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January 19, 2004
China's Irresponsibility May Kill Tens of Millions World-Wide
Chinese corruption and secrecy allowed the SARS epidemic to get out of hand last year, when for several months they refused requests of international health workers to provide information on what they called "atypical pneumonia" in Guangdong province. That disease turned out to a new human viral disease, SARS, but the world's scientists learned little about it until SARS turned up in Vietnam and Hong Kong.
Now there is a vastly more serious risk - pandemic lethal influenza - in danger of arising in Guangdong province, and the Chinese are again failing to provide adequate information! This in spite of the fact that Guangdong was the source of SARS, the infamous 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic (which killed 20-40 million people worldwide, especially young healthy adults, with 500,000 deaths in the U.S. alone). Guangdong remains the primary source of each year's new flu variants, which cause tens of thousands of deaths just in the U.S. every year.
Fortunately, a new extraordinarily deadly and contagious flu has yet to emerge from Guangdong. Unfortunately, the cover-up by the Chinese of the presence of H5N1 avian flu in Guangdong province increases the probability of another 1918-like flu and reduces the time needed to prepare a vaccine should that flu arise. The Chinese deny the existence of that virus in spite of detection of H5N1 in meat shipped from Guangdong.
Guangdong province annually produces new strains of human influenza because of the large number of humans who live in close contact with both birds and pigs. The birds acquire variants of avian flu strains as a result of migrations (where they mix with birds from many regions), and pass those strains to pigs, which can harbor both human and avian flus. Genetic mixing takes place in the pigs, resulting in new strains to which humans are susceptible and, in an environment like Guangdong (and some other parts of east Asia), the strains are passed from the porcine host to humans.
About every 25 years, an especially dangerous flu arises - one which is significantly different enough from strains that the current human population has been exposed to - that a global pandemic occurs. In the 20th century, these pandemics happened in 1918, 1957 and 1968.
The reason scientists including the World Health Organization are so concerned is that there have been a number of outbreaks of a particularly dangerous strain of avian flu in east Asia, including Guangdong. This strain (A/H5N1), if it "cross breeds" (exchanges genetic information) with human influenza is likely to produce an extremely dangerous human flu. Of the 15 known types of avian flu, H5N1 is believed to be the most dangerous. It has a propensity to acquire genes from viruses infecting other animal species, and it has been documented to cause severe disease in humans. There have already been a number of human cases of H5N1, with a high mortality rate. One fear is that, in addition to the normal genetic mixing mechanism in pigs, a simultaneous infection of H5N1 and normal human flu in just one human being could provide the genetic mixing needed to produce a new, highly lethal pandemic virus.
Unfortunately, flu vaccines take many months to develop and produce, and intiviral medications are only partially effective against type A flu. A pandemic flu similar to that of 1918 could again kill tens of millions. The US government has recently started funding research into ways to much more rapidly produce new vaccines.
References:
Telegraph Article
CDC fact sheet on flu pandemics
Aventis Research on Influenza Vaccines
Posted by John Moore at January 19, 2004 11:29 AM
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Comments
.......all good things must come to an end....
** so the world will end with a whimper (flu)not a bang ( nuclear) *****
or, some one will be (Left Behind)
**** and so it goes *****
************************** CK *****************
Posted by: old man of the desert at January 26, 2004 08:36 PM
A few days ago, WNED in New York (a PBS member-supported TV station) broadcast a gripping documentary: "Secrets Of The Dead: The Killer Flu".
A number of experts working in the field said clearly that they expected the return of the horrific 1918 Spanish Influeza vrus, or a variant of it - one British expert predicted that event as occurring within the next 5 or 10 years.
When you reflect on the fact that the 1918 flu pandemic swept away 40-60 million people arounf the globe in three separate waves over just six months and THAT before the dawning of mass air travel!), you can envisage both the scale of the potential calamity and how utterly unprepared we are to deal with it. Every continent would be visited with the same deadly scythe - Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia.
The anguish would probably also be accentuated by the resulting collapse of the world economy (a very real possibility: the 1918 Flu almost had that effect in England and Germany, but disappeared just before their economies and production went over the brink because of deaths, disruption and sickness absenteeism).
One intriguing note, though: the documentary appeared to state clearly that NO samples of the 1918 flu had been recovered from the bodies of victims buried in the permafrost. But if you go to the news reports on the excellent '1918 Flu' page at http://www.survivalistskills.com/1918FLU.HTM, they appear to state exactly the opposite - and that, furthermore, the samples thus obtained were sent to the US Army's Biological Warfare section (now re-named) at Fort Detrick and to the equivalent British biological warfare centre! That appears to be a puzzling and potentially disturbing discrepancy, since the expedition which apparently recovered the tissue samples from Svarlbard Island, in Arctic Norway, was mounted thre or four years ago at least.
A synopsis of the program, and information on ordering the DVD of it, can be found at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_killerflu/index.html. For balance, though, be sure to read through the varied reports on the 1918 Flu and on SARS (which, interestingly enough, two Russian experts are quoted as asserting to be a 'biological warfare' weapon!) on the http://www.survivalistskills.com page cited above
Posted by: Kathie Johnson at March 27, 2004 10:43 PM
BOFH Excuse #438:
sticky bit has come loose
tramadol
Posted by: tramadol at August 10, 2004 06:27 PM
Posted by: online poker ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tinyvital.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 25, 2005 12:57 PM
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