It seems like everyone is worrying that the pandemic we will face will be like the one in 1918. I’m not too big into history but the only two extremely big pandemics I’ve heard of are the bubonic plague and the 1918 one. I have heard people talking about the Hong Kong one in the 50′s and that pandemics happen three to four times a century. Looking at history,the 1918 one seems like an anomaly and doesn’t occur too much. What are the chances that if we get a pandemic, it will be like the 1918 one.
40% for 1918-like or worse ? That’s my feeling from what I’ve heard. There were 3 bad pandemics in the past: 1347,1510,1918. Usually only 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 pandemics are really bad, but this H5N1 seems to have some special similarities with 1918.
anonymous – at 18:53
They are concerned it could be like 1918, and it is possible to plan as if it will be, if it isn’t bad, we’re ok, but, it won’t be good it we plan on it like being a bad seasonal flu season, and instead, get bodies piling up faster than they can be buried.
Nowadays, even a disruption to the supply chain/medical system for a month would result in deaths from people who rely on “business as normal” because of imported Rx meds, hospitals providing normal medical/emergency care, or even uninterrupted electricity supply, or food aid handouts in refugee camps, ect.
The avian H5N1 virus has been able to infect and kill many kinds of animals http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Science.AnimalsShownToBeInfectedWithH5N1BirdFlu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1
Also did you see this thread http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Forum.UNUrgesFastPlanning or read Dr. Nabarro on needing to plan as if it could happen soon?
I believe there was a pandemic in 1830 that was more severe than the 1918 pandemic. That would make one in every three pandemics a serious one. There was an 88 year time frame between the last two identified serious pandemics. Add 88 years to 1918 and you get 2006.
Tom, unscientific but spooky!
Annon. The information came from an Osterholm summary last spring in the main american medical journal; the exact name has slipped my mind at the moment. Maybe someone else read it.
Anon I just reviewed my articles and it is Preparing for the Next Pandemic Michael T Osterholm New England Journal of Medicine May 5 2005. I think gs has given you the link. It is the most informative on the subject I have read.
Just for fun, I substracted 88 from 1830, and found this with the search terms “pandemic 1742″:
“The term ‘influenza’ was introduced in Italy in the 15th century when the disease was attributed to the influence (= ‘influenza’) of the stars. Later Italian writers refer to ‘influenza di freddo,’ the influence of the cold, thinking that exposure to the cold caused influenza. The British adopted the name during the epidemic of 1742–43, and it was during this same time the French began calling the disease ‘la grippe.’ “
The epidemic of 1742? Do we have any astologers present?
Anon gs link is not to the paper. I accessed it on the internet so it is avaliable. Try searching for it…it will be well worth the effort.
Tom, this numbers thing is freaky!…makes me want to look at the 1830 pandemic. Plan for the worst, hope for the best, I say.
For what its worth, I think there is a very real chance that an H5N1 pandemic will be much, much worse than the 1918 pandemic. The available evidence suggests that the virus became MORE lethal from 1997 to 2004. The Turkish cases require further analysis, but even if all putative nonlethal cases turn out to be positive, one is still left with kill rate of about 20%. This is 8 times worse than 1918. Of course, H5N1 may not become a pandemic strain or it may change to a less virulent form before or during the process of becoming a pandemic strain. But… I think the possibility that an extremely lethal, highly transmissible form of H5N1 influenza could develop should not be discounted.
Preparing for the Next Pandemic, Michael T Osterholm http://tinyurl.com/apms6
…”Recent clinical, epidemiological, and laboratory evidence suggests that the impact of a pandemic caused by the current H5N1 strain would be similar to that of the 1918–19 pandemic.
More than half of the people killed in that pandemic were 18 to 40 years old and largely healthy. If 1918–19 mortality data are extrapolated to the current U.S. population, 1.7 million people could die, half of them between the ages of 18 and 40.
Globally, those same estimates yield 180–360 million deaths, more than five times the cumulative number of documented AIDS deaths.
In 1918–19, most deaths were caused by a virus-induced response of the victim’s immune system — a cytokine storm — which led to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In other words, in the process of fighting the disease, a person’s immune system severely damaged the lungs, resulting in death.
Victims of H5N1 have also suffered from cytokine storms, and the world is not much better prepared to treat millions of cases of ARDS today than it was 85 years ago. In the 1957–58 and 1968–69 pandemics, the primary cause of death was secondary bacterial pneumonias that infected lungs weakened by influenza. Although such bacterial infections can often be treated by antibiotics, these drugs would be either unavailable or in short supply for much of the global population during a pandemic.
The arrival of a pandemic influenza would trigger a reaction that would change the world overnight.” …
…”Widespread infection and economic collapse can destabilize a government; blame for failing to deal effectively with a pandemic can cripple a government. This holds even more for an influenza pandemic. In the event of a pandemic influenza, the level of panic witnessed during the SARS crisis could spiral out of control as illnesses and deaths continued to mount over months and months. Unfortunately, the public is often indifferent to initial warnings about impending infectious-disease crises — as with HIV, for example. Indifference becomes fear only after the catastrophe hits, when it is already too late to implement preventive or control measures.”…
Does it seem odd that Osterholm, who usually has the most extreme projections, seems to be the favored expert on this forum? If an expert suggests anything less than the 1918 pandemic he’s almost discounted out of hand. This in light on the fact that every projection offered is simply a guess as a pandemic virus does not yet exist.
anon The article from crfullmoon is a different article with the same title. This is from the New England Journal of Medicine article. “There have been 10 pandemics of influenza A in the past 300 years. A recent analysis showed that the pandemic of 1918 and 1919 killed 50 to 100 million people, and although its severity is often considered anomalous, the pandemic of 1830 through 1832 was similarily severe - it simply occurred when the world’s population was smaller. Today, with a world population of 6.5 billion - more than three times that in 1918 - even a relatively “mild” pandemic could kill millions of people.”
Monotreme- you took the thoughts right out of my head…..
Larry I listen to all opinions objectively and after due consideration I honestly believe this one will more much worse than that of 1918
TomDVM,
According to the link provided above, it says mortality rates were low.
1830–33 Pandemic. Spreading out from China, waves hit in 1830–31 and re-occur in 1832–33. The infection rate is high(20–25%), but mortality low
ditto
luv2cmwork. I’m not sure of other sources but the New England Journal of Medicine would be peer reviewed and if Dr. Osterholm’s comments were not accurate, they would have been questioned, debated and probably removed.
