http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/02/60minutes/main1094515.shtml
I imagine this will get people talking…
Well, it got me thinking….
We’ve been speculating as to why the WHO hasn’t declared its Phase 4 Pandemic Influenza Alert. Perhaps in this message from FW, we have some answers.
The 60 Minutes bird flu segment was produced before we ramped up speculation here. 95% confident of that.
An answer to the question not asked can be found in the CBS transcript linked by FW above. I’ve parsed it between the lines and pasted those lines as follows:
“Time is the essence,” says Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization’s chief of Pandemic Influenza in Geneva. She calls it a warning signal from nature.
“For the first time in history we are seeing a pandemic unfolding in front of our eyes,” says Dr. Chan.
[snip]
Every morning at the World Health Organization’s Strategic Health Operations Center, scientists and public health officials gather to go over the latest information and monitor every suspected human infection. They call it the morning prayers. The man in charge is Dr. Mike Ryan.
[snip]
There have been several cases in Vietnam and Thailand, where the virus seems to have spread from human to human, but only to close family members and caregivers. Then the transmission stopped.
“What we haven’t seen is sustained efficient human to human transmission. We have not seen chains of infection. And of that we’re sure. And that’s what we need to look out for,” says Dr. Ryan.
[snip]
“We won’t have time, possibly, at the beginning of a pandemic even to get laboratory confirmation. It may take days to get laboratory confirmation,” says Dr. Ryan. “We may have to make this judgment on the basis of the existence of a cluster that’s spreading quickly. And that signal will be very strong. You’ll see the disease extend very quickly from two to four to ten. To 20. To 30, 50, and beyond number of… And when you start to see that mini explosion of cases, we’re going to have a very, very short time in which to do something about that. Very short.”
How long do scientists have?
“The intervention time will be measured from days to weeks. I think no longer than a month at the extreme,” says Dr. Ryan.
Dr. Ryan says if an outbreak isn’t stopped or controlled in 30 days, scientists may lose the battle, “and nobody knows whether that can be done.”
[snip]
Asked if she thinks the surveillance system is good enough to detect when the virus makes the jump, Dr. Miller says, “We’re not going to pick up the first case or the second case. I don’t think we’ll pick up the first jump. We’re just not going to. What we’re hoping to be able to do, and I’m fairly confident we should pick this up, if we get a family cluster, it will worry people. And so they’ll go looking for answers. So, hopefully, in that looking for answers, they’ll get to the right people and the alert will be triggered,” she says.
[snip]
This virus has been around since 1997 and there are people who say that it hasn’t made the jump yet to the point where it can affect humans. Is it not going to?
“It is conceivable that this virus has already reached its dead end and these little blips of infections are just things that are manifestations of where it would like to go, but it’s never going to get there,” says Dr. Fauci. “On the other hand, the more this virus is infecting and killing chickens, and the more people that get infected by it, that’s going to give the virus a greater chance of doing what you hope it never does.”
[snip]
Dr. Fauci says he doesn’t see the preparations for the H5N1 virus as an exercise to improve capabilities of fighting off a pandemic. “Well, I don’t see it as an exercise because it could be the big one. It could be. And if it is, our rushing around doing what we need to do, pushing the envelope, is not for naught or in vain.”
What, in his opinion, are the chances there could be a pandemic during this flu season?
“The probability of next month a H5N1 turning into a widely disseminated 1918 version, given where we are now, in my opinion, is low. Is it zero? No. Since it isn’t, I’m assuming the worst case scenario will happen,” says Dr. Fauci.
[snip]
Now, taking these snippets at face value, here’s what i get:
1. Margaret Chan isn’t fooling around. Beyond any care for her personal / professional reputation, she knows what’s at stake.
2. The WHO has a morning briefing rooms whereby yesterday’s estimate of the situation is brought up to date with overnight information. They call that briefing “morning prayers”. No comment on the gravity and perhaps verity of that briefing could be more telling than that.
3. Such h2h tranmission as the WHO and its collaborators have found has been weak. It might be h2h transmission, but it isn’t the feared h2h transmission, as yet, no “chains of infection”.
