How close this year?

[Gray-Wolf]

Poland now have a fourth outbreak confirmed. The initial case was supposed to be from wild birds fecal contamination ,no news on the new ones.

No word from our boys either. Are we looking at 4 weeks more of wild bird spread or was it an 'in house' infection spread by workers?

No news from W.H.O. about the Chinese possible Human2Human.

[picog]

Yes, it's amazing how the UK authorities do not seem able/willing to keep Jo Public updated about these events — it's the same with foot & mouth and blue tongue.

I think that most people have not the vaguest idea how potentially devastating a form of the H5N1 virus that could be transmitted between humans might be. The governments own figures on likely outcomes (morbidity and mortality) for when we get the pandemic seem ludicrous. Stocking up on an antiviral drug that has been shown to be ineffective against H5N1 also seems like another waste of tax payers cash and general ineptitude.

Picog

[OneOffDave]

Yes, it's amazing how the UK authorities do not seem able/willing to keep Jo Public updated about these events — it's the same with foot & mouth and blue tongue.

I think that most people have not the vaguest idea how potentially devastating a form of the H5N1 virus that could be transmitted between humans might be. The governments own figures on likely outcomes (morbidity and mortality) for when we get the pandemic seem ludicrous. Stocking up on an antiviral drug that has been shown to be ineffective against H5N1 also seems like another waste of tax payers cash and general ineptitude.

Picog

Part of the problem is that teh next flu pandemic may be H5N1, H5N2 or some othere strain. Tamiflu and the like aren't brilliant but they are often better than doning nothing, particularly amoungst high risk groups, key workers and closed populations like boarding schools, prisions and the like. The big issues about any pandemic aren't the crude M&M figures (a lot of which may just be early culling rather than significant population die off) but how widerspread absenteeism would affect the economy. The problem is that we have no meaningful experince to base any judgement on for this kind of event.

Dave

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks for the input guys!

You'd think folk would have had enough of a 'glimpse' of how quickly 'all of this' could go belly up with the 'text message' petrol 'crises' (when fuel threatened to rise to 6p less than todays price!!!)

Should Pandemic erupt then it will be our societies 'reaction' to it's onset ,and not the Pandemics 'death toll' itself, that'll cost us more deaths by virtue of the 'knock on effects' the disruption will have on our modern ,'convenience living' society. More than, even, all the deaths directly caused from the emergence of the new 'Human2Human' H5N1 virus' (IMHO).

...and all because folk ARE aware of the H5N1 mutation threat but that they seem to want to 'back burner' the worry so that when 'the worry' becomes 'current' they know what to expect of it all but still haven't bothered to take any precautions to cope with the initial 6 weeks (easily done and openly promoted by the U.S. to their populace where local/Regional 'disruptions to local services' are more common).

When you look at the lines queueing for boarding for their properties prior to landfall of any major Hurricane you can see how 'slack' some folk can be even when living with a recurrent threat!

Edited December 12, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[Gray-Wolf]

Poland seems to be going down with a serious bout of H5N1. The fifth site of infection has also been identified there.

Indonesia seem loath to drop down the 'league of death' and have reported another one just to top up (28yr old woman).

She wasn't raising back yard chickens and lives over 100m from the nearest fowl so they are checking out possible causes of her infection. Their best guess is she contracted it from 'fertiliser' from her neighbours which will have included bird pooh.If so then the virus seem a lot hardier than we are led to believe (unless it was still a steaming mound when she received it!).

[Gray-Wolf]

I think it true to say Poland has a serious outbreak of H5N1 with 2 new sites being added to the list.

In Indonesia they report their 115 case of H5N1 infection (47 year old man) with 92 dying as a result......pretty high kill rate (at first glimpse) but remember that the area is 300 islands so getting folk onto a ward is often a last attempt to save the victim. Much of Indonesia is Moslim and so many deaths go 'unconfirmed' (Indfonesia demand 2 tersts and 2 blood tests to show positive before adding it to their 'list') and the true scale of the problem is unfathomable.

South Korea have also confirmed a poultry farm there with H5N1 infection.