Larry F: Osterholm is not saying that a 1918 style pandemic *will* happen, only that it could. There are many sound biological reasons why this is quite possible which have been discussed in other threads. The official US pandemic plan is based on the possibility of a 1918 pandemic. Most experts, with a few exceptions, also agree that a 1918 type pandemic is a real possibility. Osterholm is notable because he doesn’t just look at the direct effects of a pandemic. He also considers the indirect effects, such as supply chain disruptions. Official pandemic plans are just now starting to take these into account. Osterholm is ahead of his time, but the rest of the world is starting to catch up.
I have a confession to make. When I saw the original post I wanted to say ‘actually it seems to me that it may be worse than 1918′. Then I thought I better not freak people out, especially as the person who started this thread seems to be new to this problem.
So should I be completely honest or be more circumspect in my posts?
1742 - 88 years = 1654. Everyone knows about the Plague of 1665 in England, preceded by what appears to be bubonic plague in Holland within one or a few years prior. That plague of 1665 whacked them real good.
And of course there is the plague of 1742 - ( 88 x 60 ) which we fondly call The Tenth Plague. Now that was a doozie. It killed every first born (at least one young person in each family). It killed cattle. It scared the living daylights out of everyone then alive. The Jews experienced post traumatic stress syndrome and “wandered” in the desert for 50 years until the living basketcases kicked off…Moses died and the community finally headed into the promised land (probably where they were at the time that Moses kicked the bucket). Imagine, cytokine storms, blood everywhere, no visible or rational reason. Of course the king, god, pulled them through and said, “be good, and I promise, never again”. Well, it appears that someone’s been bad, or sort’a like Bill Clinton’s liberal definition of “sexual relations”, “never” is now measurable at 2600 years.
Grace RN: I think we are on the same wavelength on a lot of things.
Tom DVM: I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts. I’ve started an [[Science.AnimalStudies|animal studies page. Please check it out and add or edit as you wish. I’m going to add ferret studies tonight or tomorrow.
Straight up and honest…I’ve thought the same thing,ie CFR, but was afraid if I said that, I’d be too “over the top” even for a flu prepper! On this subject, I so much want to be wrong….
Oops. Here’s the animal studies? page.
Anon I believe as scientists, and we are all scientists, that we must always speak the truth as we know it….show humility when we are proven right …and at the same time always be ready to acknowledge the fact if we are proven wrong.
anon_22: Our motto is hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Its a little hackneyed, but still true. People can’t prepare for the worst if they don’t know what it is. The myth of the hidden iceberg of mild cases has been demolished. Now, the only thing between us a nightmare scenario is some unknown biological law that keeps H5N1 from going pandemic or makes it much less lethal. I have no faith in unknown biological laws.
Monotreme Thanks for the invitation. I’m really relatively new at the blogging thing but not with H5N1. I will probably lose the page at some point but will try.
Okay so Osterholm thinks it “could” be as bad as 1918. My point is that on the board seem to latch onto this and this becomes the measuring stick. Anything less is almost discounted out of hand.
Tom you think it will be much worse that 1918? Wow, I guess your really at the far end of the bell curve. Not too many experts are with you on that one.
If you want to speak the truth, this virus has been obviously killing at a very high rate since 2004. The truth is that recombination controls the destiny of this virus, not reassortment. Webster screwed all of us and continues to do so by remaining adamant and then silent. The truth is that for those who show signs of the flu at anything over moderate, that 20–50% of them die. That doubles or quadruples the mortality rate of 1918, when, according to the NY Times study I did, 10% of those reported as new infections died, including those who were admitted as “with pneumonia”. (Check out Oct 13 and Oct 15, 1918 NY Times, around pg 16 or so).
The truth is that WHO dropped the ball, that the US dropped the ball (but nothing better could be expected with a distracted idiot as president), that the calls one year ago for vax plant construction were met with cat calls in the then 2 bird flu discussion groups, that the call to recognize recombination as a way to anticipate what has happened, S227N showing up and raising the H2H efficiency (no long term scientific paper on that yet…sorry…ask the dead ones after this sweeps through for their scientific answers), was also met with cat calls and from normal, conservative prove-it-to-me scientists who yet today rule the roost and continue to sound like fools.
That’s the truth.
1918 is merely a known marker. If you read the NY times on one of those two dates, you will see that there was a prior pandemic in NY City about 40 years prior that appears to be twice as severe as the 1918 pandemic. 1918 is a mere place holder, nothing more.
Larry Before I knew I had any company at all, I made an estimate to the Canadian Government (Feb 2005) of one million dead in Canada and a probably start date of fall 2006. That would put the USA rates at ten million. It’s just a pure scientific estimate on the best information avaliable to me.
Larry F, Monotreme is being conservative. There are plenty of pandemics that are worse. The one I cited that occured in NY City only decades prior, I believe it was 1889, was, based on NY Times published comparative statistics, twice as bad.
Actually it is not true that Osterholm has the most extreme projections. If you have spent a lot of time as I have analysiing the utterances of these top experts and talking to some of them personally, you will be surprised at how little disagreement there is.
…”Recent clinical, epidemiological, and laboratory evidence suggests that the impact of a pandemic caused by the current H5N1 strain would be similar to that of the 1918–19 pandemic. “
ahh, Osterholm said that ? I think, he means “..could be similar..”, as monotreme said. IMO it’s still more likely that it would be much milder. What “Recent clinical, epidemiological,labarotory evidence” is he referring to ? Why can’t he give probability estimates ? I mean, what evidence do we have that a virus as contagious as the 1918-thing might evolve ? If it’s really similar to it, then we should be immun. These experts seem to dramatize, when others ignore the threat, but then underhype when others are starting to panic. They want to lead the public into one direction, so they take an extreme opposite position. And they can’t give numbers, because then this behaviour would be most apparant.
Larry F: “Tom you think it will be much worse that 1918? Wow, I guess your really at the far end of the bell curve. Not too many experts are with you on that one.”
Don’t be so sure. Some may be reticient to say what they think in public, now. Perhaps that will change soon. Many experts have now acknowledged the absence of an iceberg of mild cases. That may be the first step.