4. The trigger event will be “…the existence of a cluster that’s spreading quickly. And that signal will be very strong. You’ll see the disease extend very quickly from two to four to ten. To 20. To 30, 50, and beyond that number of…a mini explosion of cases….”
So there’s a very definite trigger event, a local outbreak that might see a hundred or more cases in less than a month in a pattern by which a given infected person might infect 3 or 4 or more other persons in a short time of contagion. Given that scenario, it’s possible that a trigger event hasn’t happened yet even if the Boxun reports are true.
The rest is pretty self evident. The operative assumption is that the trigger event won’t need swabs and lab tests so much as news of local panics or at least suddenly unusual small concentrations of human mortality. The news might not come from WHO agents or MoH workers so much as concerned, indeed, aggravated local residents.
Thus, a glimmer of credibility for the WHO.
I recall something said in an offhand way about this anticipated pattern of “chained infection” several weeks ago or more, but, owing to the fact that it had no further elucidation, it slipped my mind until now.
Is WHO out of the woods? Not necessarily. They foresee a very short time, perhaps a month or less, to recognize and contain a running virus. Dr. Mike Ryan believes a prompt, fairly robust quarantime would be needed to stop a killer virus from running. In a local sense, in some places, the WHO may not have the political horsepower or the footsoldiers to impose an initial containment and make it effective. That possibility is further complicated if some nations or county governments systematically deceive the WHO for various reasons.
The sustained chain of H2H transmission they’re talking about would constitute at least stage 5 and maybe stage 6 - full blown pandemic. Stage 4 doesn’t require that. B-H-H-stop is what’s happening now; that should be enough to trigger stage 4. Many WHO scientists have been talking as if we were already at stage 4, but the official designation is still stage 3. Declaring stage 4 is important because it will trigger a series of preparation steps in countries around the world. No stage 4, no prep. If the WHO waits for sustained transmission to increase the alert level, it will be too late and millions will die as result.
The US is a case in point. Although billions were proposed to prepare for bird flu, provisions for this funding have been killed in Congress. The reason: Bird flu is not perceived as an imminent threat. Occasional CYA hand-wringing by various members of the WHO is not enough. They need to declare staqe 4 or accept responsibility for the lack of preparation in their member states.
Monotreme
I’m intrigued to know what level of expertise or knowledge you have that makes you so confident in making the extreme statements that you do. Level 5? Level 6? Did you read all of the article?
“It is conceivable that this virus has already reached its dead end and these little blips of infections are just things that are manifestations of where it would like to go, but it’s never going to get there,” says Dr. Fauci. “On the other hand, the more this virus is infecting and killing chickens, and the more people that get infected by it, that’s going to give the virus a greater chance of doing what you hope it never does.”
This is from the expert on the ground in the CBS feature and does not sound like he thinks that we are anywhere near to a pandemic. Do you really believe that if this were the case, the world would not be in a state of panic, alert and preparation?
Monotreme,
You misconstrued the actions of Congress in stripping out the panflu appropriation from the omnibus budget bill. Congress will appropriate in the spring, probably March or April, so that they can all talk about it as part of the campaign cycle next year.
We are at stage 3. We will be at stage 4 when WHO says so. And they get to be the official voice, like it or not.
Are they wrong or hesitating or in doubt? They’re human and err and are very cautious and have to play politics. They are well aware of the implications. They are, however, not the bad guys, just people trying to do an impossible job of balancing competing interests. We really have to try to avoid shooting the messengers.
That said, suspicion for stage 4 is very high.
When I heard “Morning Prayers” last night, it sounded eerie. WHO knows that it is stage 4 but cant say that at all. Not until it is close to or at stage 5 will they officially change it. They cant. Like Dem says, there are so many implications of changing the level officially. I cant imagine being one of the higher ups in WHO, probably wouldnt sleep too good at night.
IMHO it wont be too long (relatively speaking) til they do, but they will wait as long as possible. The cat is jumping out of the bag and you can only shove it back in from view for so long.