We are now approaching the 'cold/Flu' season so you would expect more cases reported over the next 3 months. If it stays a 'controlled as the last 3 months we wuill be doing very well at it's containment.

[Bobby]

It looks like it's only a matter of time. The virus isn't going away and the recent mutations show it's getting closer and closer to becoming pandemic. When is the question.. it could be tomorrow, it could be 10 years away. Nobody really knows which is the annoying thing.

[Hiya]

It looks like it's only a matter of time. The virus isn't going away and the recent mutations show it's getting closer and closer to becoming pandemic. When is the question.. it could be tomorrow, it could be 10 years away. Nobody really knows which is the annoying thing.

Which recent mutations?

[Bobby]

Mutations were found in one of the more Western strains that showed the virus becoming more adapted to survive in the cooler conditions of the upper respiratory tract instead of deep down in the lungs which are warmer, which means it could be transferred more easily.

[Gray-Wolf]

Mutations were found in one of the more Western strains that showed the virus becoming more adapted to survive in the cooler conditions of the upper respiratory tract instead of deep down in the lungs which are warmer, which means it could be transferred more easily.

Yes, I'd spotted that in Autumn. This one one of the 2 mutations needed to allow Human2Human transmission and I can't for the world of me figure what the last one is The mutations were spotted in the new European/African strains so it was quite lucky that the outbreak here was the far eastern strain!

If the 'European version' were the one to make the final leap then we'd stand no chance of containing it I fear with the vast distances folk travel around Europe day to day. In some musty, stay at home Indonesia village on an island we may stand a chance but here? one infected person at a busy 'Hub' making their way home for christmas.......doesn't bare thinking about!

Edited December 13, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[Gray-Wolf]

Number 93 for Indonesia. The 47yr old man (who was reported to be doing well though on oxygen yesterday) has died. As posted above we have no way of knowing the true figure for infection in the Indonesian islands but the recorded cases now stand at 115 of which 93 have died.

[PersianPaladin]

I don't care about H5N1...load of scare-mongering tbh and there are far more pressing issues to be concerned about.

If people in Asia had better hygience practice when it comes to storing animals, feeding them, etc as well as not eating anything with a pulse...then we wouldn't be having such dodgy diseases spreading around the world so fast.

IMHO...the growing cold around Europe should be killing off the virus now anyway.

[Chris Knight]

"Free range" merely means not caged, it doesn't signify the mean beak to cloaca minimum distance, which is often less than zero by the prospective date of slaughter.

[Mondy]

I don't care about H5N1...load of scare-mongering tbh and there are far more pressing issues to be concerned about.

If people in Asia had better hygience practice when it comes to storing animals, feeding them, etc as well as not eating anything with a pulse...then we wouldn't be having such dodgy diseases spreading around the world so fast.

IMHO...the growing cold around Europe should be killing off the virus now anyway.

Fantastic PP. Couldn't have put it better myself.

GW. Pardon me for saying this, but perhaps it should be said - are all your posts going to be so damn gloom-ridden? As a viewing guest, unable to now post on the AGW threads, i chuckle/chortle at some of the crap you guys are coming out with.

AGW is now having it's day, H5N1 probably already has.

PP has hit the nail on the head - i'm just amazed this thread has reached so many pages.

If you really want to worry about something, try fathoming out the latest Kosovo situation (should they manage to secure independence from Serbia). That's newsworthy in it's own right, not some viral strain that pops up in Asia specifically, with a chance of progressing over to Europe and killing thousands - it's not gonna happen.

Take a chill pill, GW, pour a Highland Park, and be reasonable to onlookers within here - we don't all want to read gloomy posts [all of the time].

[Bobby]

So there will never be another flu pandemic, even though they come by at regular intervals of about 40 years, and the last was about 40 years ago? The world has now changed in such a way that something like the 1918 flu is impossible and we'll live happily forever and ever?

All the world's top microbiologists and health organisations must be a load of nutters then. What do they know?

[Gray-Wolf]

Mond's, I did a bottle of H.P. once and hated it ! I now know the 'malt' they pour into Bells and Teachers. Laughuvalin,Talisker,Jura are more my tastes (until the morning after that is........How I loathe whiskey poohs....)