What the NY City pandemic a global or a local infection. Do we know how many died of secondary infections?
Larry F: Please give us your line of reasoning, the steps along the way that have led you to your own conclusions. Most of us here have weighed and reweighed our thoughts as new information came to us. And we have done this for many months, some of us for years. And the record of our thoughts are here, if you would take the time to go through them.
2% x 295 MM people is 5.8 MM dead. 4%, the 1889 pandemic in NY City, is 11 MM dead. Those are deaths directly related to pandemic illness. Where are the collateral deaths? Will there be none? Those who are dependent on then unavailable meds. Those who will need emergency surgeries. Those who will starve due to power failure leading to a collapse of civilization as we know it. And those who will be murdered, or robbed and who will die due to inability to be rescued. And those who will die in massive natural disasters which now modern society can address, like earthquake, natural firestorms, building collapses, and the intentionally, maliciously set fires that will burn the cities?
>>If you have spent a lot of time as I have analysiing the utterances of these top experts and talking to some of them personally, you will be surprised at how little disagreement there is. >>
anon22, would you then please enlighten us, what their position is ? In expectation value of expected H5N1-deaths for the next 5 years, please. To my experience, this is _very_ controversial.
monotreme, please make a list, whom you mean with “Our”
GaudiaRay I chose not to go down that road. It’s a little depressing but you can assume serious life-long clinical complications in equivalent numbers to deaths.
oops, for some reason that post didn’t come out as planned. Include the monotreme’s quote: “Our motto is hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
for the pandemics history, remember that a pandemics must have global impact to be called pandemic.
Medical Maven, I can assure you that my estimate has the same odds of accuracy as yours as both are pure speculation. If you don’t agree, please enlighten us as to how your lines of reasoning would impact your odds of accuracy.
gs: “Our” is the flubie community. I think this started as general preparedness motto, but I’m not sure who initially said it. I didn’t mean to include you if you don’t agree.
Larry, every single estimate that I have seen projects between 25–50% of the population will be infected in a first wave of any flu pandemic. The current official case fatality rate is around 50% Whatever people say about actual number being lower, it is still two digits. What would your estimate of the CFR be if a pandemic happens in the next few months? Let’s say it magically becomes 2%. If I take the lower infection rate of 25%, the no of death would be 25% x 2% = 0.5% of the population killed within 3–6 months. A city the size of New York and suburbs with 22M people would have 110,000 fatalities. Hong KOng has 7M people. SARS killed 299 people in 3 months and brought the whole place to a standstill. A flu pandemic that kills 0.5% of the population would leave 35,000 people dead within the same time-frame.
Larry F:>
What the NY City pandemic a global or a local infection. Do we know how many died of secondary infections?
GR: I don’t know. I was surprised to find that tidbit of information when I read the NY Times microfiche in the past 2 weeks. It was just presented as an argument that 1918′s mortality and infection rates were “no worse” than 1889. The problem with that logic is that NY City had 1/2 the population in 1889 as it did in 1918. The chart showed the first 3 weeks or months, don’t recall, of pandemic, and the numbers matched within a narrow range. The growth rate was equivalent. It was quite fascinating.
As I was there, to get a sense of the “feel” of a pandemic, I did not focus further on that chart. I saw panic, raw fear, masked by public statements from senior public health officials that the event was nothing as serious as the risks and deaths of the boys then in Europe engaged in WW 1.
GS is not only wrong; he is consistently wrong. He has first said it ain’t gonna happen, over in CE in the flu clinic, but he quit there and hangs out here when the wave of opposition grew large and demanded he back his utterances with fact. I pay no heed to his statements whatsoever.
Larry. You are exactly right.
BTW, if by “the experts”, Larry, you mean WHO, they again have been wrong over their pronouncement about the girl who just died in Iraq. Nothing that the WHO says when it comes to numbers is believable. They have said one phrase I believe is true. They have said, “be concerned with power, water, sanitation, transportation”. That’s correct. In fact, only today did Cheng say that H2H has occured in the past. She admitted by her recognition of H2H in Northern Iraq, that these H2H cases have been occurring in the past (in Indonesia and Vietnam, for example).
So, who are the experts to who you refer? Don’t tell me Stohr, or Omi or Oshita or Nabarro or any of the WHO crew. Who else?
gs “anon22, would you then please enlighten us, what their position is ? In expectation value of expected H5N1-deaths for the next 5 years, please. To my experience, this is _very_ controversial.”
Yes, this is very controversial because you are the only person who gets so fixated on 5 years. It is the wrong time-scale to use for a potentially fast developing disease. Once things start happening, events feed on events. That is whatever happens on one day or week changes what is going to happen next day or week.
A 5 year mortality estimate is more appropriate for diseases like cancer or Alzheimers, or HIV if you want to talk about infectious diseases.
So, No, I cannot answer your question because I have not met anyone nor read any journals or articles that use such a parameter. YOU are the only person who thinks that way. That makes you either a genius or ….?
Larry F: Hunches are based on facts and reasoning. Idle speculation is just that. Are you just a speculator trying to smoke-out the “soft spot” so that when you see something weak you can say “Aha!”? Like I said, our record is here. Spend the night reading our comments, going back many months, and then come back in the morning.
BTW, I wish to apologize for appearing a bit strident in my tone. I’ll tone it back here. I rarely participate here as I need encounter with unvarnished truth and hard-nosed speculation as I’m preparing for the pandemic, not examining it as a disinterested academic. My personal life depends on my full understanding of what’s happening. So far, I’ve been right. So, I’m not very indulgent of the genteel engagement which fails to advance the ball without looking forward into the absolutely uncharted unknown. Again, my apologies, but you may now be a bit more tolerant of my insistance that facts speak for themselves.
Don’t forget, add onto what your think pandemic influneza itself will kill, what the disruption of widespread illness and absenteeism and quarantines will do, too. We have many people alive today who can’t survive without “business (and current societal efforts) as normal”.
International, just-in-time supply chains, all hospital/emergency care, possible electrical grid problems, I can’t go into all the things that can fail right now, but life is more complicated now that in 1918, besides having 3 times the world population, and far far fewer people producing or storing their own food.