One more time
The WHO Pandemic Alert Phase definitions
Interpandemic period
Phase 1 : No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans. An influenza virus subtype that has caused human infection may be present in animals. If present in animals, the risk of human infection or disease is considered to be low.
Phase 2: No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans. However, a circulating animal influenza virus subtype poses a substantial risk of human disease.
Pandemic alert period
Phase 3: Human infection(s) with a new subtype, but no human-to-human spread, or at most rare instances of spread to a close contact.
Does Phase 3 remind us of this?
“There have been several cases in Vietnam and Thailand, where the virus seems to have spread from human to human, but only to close family members and caregivers. Then the transmission stopped.”
“What we haven’t seen is sustained efficient human to human transmission. We have not seen chains of infection. And of that we’re sure. And that’s what we need to look out for,” says Dr. Ryan.
(Yes, it does.)
Phase 4: Small cluster(s) with limited human-to-human transmission but spread is highly localized, suggesting that the virus is not well adapted to humans.
Does Phase 4 remind us of this?
“There have been several cases in Vietnam and Thailand, where the virus seems to have spread from human to human, but only to close family members and caregivers. Then the transmission stopped.”
“What we haven’t seen is sustained efficient human to human transmission. We have not seen chains of infection. And of that we’re sure. And that’s what we need to look out for,” says Dr. Ryan.
(Yes, it does.)
Phase 5: Larger cluster(s) but human-to-human spread still localized, suggesting that the virus is becoming increasingly better adapted to humans but may not yet be fully transmissible (substantial pandemic risk).
Does Phase 5 remind us of this?
“There have been several cases in Vietnam and Thailand, where the virus seems to have spread from human to human, but only to close family members and caregivers. Then the transmission stopped.”
“What we haven’t seen is sustained efficient human to human transmission. We have not seen chains of infection. And of that we’re sure. And that’s what we need to look out for,” says Dr. Ryan.
(Yes, it does.)
Pandemic period
Phase 6: Pandemic: increased and sustained transmission in general population.
Does Phase 6 remind us of this?
“There have been several cases in Vietnam and Thailand, where the virus seems to have spread from human to human, but only to close family members and caregivers. Then the transmission stopped.”
“What we haven’t seen is sustained efficient human to human transmission. We have not seen chains of infection. And of that we’re sure. And that’s what we need to look out for,” says Dr. Ryan.
(Yes, it does. It speaks of “chains of infection”…that “we (so far) haven’t seen” (probably even if the Boxun reports are true).)
Note:
The distinction among phases 3, 4, and 5 is based on an assessment of the risk of a pandemic. Various factors and their relative importance according to current scientific knowledge may be considered. Factors may include rate of transmission, geographical location and spread, severity of illness, presence of genes from human strains (if derived from an animal strain), and other scientific parameters.
Like it or not, the WHO Phase definitions don’t speak of “sustained transmission” (aka “a chain of infection”) until Phase 6…”and that’s what we need to look out for,” says Dr. Ryan.
Given fact that public notification / mobilization is supposed to happen at the onset of the Phase 4 Alert, the vagary as between Phase 3 and Phases 4 and 5 is confusing, perhaps even reprehensible. The key issue here is how much preparation time is likely to exist between a (liberal) Phase 4 declaration and the onset of pandemic conditions…versus preparation time likely to exist between a (conservative) Phase 6 declaration and the onset of pandemic conditions. Put another way, how much time from now to pandemic conditions (where you are) versus how much time from a runner to pandemic conditions (where you are)?
Thus it seems the WHO ought to explain and perhaps revise its Phase definitions…explain more succinctly the distinctions between Phases 3, 4, 5 and 6 and why the matter and what they mean.
Thus it seems the WHO ought to explain and perhaps revise its Phase definitions…explain more succinctly the distinctions between Phases 3, 4, 5 and 6 and why the matter and what they mean.
That’s be helpful.