2 dead in Pakistan (first reported deaths their) Myanmar has it's first outbreak. Further outbreaks in Russia and Poland, no news from the Chinese cluster apart from they sharted a meal of 'beggars chicken' though there has never been transference from cooked chicken before so it don't look like it was that.

The W.H.O. are saying that there is now an Asian 'Flare up' as this years cold season starts in earnest.

[Gray-Wolf]

With the propspect of a double post, now the pre-mod has been lifted,

2 dead in Pakistan from H5N1 infections. Mayanmar reporting first outbreaks. W.H.O. declaring an Asian 'Flare up' of the infection (in line with the start of the cold season). Russia and Poland with further outbreaks. No news on the 'China 2'.

Mond's , I hate H.P., it must be the malt in Bells/Teachers......blah!! More a Talisker,Laguvhalin,Jura chappie myself. H5N1 has the very real potential to make ALL other news look very small beer. Let's not forget the kill rate in Indonesia is 93 out of 115 infections recorded.Even if you reduce this by a factor of 10 it is still 3 times higher than current predictions for the pandemics 'kill rate'.

All those corpses rotting away in your local school whilst the hospitals struggle to cope with an extra predicted 1000 bed cases a week. Nah ,not newsworthy nor worth preparing for......

Edited December 15, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[PersianPaladin]

So there will never be another flu pandemic, even though they come by at regular intervals of about 40 years, and the last was about 40 years ago? The world has now changed in such a way that something like the 1918 flu is impossible and we'll live happily forever and ever?

All the world's top microbiologists and health organisations must be a load of nutters then. What do they know?

Tbh, a lot of these diseases are associated with ignorance wrt to cleanliness, feeding animals, storing animals, eating the right foods, etc. If you feed animals the wrong food then you weaken there immune systems and this can have chain-effects until the point we have infections and then a widespread epidemic. It is all down to human practice imo.

These days, health care, dietary advice and variability, preventative measures, socio-economic conditions, etc have changed such that less people are vulnerable to such outbreaks.

[Gray-Wolf]

Tbh, a lot of these diseases are associated with ignorance wrt to cleanliness, feeding animals, storing animals, eating the right foods, etc. If you feed animals the wrong food then you weaken there immune systems and this can have chain-effects until the point we have infections and then a widespread epidemic. It is all down to human practice imo.

These days, health care, dietary advice and variability, preventative measures, socio-economic conditions, etc have changed such that less people are vulnerable to such outbreaks.

Susceptible? Why then are our planners telling us that there will be an excess of 1000 cases per hospital per day? It would seem our own 'socio-economic' pressures are more to do with ward closers than keeping enough spare capacity to deal with 'eventualities'. When we hear of fantastic voyages of the sick and injured to find suitable 'beds' you have to wonder.

Animals. Do you have cats or dogs in your home? Do you handle them if you have them? Do they sleep with you? Our western predilection for feline/canine companions are our Achilles heel as they fetch the virus too us as discovered in the infections of the cats in far eastern 'wet markets' or dogs in China.

[Gray-Wolf]

Being pre-mod-ed makes for an interseting duality of existance! The more I read of the Pakistani 2 the less confident it makes me!

From Reuters;

"Hartl said WHO has not ruled out limited human-to-human transmission.

"We can't answer that yet," he said. "It's possible."

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 208 people worldwide, mostly in Southeast Asia and China, since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds.

A team from the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit in Cairo was being dispatched to Pakistan to help with the investigation, said Dave Daigle, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Khalif Bile, WHO representative in Pakistan, told The Associated Press on Saturday that preliminary tests had been carried out. He said the WHO was encouraging the government to carry out confirmation tests in the same government laboratory and the results should be available by Tuesday.

People who came into contact with those infected in Pakistan are being monitored, the WHO said.

A brother of the two men who died in Pakistan said Saturday he had been hospitalized with flu-like symptoms. Mohammed Ishtiaq said he fell ill last month after slaughtering chickens suspected of carrying bird flu at a farm near Abbottabad.

"I was not aware that this was such a dangerous disease," said Ishtiaq, a veterinary doctor who works for a government-funded livestock program. He said he wore no protective clothing.