For those additional reasons, beyond the likelihood of an H5N1 pandemic being able to cause cytokine storm/ARDS deaths in the 20-to-40, infrastructure-running age group, I have been concerned that we could have to see a pandemic worse than that of 1918.
It would be a happy thing to be wrong; have no pandemic in our lifetime, but planning for the worst has to be attempted. Planning as if it may be a mild pandemic or one years away may prove deadly. Your personal catastrophe would just be someone else in the future’s sad statistic.
ditto
Oops!
I meant ditto to Medical Malvern’s post..
anon_22, I’m in complete agreement. I read the facts one minute at a time. This is a very quickly evolving disease. And the facts are being masked or horribly mishandled by ignorant and frightened bureaucrats, as well as stifled by intensely vested interests and their narrow-minded supporters (such as Dr. Butcher, one of the few poultry virologists in the world, out of FSU, who only a month or two ago argued against BF becoming H2H). Denials are to be expected. Tragically, they ungird the general public.
My mention of WHO failing to acknowledge fully and publicly H2H (due to their quaint desire to define H2H as efficient and casual) has led to many millions of people believing that this virus is not now and has not been transmitting H2H. It’s criminal.
Medical Malvern, facts and reasoning aren’t real useful in predicting the future..no more than idle speculation. Sorry but facts are facts.
Larry F: Katrina.
Larry, pray may I ask how one predicts the future then if not based on facts? Astrology? Psychic channeling?
Larry F: Wars are fought with such stuff, (facts and reasoning), and won. That is sufficient for our purposes. What is sufficient for yours, I have no idea, because you won’t elaborate. And with that, I am going to bed. Goodnight all.
Monotreme, are suggesting that the future of H5N1 can be predicted? I’m not suggesting an unknown future pandemic (i.e. Katrina). I’m speaking of something very specific (i.e. H5H1).
Larry. Most human calamities including diseases have historically been predicted and the predictor ignored. Those that ridiculed the predictor are the same that jump on the bandwagon and yell the loudest when the inevitable happens and take it from me…this is going to happen.
mono, I said several times, how I hate that motto. I’d like to know who “flubie” is and who stands to that motto. gaudia, «GS is not only wrong; he is consistently wrong. He has first said it ain’t gonna happen, over in CE in the flu clinic, but he quit there and hangs out here when the wave of opposition grew large and demanded he back his utterances with fact. I pay no heed to his statements whatsoever. » GS is me ? I never said “it ain’t gonna happen”. I didn’t quit flu clinic, custodians threw the thread into dungeon, I still posted there and some other posts. But even suppose it were true, whith what point do you think I’m wrong ? I can’t see this from your post.
I think the last couple of posts by Larry has revealed his true colors. Someone who has already decided that he will never be convinced no matter what, even by facts or reason, do not deserve our attention. I have better things to do.
larry: «Okay so Osterholm thinks it “could” be as bad as 1918. My point is that on the board seem to latch onto this and this becomes the measuring stick. Anything less is almost discounted out of hand. »
anything else is just not worth considering. When you estimate the whole risk, the less likely 1918-scenario is still much worse than the more likely mild scenario in expectation value because of it’s much larger death-toll.
anon_22: Agreed. There seem to be a number of these individuals who have been here lately. What I wonder is - why?
Larry. I really don’t have any problems with your comments. As a scientist just remember as I will that if we are wrong we will acknowledge the fact. And if you want to know the truth…I really hope you are right and I am wrong.
Tom: «Larry Before I knew I had any company at all, I made an estimate to the Canadian Government (Feb 2005) of one million dead in Canada and a probably start date of fall 2006. That would put the USA rates at ten million. It’s just a pure scientific estimate on the best information avaliable to me. »
can you give some more details, how you arrived at that estimate ?
gs. At the moment I can’t remember the exact parameters upon which I made the estimate but I think my worlwide total death rate was 180 million. I have to go now but I will review them and catch up with you and explain them in the future. Thanks for the interest.
gs, again you’re wrong about what is the probability of “mild” pandemic. You do it in spite of fact. Where else do you think your postings belong but in the dungeon, out of courtesy, as the alternative is saving bandwidth by their erasure? The potentially pandemic virus, H5N1, is currently at 20% mortality. Correct? There is now sea of mild cases. Correct? 20% mortality when applied to a 25% infection of the entire population is what, gs…what? Allow me to help you .2 x .25 = 5%. And that compares to the 1918 2% by being 150% larger. Hmm. Now, I’ll join you in saying that 5% mortality rate of the entire population is mild. We’re in agreement.
gs, before you ask one more person that favorite question of yours, please explain fully your rationale for using the 5year timeframe?
you keep asking people for details, yet you are never able to provide any. It is irresponsible and downright selfish if you don’t mind to keep using up people’s time and goodwill without contributing anything substantial in return. And never even moving forward but staying with exactly the same fixation.
anon22, chose any timescale of your choice for an estimate which you think most experts would agree on. Tuft’s questioning took 3 years BTW. with 18 experts estimating 30% probability for H2H in average.
Tom, read my post 00:32
And let’s be liberal and toss out 1/2 of the 5%. The mortality rate will be 2.5%, which is awfully like 1918. However, you have some information I’m missing, which is the number of mild and asymptomatic cases, I assume. Can we just say that they were included in the toss out of 1/2 of the 5%? So, again, I agree with you, at 2% mortality rate, the pandemic strain apparently is mild.
gs “anon22, chose any timescale of your choice for an estimate which you think most experts would agree on.”
I already did. The first wave of a pandemic. After that … it depends.
READ MY POSTS.
STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.
Monotreme, “There seem to be a number of these individuals who have been here lately. What I wonder is - why?”
I think there are just many more new people. There have been quite a few nice open-minded people asking intelligent questions or posting useful comments. But more traffic of course mean more trolls. Or they got clever and camouflage their troll-ness as ‘intelligent’ questions.
anon22, if I had chosen another timeframe you would probably have complained as well. I started with 10 years but went down as other people became more intersted in shorter ranges and as things heated up. I gave my estimates (based on what I hear, I’m no virologist) lots of times. It’s about 5e7 expected deaths in 5 years. My contribution _is_ the asking of this question and collecting the answers as I think, it’s very important for us to have that estimate and to have it as profound as possible. Why don’t you want experts giving that estimate ? Because you are afraid it might differ from yours ?