Everyone is assuming that the experts (WHO or elsewhere) really know what to expect. Given the huge variance in their predictions and opinions, it seems that they are pretty much in the dark. Most of what they tell the world is pure conjecture and they have very little historical information to work from.
One thing is certain, if a pandemic had reached an easily transmissible stage, we would all know about it by now.
Anonsense, I don’t see any “huge variance in their predictions and opinions” at all. I think up to maybe 4 weeks ago, there were small but significant differences in their emphasis. But if you pay attention to how they phrase their opinions and how that developed over time, I am actually hearing many grave voices saying almost the same thing.
What I hear (and that’s just me) is “we can’t really tell you that a pandemic is just round the corner, because to say that as scientists and officials we have to have definite proof, and THAT doesn’t happen until we are in a pandemic. But we really really want you guys to pay attention and get your butts off the chair, so how many different ways do you need to hear ‘imminent’ to get going?”
Bless them…
As long as there remains a small chance that H5N1 could still reach a dead end in terms of human infections, it would be political suicide for the WHO to declare a Stage 4 alert that would create global panic and invoke huge economic consequences (which itself has enormous consequences in terms of human life, let’s not forget).
I suspect many at WHO think we’re at Stage 4, but they need to CYA as well and will wait for the next unquestionably ominous sign before announcing that we’re there.
As it is, probably the majority of people dismiss the threat of H5N1 based on the “Cry Wolf” argument—i.e. Y2K, SARS, etc all turned out to be false alarms and this is just another example. WHO absolutely cannot afford to Cry Wolf on this one, which puts them in a real bind.
There are 2 issues with regard to stage 4 issue: 1. Are we really at stage 4 based on the science? 2. If we are, and the Secretary-General believes we are, is it OK to lie about it to the public because of other considerations.
I think we are at stage 4. Note this, does NOT mean the pandemic has begun, it does NOT mean that we have sustained human-to-human transmission. [Thanks to dubina for posting the actual criteria as I think some are confused on this issue]. There may be disagreement about what stage we are at. I think that’s OK. And if the Secretary-General genuinely believes that we are stage 3, I think that’s OK.
But…
The language used by many scientists at the WHO, and elsewhere, sounds a lot more like stage 4 than stage 3. Some examples?
My concern is that Secretary-General doesn’t want to offend China and hence is reluctant to move the official designation to stage 4, even though his scientists tell him that in fact that is where we are. This speculation on my part, but I see now other reasonable hypothesis to explain the ridiculous WHO, and OIE statements, about how transparent China has been about H5N1 outbreaks.
Why is this important? Many pandemic plans start out by listing the WHO alert system. Their plans are linked to the staging system. They won’t move to the next stage of preparation unless the WHO moves to stage 4. DemFromCT is quite correct that only the WHO can say what stage we are at. Ominous statements by the world’s influenza experts count for nothing in the pandemic plans. Only the WHO alert system counts.
I don’t think that it’d be easy to conceal a stage 5 or greater for long. Too many rumors in this internet age. And it may well be that WHO is worried about a stage 4 (or parts are) but doesn’t itself think we’re there (or hasn’t reached consensus). That’d be my best guess and it’s only a guess. Imagine if Monotreme were elected to tell someone what Flu Wiki thinks! Flu Wiki thinks a lot of things simultaneously.
Don’t forget there’s Indonesia, not just China, in terms of previous rumors or worries that don’t appear to have panned out, at least yet. So the balance between proper concern and over-reacting remains a delicate one.
I like dubina’s suggestion that WHO should clarify what they mean by 3 vs 4, though it’s likely deliberately mushy to allow for some leeway. And don’t forget the stages are listed in the science section for reference.
DemFromCT: I agree about stage 5, no way to hide that for long. Unfortunately, I suspect once we’re at 5, 6 will come quickly behind. So, declaring stage 5 or 6 will have very limited utility, IMO. No time to do much unless you’re a lucky Kiwi and you’re government closes the borders in time. Stage 4 is a different matter entirely. I think we could be at stage 4 for a year or two. In fact, I think we’ve already been at stage 4 for a couple of years.