His two brothers did not accompany him to the farm, but visited him in a hospital, Ishtiaq told Associated Press Television News in the village of Sukur.

He identified his brothers as Mohammed Ilyas and Mohammed Idrees and said they were both studying at an agriculture college in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

It was unclear if they had other contact with poultry or another potential sources of infection.

Muqarab Khan, director general of livestock and animal husbandry in the province, said animal surveillance was under way across the province.

Poultry vaccine campaigns also have been started and all farms in the surrounding area have been closed.

Pakistan has grappled with outbreaks of bird flu in poultry for the past two years, but had previously not confirmed cases in humans. "

A vet who didn't know it was serious????___

[Bobby]

This I think is the most worrying news so far. Looks like 2 out of 8 died, lower than the usual rate. Many have said a sign of it mutating would be lowered kill rates as if it's too lethal it won't spread as efficiently.

We'll have to see how this situation in Pakistan develops I suppose.

[Gray-Wolf]

This I think is the most worrying news so far. Looks like 2 out of 8 died, lower than the usual rate. Many have said a sign of it mutating would be lowered kill rates as if it's too lethal it won't spread as efficiently.

We'll have to see how this situation in Pakistan develops I suppose.

I'd agree Magpie. It's bang on the time of year you'd expect higher rates of infection and if 'the vet' was the only source of contact with sick birds then you have to wonder how his immediate family succumbed

[Gray-Wolf]

Lets not forget it's (H5N1's) spread into Africa.

This is from the 'home of Voodoo' .....I wonder if they'll still be sacrificing chickens????

COTONOU (Reuters) - Benin, the home of ritual Voodoo sacrifice, became the latest in a string of West African states to report cases of H5N1 bird flu after laboratory tests confirmed the deadly virus on two poultry farms.

Agriculture Minister Robert Dovonou said in a statement late on Sunday test results from a laboratory in Italy confirmed the H5N1 virus in cases discovered this month north of the capital Porto Novo and on a farm in the commercial capital Cotonou.

Benin's immediate neighbors, Nigeria, Togo, Niger and Burkina Faso, have all reported H5N1 cases. Other regional states hit include Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.

Eastern neighbor Nigeria is one of the regional nations worst affected by bird flu. It reported sub-Saharan Africa's first confirmed human death from the disease early this year.

Health experts have said they fear Benin's Voodoo priests could be particularly at risk because of their practice of tearing out the throats of live chickens in ritual sacrifices.

Voodoo "convents" are found across Benin and the ancient religion was also carried to the Caribbean, especially Haiti, by slaves shipped to the Americas by European captains and traders.

Benin first announced its suspected bird flu cases on December 7. Health Ministry officials said several hundred birds were slaughtered as a precautionary measure in a 5-km (3-mile) radius around the two separate locations. All farms in a 15-km (3-mile) radius were also disinfected.

The import of poultry into the former French colony on the Gulf of Guinea was banned and restrictions were imposed on the movement of birds between farms.

"The tests carried out on samples sent last week to Italy have shown positive ... The two suspect locations are indeed infected by the group A and type H5N1 flu virus," Dovonou said.

H5N1 bird flu has killed more than 200 people around the world, mainly in Asia, since the disease re-emerged in Hong Kong in 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

So far, most human cases can be traced to direct or indirect contact with infected birds and hundreds of millions of birds have died or been culled.

Outbreaks in Africa have raised alarm bells because epidemiologists fear the continent's widespread poverty, lack of proper veterinary and medical facilities and huge informal farming sector could allow outbreaks to go unnoticed for longer, increasing the risk of the virus mutating.

(Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

[Gray-Wolf]

It would seem that the 'Pakistan 2' did NOT accompany their brother to the farm where he slaughtered the chickens (both are studying in Pershwar) and their only contact with him was whilst he was in hospital.

Now I do find that worrying!

[PersianPaladin]

It would seem that the 'Pakistan 2' did NOT accompany their brother to the farm where he slaughtered the chickens (both are studying in Pershwar) and their only contact with him was whilst he was in hospital.

Now I do find that worrying!

Hospitals in grenadeistan aren't exactly the cleanest.

Edited December 17, 2007 by PersianPaladin