Bird Flu ha worry about this

[Gray-Wolf]

Okay so we can debunk thousands of deaths but panic madly of a couple hundred even allowing for misdiagnosis you're going to struggle to get to five hundred cases. Perspective yes that's what you need.

In the winter of 2004/5 large areas of China had increases of Pneumonia/septicaemia deaths (tens of thousands) ,well above the seasonal averages. These are the common complications from bird flu that most folk die of.........of course China had no cases of human bird flu until a Chinese lass became head of WHO last year......... Poultry workers in Northern India, when tested, had H5N1 antibodies.......no Bird flu in India until last year either. Maybe their should be some serious reading in between lines here. After SARs cost the countries affected billions in lost trade are you sure that, during a time when the west were looking for any reason to restrict trade with China, any developing nation would seek the isolation that confirmed, widespread H5N1 would bring????

If you enjoy your hunting then look at the deaths, in regions infected with H5N1, for spikes in the known secondary complications of H5N1 infection. There has been a lot of politicking from China/India to protect their exports and Who's appointment of a Chinese National as president is just one instance of the pressures brought to bare on those nations.

If we look at the Hoo Ha Indonesia caused by refusing samples to the West (to broker a deal with the drugs comps for vaccines) you can see what would happen if countries decided to act independently.

Check out some of the Hong Kong Blogs also for their take of the situation on the chinese mainland over the past 5 years, I bet you'll find it enlightening!

On a brighter note;

Sat Mar 1, 11:05 PM ET HONG KONG (Reuters) - A vaccine designed by GlaxoSmithKline to protect people against the H5N1 bird flu may be effective in warding off a few different sub-types of the virus, the company said on Sunday.

In an Asian clinical trial involving 1,206 adults in Hong

Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, the vaccine produced antibodies that not only neutralized the H5N1 virus found in Vietnam, but also the variant now dogging Indonesia.

"The vaccine was made using the Vietnam strain. In principle, there is a very broad antibody reactivity that's being induced. These are neutralizing antibodies and they do correlate with protection," Albert Osterhaus, head of virology at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, told Reuters when asked for comments about the study.

Osterhaus was not involved in the study, but is familiar with the results and methodology.

An earlier GSK study in Europe showed the vaccine to be effective in protecting against two other H5N1 subtypes, in China's central eastern province of Anhui and Turkey.

For years now, experts have warned a flu pandemic was long overdue and many have held up the H5N1 virus as a prime candidate because people have no immunity against this bird virus, and because of the high mortality rate associated with it so far.

The virus has infected 368 people in 14 countries since 2003 and killed 234 of them, or 64 percent.

An eventual vaccine to protect people against a flu pandemic can only be made 4-6 months after the start of such a disaster, when the culprit virus strain has been identified.

But human populations still need some form of protection in those initial months of a pandemic and drug companies are in a race to design what are known as "prepandemic" vaccines.

GSK's prepandemic vaccine uses a very low dose, 3.8 micrograms, of antigen. Antigens are substances like toxins, viruses and bacteria that stimulate the production of antibodies when introduced into the body.

But they can be difficult to culture and scientists have been trying to fix that by using boosters, or adjuvants.

Volunteers in the GSK trial received two shots of the adjuvanted vaccine 21 days apart, and blood tests done three weeks after the second shot showed the presence of antibodies which neutralized the Vietnam and Indonesian H5N1 strains.

Osterhaus, however, voiced a note of caution -- that the pandemic may be triggered by a completely different virus.

"We are all scared of H5, but we should realize that other (viruses) are also a threat and the thing with flu is we have to expect the unexpected," he said.

"Separate stockpiling of antigen and adjuvant, that is quite an interesting option," he added.

With such a plan, adjuvants will then be mixed with the antigen of whatever virus emerges as the pandemic strain. (Editing by Jerry Norton)

Edited March 3, 2008 by Gray-Wolf