Consensus at the WHO doesn’t really matter - the Director-General makes the decision. “The designation of phases, including decisions on when to move from one phase to another, is made by the Director-General of WHO.” Nothing there about voting or consensus. I do agree that a more precise definition as suggested by dubina would be a good idea. The leeway is for CYA, in my cynical view.
Ref:Current phase of alert in the WHO global influenza preparedness plan.
And I was hoping someone would have learned something from the New Orleans disaster.
Monotreme et al,
If the WHO declares stage 4, it triggers a bunch of actions which have financial consequences for developed nations. Skepticism in this area is warranted.
HPAI H5N1 does not care about what stage we are at. Nor does H5N1 read WHO press releases. It cares nothing about politics or money. All H5N1 wants is a nice warm place to live, breed and evolve. And it will continue to live, breed and evolve until it evolves into a less virulent form that can infect more hosts. And it’s on the verge of adaptation to be able to infect 6.6 billion more hosts and yet we’re all argueing about how to describe what stage we’re at. Ugh. Politics and silly semantic differences will be the end of us all. I can already hear the Katrina-esque recriminations about what stage the WHO said we were at when the H5N1 pandemic was already raging h2h. God save us all.
“And it’s on the verge of adaptation to be able to infect 6.6 billion more hosts”
Big statements. Many experts still disagree. How do you know this?
Whatever the current state of affairs, one thing has been clarified so far as I can tell: the trigger event that WHO is looking for and is most concerned for is a chain of infection, probably localized…by the time it’s discovered, probably involving somewhere between 10 and 100 people with no end in sight. That’s also the outbreak they want to be able to contain and snuff. Despite ambiguity in their Phase definitions, I think that first explosive chain of infection, still localized, signifies what they consider to be the Phase 4 trigger.
If that’s so (and Drs. Margaret Chan and / or Mike Ryan could verify it one way or the other) then the time we have between WHO’s Phase 4 declaration and the arrival of pandemic conditions most anywhere in the world has to do with air transportation, border closing, the WHO containment effort (we assume that emergency response falls to the WHO because they say it does) and how near or far away we are from the outbreak (exposure-wise) when it happens. Some people would be only days away, others, weeks away, others, months away and some places, probably not many, might not see it at all.
Having dropped this broad hint on the public, WHO definitely needs to clarify its position.
BTW, it’s a good bet this first runner will be a different H5N1 subtype…the very culture needed for a new vaccine, all the more important to spot such an outbreak as soon as possible.
Remember that this is the first time that we’re actually witnessing a (potential) pandemic unfold in real time. So what will or won’t happen is all guesswork, to some extent, and things could play out very differently under various equally credible scenarios.
For example, imagine H5N1 achieving limited H2H transmissibility, the way SARS did, and then pausing at that stage for a year or two. It would allow lots of time to try to contain/avert a pandemic. Or it could go through one major mutation that could take us straight to Stage 6 with no warning at all and just explode with no warning. Or we could have different strains of H5N1 evolving differently and emergin as dominant strains in different locations. Or H5N1 might fizzle out and SARS may take another leap and come back as the real threat. Or something else entirely.
Those who’ve studied the 1918 virus suspect that it may have taken 10 - 15 years for that virus to develop the capacity to cause a human pandemic. That doesn’t mean this one will do the same—it may be faster, slower, or not at all. There is no certainty and those of us who want to be prepared need to consider that this could be something we’re watching for many, many years. I think this is all starting to sink in for a lot of emergency planners. In one sense it heightens the certainty that something will happen, sooner or later. But it remains uncertain whether that something will indeed be H5N1 and if so, how that would actually unfold.
Dubina “Some people would be only days away, others, weeks away, others, months away and some places, probably not many, might not see it at all.”
With regard for timescales for transmission, it might not be as straightforward as we think. Evidence from the 1918 flu pandemic (see Killer From the Skies, under the systematic preparations thread).
“”The lethal second wave, which started at Ford Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1918, involved almost the entire world over a very short time. Its epidemiologic behaviour was most unusual. Although person-to-person spread occurred in local areas, the disease appeared on the same day in widely separated parts of the world on the one hand, but on the other took days to weeks to spread relatively short distances.
“It was detected in Boston and Bombay on the same day, but took three weeks before it reached New York City, despite the fact that there was considerable travel between the two cities. It was present for the first time in Joliet in the State of Illinois four weeks after it was first detected in Chicago, the distance between those areas being only 38 miles.”
makes me think of russian roulette with 5 of 6 chambers loaded
Anon,
“The lethal second wave, which started at Ford Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1918, involved almost the entire world over a very short time. Its epidemiologic behaviour was most unusual. Although person-to-person spread occurred in local areas, the disease appeared on the same day in widely separated parts of the world on the one hand, but on the other took days to weeks to spread relatively short distances.”
Consider that statement for what it must mean.
Being of the second wave, for the virus to have appeared in different places around the world on the same day - before international air travel, it must have been leftover / dormant / somehow inactive from the first wave. What caused it be activated / record illnesses in widely separated locations on the same day? I don’t know: a seasonal thing? Sunlight? Nobody knows, but obedience to the laws of time and space don’t allow it propagate instantaneously around the world from a single point of origin.
Why say that? Because it’s obvious that the WHO expect THE first really serious H5N1 to occur someplace, sometime…at some presently unknown point of origin.
If that WHO assumption is correct, it brings up several interesting questions related to containment.
Assumming the outbreak is discovered quickly, and the outbreak virus is taken to make a global influenza vaccine, if the outbreak is successfully contained, would vaccine production thereafter be halted or allowed to continue? Is it assummed by epidemiologists that a successive outbreak in a different place would involve a subtantially different virus? If so, how substantial is substantial?
And that question of substantiality goes back to the strategy of mass producing an H5N1 vaccine from a presently circulating virus. Some say that strategy might be effective; others doubt it.
Is the first outbreak virus likely to be “good enough”? Do we already have some technical expectation of what a “good enough” virus might mean in terms of its subtypical structure?
It gets murky, yes, but somebody must be “on it”.
Dubina, re the appearance in several phases, this is what some experts belive happened (full text in Systematic Preparations thread - Killer From the Skies) -
“The lethal second wave also provided striking evidence of local patchiness from one American city to another. Death rates from respiratory disease recorded in the late months of 1918 varied dramatically between different cities.
The only reasonable inference to be drawn is that the virus was airborne with an incidence at ground level that was temporally erratic and spatially very patchy. It would be unwise to dismiss the historical evidence that leads to this conclusion as being flawed and inadmissible.
An external reservoir of the virus in the high atmosphere, amplified by the exudations of billions of high-flying migratory birds, cannot be ignored, no matter how unlikely it might sound. Winter downdrafts could bring down the amplified virus as nuclei of mist that can directly enter the respiratory tracts of susceptible humans. A heavy fallout in any location could give a semblance of high infectivity which would then be an illusion.”
Regarding the killer that fell from the skies
I personally don’t like “Deux ex machina” theories introduced which seem to only describe one single event. Having thought about this for 10 minutes yielded, for myslef anyway, an equally plausible explanation:
The second wave was actually a different virus than the first wave. The second wave virus may have had a longer incubation period, on the order of a couple weeks. The virus spread as one of the theories for the Black Death posits. Then when the long incubation period began to expire, it had already spread h2H over the previous weeks. With the wartime mobilizations and personnel movements, it would have lots of opportunites to get to lots of places simultaneously
Thanks to the person who started such an important debate on bird flu. I have been involved with this issue closely for several months and was personally glad to see 60 minutes do such an excellent segment. What I see is that the WHO is doing a very good job with far too few funds. They have been sounding the alarm for a flu pandemic for years now but it has fallen on deaf ears. People are disaster weary from the tsunami, earthquakes and of course hurricanes after Katrina and others that preceded it
The WHO is in a very delicate balance with China and some of the other countries with governments who have a history of covering up the truth. If they accuse China or others of under-reporting, it will cause those governments to close off what communications are there now. WHO officials are not stupid. They know the extent of the under-reporting, and they are working around the clock to penetrate countries like China and Thailand to find out what is really going on and help them try and contain what is frankly no longer containable in the opinion of many experts.