So, gs is an historian. Kewl. He’s building a data library and fleshing it out by asking questions. Thx gs, you’re a helluva a public servant.
can someone else please recall anon22′s estimate ? I must have missed it.
KEEP ASKING QUESTIONS.(that’s our motto, isn’t it ?)
gs, “anon22, if I had chosen another timeframe you would probably have complained as well.”
Oh, so now you are able to predict MY behavior?
I don’t know what is 5e7 deaths.
You still have not told us why 5 years.
I didn’t ask for your estimate. I asked your rationale for wanting the estimates expressed in that form. READ MY POSTS.
Asking questions and collecting answers is not a contribution. It is an annoyance when the same question is repeated ad nauseum over months and months.
This is not a stamp collection club. We do not need your collection of answers, and you don’t even have that, just a collection of one single question repeated like a broken record. We need a thorough discussion AS RELEVANT TO THE IMPLICATIONS OF A PANDEMIC. A ‘collection’ of anything is dead data, it does not help anyone unless interpreted in a way that is appropriate to the situation.
I have never been afraid of answers of any kind. You are going back to unsubstantiated accusations in place of well-supported analysis.
I am only annoyed ANNOYED SILLY by stupid people.
How about you be a contributor of one rational, fact based idea relating to the 1918 pandemic? That’s my question. That was the same question, in essence, posed to you over at FC. You’ve flunked out over there. Here, I’m waiting for the info, so I too can understand better the 1918 pandemic.
For you number collectors, I’d suggest a trip to your local historical society and some reading. Diaries and journals from the 1918 flu are very enlightening in many ways. The big numbers are scary, but nothing to compare to the feelings of the people living through it! I spent a week reading when I first started looking in to this, one of the more depressing weeks of my life. The mass numbers won’t speak to the tragedy in your neighborhood, the raw impact on your world view.
anon22 - I’ve posted before, and I’ll reiterate it here. I personally believe that gs is OCD, with the target fixation to be this imagined probability number that he keeps seeking. if he can only discover the perfect probability expression, then the secrets of the universe will be unlocked for all time.
I have learned never try to argue with or use logic with an OCD. It will just annoy him and give you the screaming willies.
Eccles, I agree. It is partly for the benefit of newbies who may actually be conned by his pseudo-analytical language.
Also, it does seem to shut him up. See how he’s disappeared? Works every time.
And the fact that he does that, disappear when really challenged, ought to be revealing to anyone new-ish here.
I didn’t get the screaming willies, just wanted to really show his true colors.
“Larry, pray may I ask how one predicts the future then if not based on facts? “
anon_22, how can the past be used as a guide for an unknown such as a potentially mutated H5N1? By applying 1918? How about some milder pandemic? The virus as it now exists may or may not resemble a mutated H2H virus, that much we can all agree on correct?
My original point is that many on this board want to grab on to the most extreme and dire predictions. If I offered my opinion of a pandemic to be 1 billion dead, no one would here would question the number. If on the otherhand I predict 5 million, I’d be asked to justify how I came up with that number. It’s quite obvious that experts that either predict a mild pandemic or a pandemic as being very unlikey are dismissed out of hand. Experts that predict massive casualties and civil unrest seem to be knighted as being especially plugged in and better informed. If I’m wrong, please show me how.
BTW, I’m not interested in a game of gotcha, regardless of what you or others might think.
Anon22 - By the way, the notation that gs is using (i.e. 5e7) is a shorthand way of expressing large numbers in text. It translates as 5 times ten to the 7th power. This is normal scientific notation converted to something you can post on a BBS. The actual origin of this method dates back to FORTRAN programming language, where it was one of the possible output formatting methods for numeric data when outputting to a limited sized field on a line printer or page printer.
>gs, anon22, if I had chosen another timeframe you would probably >have complained as well. >Oh, so now you are able to predict MY behavior?
I do my best.
>I do not know what is 5e7 deaths.
short calculator notation for 5*10^7 = 50000000 = 50million
>You still have not told us why 5 years.
Probably because we have 5 fingers on each hand. Because people are using decimal system over here.
>I did not ask for your estimate. I asked your rationale for wanting >the estimates expressed in that form. READ MY POSTS.
It’s IMO the decicive question which people and governments should base their decision and preparations upon. Few people read more of your posts than me. I can’t always make sense of them, though.
>Asking questions and collecting answers is not a contribution.
others disagree.
>It is an annoyance when the same question is repeated ad nauseum >over months and months.
we all have our special subjects. You are repeating your New York,Tokyo,.. death-tolls again and again.
>This is not a stamp collection club. We do not need your collection >of answers,
you cannot speak for others. I know of some others who do appreciate this discussion.
>and you do not even have that, just a collection of one >single question repeated like a broken record.
I posted answers from Sandman,Webster,Fumento, and others. I discussed the Taft-report (courtesy to Dem) which you might have missed else. I discussed the recent global risk report from World Economic Forum. Please comment on these in the appropriate threads !
>We need a thorough discussion AS RELEVANT TO THE IMPLICATIONS >OF A PANDEMIC. A collection of anything is dead data, it does >not help anyone unless interpreted in a way that is appropriate >to the situation.
it helps to motivate appropriate funding of WHO,governments and other organizations. As well as private decisions, what amount of preparedness is appropriate. One of the main problems here always was how to convince others to prepare. This can best be done by expert-probability estimates. (IMO)
>I have never been afraid of answers of any kind. You are going >back to unsubstantiated accusations in place of well-supported analysis.
it was a question, no accusation. The accusations in this thread clearly come from your side.
>I am only annoyed ANNOYED SILLY by stupid people.
be more tolerant. We are fighting for the same thing. I appreciate your contribution. Let’s be allies, not friends, OK ?
LarryF, there are many experts who consider a severe pandemic unlikely. anon22 seems to differ, but this is controversial. And yes, I think you are right that those who consider it unlikely are “attacked” in these Forums. One more reason to get some numbers from the experts. Send emails to experts and politicians and ask them for their estimates ! I think we have a right that they tell us about it. Now, I just said my expectation value were 5e7 for the number of H5N1-deaths in the next 5 years. What’s yours ?
Thanks Eccles. I wondered, decided it was probably from calculus or something, and didn’t want to ask gs, for fear he would try to explain! Wasn’t sure I would be able to follow.
Anon_22: please continue as you have all along. As said earlier, I can’t prepare for what I don’t know.
gs, again you’re wrong about what is the probability of “mild” pandemic. You do it in spite of fact. Where else do you think your postings belong but in the dungeon, out of courtesy, as the alternative is saving bandwidth by their erasure? The potentially pandemic virus, H5N1, is currently at 20% mortality. Correct? There is now sea of mild cases. Correct? 20% mortality when applied to a 25% infection of the entire population is what, gs…what? Allow me to help you .2 x .25 = 5%. And that compares to the 1918 2% by being 150% larger. Hmm. Now, I’ll join you in saying that 5% mortality rate of the entire population is mild. We’re in agreement.
GaudiaRay, I’m confused. Can you enlighten me, on the evidence of efficient H2H transmission? And REAL evidence, not speculation. If you find none (I haven’t) than your entire assumption is based on H5N1 going pandemic, as it is. IT CAN’T!
You can talk about mortality rates all you want, but nobody is “wrong” about anything at this point.
I’m quite convinced, that the only posts that belong in the dungeon, are posts that only take only one point of view. For example, I’m not sure why Dr. Butcher, is any less credible than Dr. Osterholm, other than he says things that don’t support your view. Just like GS doesn’t support your view.
lum2cmwork, Butcher is one of several experts who’ve suggested the threat is being overblown. Each of these have been attacked as be non-credible as well. I know of no experts that are being attacked because the think the threat is being downplayed. Why do many if not most posters here seem so awestruck with Niman? He’s been wrong probably more times that he’s been right. It’s my opinion that he’s given special status because his views are extreme compared to other experts. Do you notice a pattern here?
I completely agree with luv2cmwork and Larry F last posts… Sorry but for me it seems many people only want a very bad pandemic, and attack everyone who say “maybe it will not be so deadly”
This seems a non-sense to me. Sorry I’ll leave this forum
Larry F: What is your “axe to grind” in this? Is this all an academic exercise to you, and do you think the world would be a better place if us “chicken littles” would only smarten up and increase our dose of Paxil or the like? Those of us who err on the calamity side of this situation are not doing you any harm. And anybody who is sucked in by our “paranoia” will at least help increase the GDP in their country while improving preparedness for many possible scenarios other than avian flu. What is your problem? Is it your ego? Is it that you have to sway everybody over to your side, to feel comfortable with your own firmly fixed view of the probabilities here? Like I said last night, wade through all of the scientific reports that we have digested over time with all of the give-and-take that followed. Each of us has wandered back and forth towards your view and back to our current one. I may yet go back to your side, if I see compelling evidence to the contrary. I am not fixed. I go with the facts as I see them. And we are talking about facts that go back many months from many sources. We have a virtual textbook here, and I will not reiterate it for your benefit (or not).
I’m not really taking sides here because I think all opinions should be expressed (of course those backed by facts or sound reasoning should be given more credence), and as much as gs has irritated me in the past, I think some are being way too harsh on him - even cruel.
Having said that (the popular phrase du jour), there’s this: luv2cmwork (a nom de plume which perplexes me) at 10:15 - “Can you enlighten me, on the evidence of efficient H2H transmission? And REAL evidence, not speculation.”
I would say there is significant evidence of h2h. Of course “REAL” evidence is very hard to come by (see threads on WHO, TPTB, etc.), but just because evidence is circumstantial does not make it any less valuable. Per Wikipedia: “Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence…the result of combining seemingly unrelated facts that, when considered together, can be used to infer a conclusion.”
So while we may not have the results of seroprevalence studies (which would produce the most powerful evidence), IF a pandemic occurs, we need to use our reasoning ability if we are to maximize our odds of survival. WHO may state that there’s little or no h2h in Turkey, but Niman says there is and I’m inclined to believe him, not because his views are extreme or alarming (although, granted, they are), but because to me they make sense.
I look at his graph (and at the graph at H5N1 blog) of Dogubayazit clusters and I see the time frames of onset of illness. I see how all the original cases were related family units. I know that, thus far, human h5n1 is rare, so I think, hmm…out of how many millions of people in Turkey what would be the odds that these distinct family units - and these only - would get bird flu only b2h. It does not make sense. I am not the mathematician that gs claims to be. And I am not a doc like anon_22. I am not a lawyer like tjclaw and I don’t have a degree in criminal justice like mom_11. I’m not a scientist like monotreme or a mechanical whiz like Eccles. Just little old stupid me sitting here with a computer and a brain and I don’t need to have Ph.D. after my name to see that H2H is a distinct possibility.
And even those who think Niman is on the right track (and I have yet to hear any more powerful arguments against him than he’s out to make a buck - which granted, should be factored into the credibility equation - and that he holds a minority opinion) acknowledge that - because of deliberately blocked access or whatever - there is a shortage of available information, which precludes certainty.
tixit at 11:20 says: “it seems many people only want a very bad pandemic, and attack everyone who say “maybe it will not be so deadly.”
We’ve been down this road before. Of course, who could blame anyone for not reading the exploding number of threads. I mean I post a comment and before I can “return to main Forum page” the thread I commented on has dropped to number 5 on the list. But we have covered this subject before. Really just about all I can do in response to this comment is to shake my head. People here are informed and alarmed. They are trying to take action to save their families, their friends and ALL fellow earthlings. The message is dire. Do not confuse the message with the messenger.
I must be missing something. I think everyone can agree that this sort of pandemic can happen, right? So what is the use of arguing what the probabilities are? I believe it was GS who said that even if the probability is small, the consequences would be catastrophic. So let’s look at this from a different angle. What other man-made or natural disaster could come close to a flu pandemic? Now let’s take a step back and look at history for examples (no one can argue there…these things have already occurred…unless you want to argue bias, censorship, etc. on the historian’s part) Let’s take nuclear war for an example, and let’s make the analogy really simple, for simplicity’s sake. Nuclear weapons have only been used on a population at one time in history, at the end of World War II against the Japanese, presumably to end the war without incurring further American casualties. A human decision-making process was used in order to make this happen. The devastation of both life and property in two cities, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, was rapid and complete. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese surrendered. Since that time, we have come close to the exchange of nuclear weapons between countries but were pulled back from the brink due to our instinct for self-preservation. Now let’s look at the flu virus. It doesn’t negotiate with its hosts. It doesn’t have a decision-making process, doesn’t know what it is doing to its hosts and presumably wouldn’t care even if it did know. Its only concern is to live and make more copies of itself in whatever life form it can infect. So our politicians can’t BS their way out of this one. Also, when the new virus gets really good at spreading between its new hosts, it won’t settle for two large cities. It will be going places! So what if it doesn’t happen this year? We might be out a bit of extra spending money. What if it does? Then you’ll wish you could have converted every bit of worthless paper money into something usable. So this gets us back to the question of why we are asking questions. I believe a question asked for purely academic reasons is a waste of energy. In other words, if you are asking questions but don’t plan to act on the answers you obtain, you are wasting your time. And since we already know from history that flu pandemics have hit us with devastating consequences, and that we are arguably no more prepared for one now than we were in 1918, why do we need to ask any more probability questions? We need only be asking questions that have answers that can help us plan more efficiently for what we all know will eventually get here.
De Jure: You have just composed the perfect coda to this thread.
“So what is the use of arguing what the probabilities are?”
‘nuff said. Let’s get back to work on real issues.
De jure,
Agree with everything you say especially this “In other words, if you are asking questions but don’t plan to act on the answers you obtain, you are wasting your time.”
Dang, lost everything I had written..and it was so good! No time to rewrite, but…
I disagree, that asking questions with no plan to prepare is a waste of time. Knowledge itself, is a good thing and can be an invaluable tool. I think it’s possible, that I may be the village BF expert, just by reading this forum and others. Even if I have prepared nothing, I have that.
Knowing all the facts (and expert speculation) would lead a reasonable person to have concern and to consider preperations. Better yet, to gather up critical items, as would be prudent in any disaster.
The fact for me is this…that I take this issue quite seriously. I hate to see it diluted down, by reasonable people, because of what I consider to be “alarmists” making all kinds of outrageous claims.
Your right, the real issues are preparing with a cool head.
I’m excited about some of the new drug and vaccine solutions I’m seeing. I hope we can hold out that long! That’s where De Jure should be taking his WWII example…how the world should be working together for a common good!
Just waded through this long debate and it seems to revolve around demands for answers and certainties that we all know are unknowable at this point. It’s pointless arguing about whose guesses and estimates are wrong if there’s no way to resolve that until a pandemic has come and gone.
The reason we discuss these things at all is basically only to help us reach our own private and individual decisions (best guesses) on what it is that we are going to prepare ourselves for. It’s a given that this crowd would tend to be more negative than average — I use that strictly in a relative sense — as we wouldn’t have come here if we weren’t seriously concerned to start with. So we’re a self-selected sample that’s not representative. Fine! But few of us would stick around here if we weren’t receiving new info that keeps reinforcing our concerns. If you step back and look at the big picture, it’s become progressively more alarming, apart from the occasional bright spot.
All this attention to H5N1 doesn’t make us right or wrong, although it certainly makes us more informed than most people — more likely to dismiss popular myths that don’t compute and to pick up the important details that others are missing. So the only thing we can say is that we’re generally more worried, more informed and definitely more likley to be better prepared than most people for whatever comes.
It’s very valuable to hear from skeptics on either side, and we need that, though it does get tiresome rehashing the same old stuff that we’ve covered many times before — though that’s more a reflection on the Forum format than on those who are raising these questions.
… and for gs, I should add that despite everything said above, I do appreciate the effort you are putting into refining probability estimates. It’s very useful as a tool to test my own guesstimates against.
(As the parent of a mildly autistic child, I’m used to coping with such “perseveration”. While it can be annoying to those who don’t share the interest, this intensity of focus can also produce remarkable things.)
Thought I’d play with GS’s numbers - 5e7 deaths in a five year period (I guess this is assuming that the pandemic will hit within that five year span?
world population - 6,494,872,078 GS’s est deaths - 50,000,000 equals about .77%
US population - 298,012,675 x .77% = 2,294,215
I’ve seen estimates of 2% to 2.5% for the 1918 rate, which is about 2.6 to 3.2 times GS’s rate.
Something else to think about - what were the birth rates like after the 1918 pandemic ended? It hit the people in the 20–40 age group the hardest, the group most likely to reproduce. Did we see a drop in birth rates?
So to get an overall picture, you’d have to have the pandemic related deaths, plus the collateral (people who needed medical care, food, etc), plus the people who won’t be born.
Now I understand the “Roaring Twenties”…I’d want to roar too after surviving something like that….
Looks like we’ll all be looking at the “Roaring Twenties” in a different light…
The people in some circles after the end of WWI have also been called “The Lost Generation” or, the “Génération au Feu” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation
Note that the Roaring twenties was also a reaction to “The Great War’. I suspect the two stimuli are inseparable as to their longer term social impacts.
But in general, if you have lived through a period of disease in which people were literally “here today, gone tomorrow” you would probably take on a more self indulgent and hedonistic bent as well.
“And even those who think Niman is on the right track (and I have yet to hear any more powerful arguments against him than he’s out to make a buck”
Making a “buck” seems to be the primary component that is used to discount Dr. Butcher. He works for the poulty industry. Why is the same critera not applied to Niman or to Osterholm for that matter? After all Osterholm seems to be getting a significant amount of television time selling his predictions. I’m just trying to understand the inconsistencies. Is it because Niman/Osterholm predict doom and gloom, and Butcher downplays the threat?
Being a 24 year old, I sometimes stop & look at the past and my elders, and wonder how on earth my generation has gone so long without a major natural disaster, or disease, or great war. We’ve been so very luck thus far.
I just wonder how long our luck will last at this point.
You can only go scotch free for so long.
(Some parts of the world certainly haven’t gotten off scot-free lately, but, I understand what you mean.)
I do think that is part of the problem in getting people to think they are at risk from a pandemic; not what they think “modern” life with “progress” has to worry about.
Also, those who never lived through the days of getting a quarantine sign nailed to your door, or who assumed they or their neighbors might have to bury some of their many children, find pandemic hard to imagine.
Larry, you mentioned Dr Butcher a few times. Can you post a link to his work please?
Are you suggesting that you don’t know who Dr. Butcher is?
Yes, Larry, there are lots of things I don’t know. Please enlighten me.
anon_22, Dr. Butcher has been an extension veterinarian at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine since 1988. He was trained as a veterinarian, specializing in avian diseases, and has a Ph.D. in poultry virology. His recent work has specialized in H5 avian viruses. Dr. Butcher’s opinions can’t be simply discounted as someone who lacks credentials on the subject. He’s regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on avian and specifically poultry viruses.
Attached in an article from December 2005 that clearly states his views:
http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051218/NEWS/212180391/1025
LarryF - I have to tell you that I am not a partisan to any particular virologic belief. I don’t give a rip who is right in the arguments in this thread. I am among the most ardent wishers that this H5N1 thing would just disappear in a puff of blue smoke.
But I have to tell you that the article that you cite, and the way it expresses Dr. Butcher’s views is not helpful to your position. From my read, he is ignoring the current events of H5N1 and soft peddling the idea of an avian virus in the US. Primarily, it appears, because of his affiliation with the poultry industry.
I am currently more convinced by the materials I have seen from the more mainstream scientific authorities on this subject. Can you offer me additional material written by Dr. Butcher beside this article in an Ocala paper which clearly and understandably state his objections to the current thinking on H5N1?
Thank you for your help.
Dr. Butcher seems to be a proponent of the long discredited “dead birds don’t fly” rationale for discounting the threat. And if he had any deeper arguments for his views, they were sure absent from that article. Niman may be over the top at times, but at least the data, scientific explanations, and conclusions he presents are generally pretty well on the mark. But hey, Butcher could be correct. And the journalist could have edited out most of the technical reasoning for his stance. I just wasn’t impressed. Please keep the articles coming.
Dr Butcher is carving a lucrative niche for himself as a naysayer, capitalizing on the very real concerns of the U.S. and international poultry industries:
I haven’t paid much attention to him since reading an article in which he was quoted making the ridiculous claim that you could not get a human pandemic in the U.S. because all your domestic poultry were locked up tight.
Dr Niman, meanwhile, has been proven right on some things and wrong on others. He’s regularly criticized by me and others on this forum for over-reaching and for failing to set the record straight when he over-reaches and ends up being wrong. For many months now he’s been making wild claims about the Middle East that most of us dismissed as bunk until it recently turned out he was right and everyone else was wrong. He’s established himself as a maverick and I for one, wouldn’t be putting any money into his company until he learns to frame his predictions like the horoscope writers do, i.e. building in just enough imprecision to claim he was right either way.
Likewise, Osterholm gets a lot of play here because he is among the few who have been willing to come right out and say that this COULD turn out to be a lot worse than the mainstream predictions are willing to let on. Every time I’ve read his stuff or seen him quoted, he is careful to mention that it may similarly turn out to be nothing.
As I and others have explained, if there seems to be a lot of attention to Niman and Osterholm, it’s in the context of trying to understand the full range of what we might be preparing for. It’s no sense jumping in the truck and heading out to put out a housefire with nothing more than a handheld fire extinguisher. If you’re lucky, that’s all you may need. But you’d be a lot smarter to consider the more serious end of the scale and take along your tanker truck in case it isn’t just the dollhouse that was on fire.
Wow, Larry, I’m Gobsmacked! I don’t know what to say!
After your vehement defence of his position I was expecting to see some really useful analysis of a different view. This is what I read:
(I am putting here in full all comments relating to Dr Butcher but not the whole article so as not to violate copyright etc, please feel free to read the original. I just thought it is important for everyone to read this in full and draw their own conclusions.)
Researchers and health agencies continue to sound the alarm about avian flu, and Dr. Gary Butcher, an expert on poultry medicine and disease at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine thinks he knows why.
“The agenda here is pretty obvious,” he said. “People want grant money. This is a bonanza.”
Butcher, who advises agricultural ministries and poultry companies around the world, is Florida’s lone poultry veterinarian. He has also emerged as a leading naysayer on the prospects for a avian flu pandemic.
Butcher insists the likelihood that the H5N1 avian flu virus in Asia will trigger a pandemic is practically nil. But the fear-mongering will continue, he said, as long as people see a potential for financial and career gain in it.
He believes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is overstating the threat posed by avian flu to justify its budget, and to a large extent, its existence. The World Health Organization, he said, has issued its warnings for similar reasons.
“They’re under intense pressure,” he said of the WHO. “They’ve had so many problems in the past, problems with internal corruption. . . . They’re in dire need of new funding and this is their golden goose, as long as they can keep it going.”
Butcher knows his words sound harsh, he said, but there is a war on.
“This is a full-on war against agriculture,” Butcher said - and he is firing back.
BUTCHER’S BEEF Historically, pandemics have tended to recur every 20 to 40 years. The last occurred in 1968. The Hong Kong Flu caused between 750,000 and 2 million deaths worldwide, about 34,000 of those deaths were in the United States.
In November, President Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion to prepare for the next pandemic flu, pointing to the H5N1 virus that numerous health experts have identified as a potential pandemic threat.
Butcher does not doubt the world is in for another pandemic, he said. But the constant hum of warnings in this country about the avian flu irks him - especially since influenza has long infected about 30 percent of the native wild duck population when it migrates annually to Canada. As the weather turns cold, the birds migrate south through the United States.
“This occurs every year,” Butcher said. “We very, very rarely have infections spread to commercial poultry.”
The H5N1 virus is a much more serious strain, he said, but it poses no greater threat of human infection.
“The threat is basically zero,” he said. “We’re spending all of our attention on this [virus], and another one may sneak up on us.”
So, in summary, he asserts that the threat is basically zero, because all of this is just people out to get money and to scare you. H5N1 is serious but we have influenza (notice he did not specify which kind) infecting 30% of the wild birds and it very rarely affects commercial poultry. OK, I will take his word for it that commercial poultry in Florida does not get infected, but it is not obvious to me how he arrives at the conclusion that H5N1 does not pose increased threat to humans.
Let’s see, has he worked with H5N1 infections in wild birds, poultry, or human? No. Did he quote any study by any other scientist who might have provided him with data that says H5N1 does not provide greater threat? No. How does he arrive at the conclusion that the risk is basically zero? Didn’t say. Hmmm probably have to take his word for it.
Now I would grant that maybe (we don’t know, we’ll take his word for it, again) Department of Agriculture and the WHO probably has lots of budget problems. