cell-culture technique that would allow vaccine to be grown in vats instead of in chicken eggs; such methods are now used for polio and other viruses and might more easily be scaled up in an emergency.

It may take years before vaccine production is sufficiently primed. Meanwhile, in Asia, the flu virus continues to mutate. Says epidemiologist Osterholm: "We have yawned at influenza year after year. We are going to have a rude awakening."

M

[echobay]

Wow mike...Pretty gloomy huh?

Looks like designer particle masks will be the new fashion trend...

Hand sanitizers will be a staple

Green Burials will be the future.

i am truly not making light of your post mike. i'm concerned too.We really are not prepared.