What the WHO needs is money, and for all of us to do what we can to give assistance to these developing countries while there is still time to help slow the spread of this lethal disease (kills over 50% of those it infects)before it hits the US. Obviously we need to prepare here as well. It starts with you and me and I appreciate the opportunity to comment, and thank you to all who take time to comment.
On the nature of most theory, consider Prof. Frank Pajares in his synopsis of Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm:
When social scientists speak of “theory”, however, they seldom mean either common-sense constraints on hypotheses or constraints derived from laboratory sciences or from the very construction of instruments. What they do mean varies from discipline to discipline, and is often at best vaguely connected with the particular hypothesis in statistical forms that are applied to data. Suffice it to say “theory” is not the sort of well-established, severely tested, repeatedly confirmed, fundamental generalizations that make up, say, the theory of evolution or the theory of relativity.
That is one of the reasons for suspicion that the uses of “theory” or its euphemism, “substantive knowledge”, are so many fingers on the balance of social chemistry, but there are several other reasons. One is the ease of finding alternative models, consistent with common-sense constraints that fit non-experimental data as well or better than do “theory”-based models. (I will pass on illustrations, but in many cases, it’s really easy.)
OK, yes, it’s easy to posit alternative explanations.
But we might reasonably assume only one explanation is substantially correct.
Of the several possibilities noted here (and surely others could be contrived) which one obtains? In any case, it seems the WHO expect “The Big One” to arise at a single location and be subject to “containment” (“Maybe,” they say, seeming to imply by omission that it isn’t an airborn virus). This raises several questions. One: why would the WHO speak hopefully of containment if they thought the virus could be airborn?
On the other hand, Dr. Taubenberger of 1918 reconstitution fame has been quoted to say of the Spanish Flu virus, “Everybody on Earth breathed it in and half of those who did became ill”. (Close to his exact words in National Geographic; I can dig it up if anybody wants me to.)
On yet another hand, speaking of quarantine, some island habitations that implemented strict quarantine remainded influenza free throughout the 1918–19 pandemic period. Patchy atmosphereic mixing AND strict quarantine? Hmmmm.
So the question is somewhat mysterious and well worth resolving. Afterall, if the virus is airborn, droplet-born AND resides intact for considerable periods of time on surfaces, it’s a very pervasive bug. If so, published rules of infection control should be revised and the public, advised.
More to the point, if our substantive knowledge of an airborn virus is still more speculation than known fact, somebody should get rigorously “on it” to certify or deny whatever can be certified or denied. Surely this possibility can be subject to prompt scientific investigation.
Dubina,
“What caused it be activated / record illnesses in widely separated locations on the same day? I don’t know: a seasonal thing? Sunlight?”
http://www.cholecalciferol-council.com/pascal.p
This is a link I posted on another thread (“Forum rules, please read and disregard,” or something like that). Anyway, it is an article about an epidemiologist - can’t remember his double last name - who theorized that the lack of some component of solar radiation was responsible for the widespread near-simultaneous outbreak of the flu during the winter months when the sun was obscured. Later researchers have theorized that component to be vitamin D3.
“Forum rules, please read and disregard” can be found here. ;-)
Rule 5a (para 3 subsection 4.iii) is staying on topic.
Yes Scaredy, I read that.
As we read of phenomena and explanations of phenomena that seem strangely at odds with other phenomena and explanations, it’s clear that not all that’s posted here is uniformly reliable and true. I’m in no position to say what’s reliable and true, but I do think it could be important to have some of these possibilities sorted out.
Without being specific, I’m sure some of the conjecture posted here is so unrelable that it doesn’t warrant competent refutation. I think so because I think that’s statistically likely. Other conjecture is rational and some, probably worth sorting out. Most of that sorting out is beyond me, however. In other words, inquiring minds want to know, my own included.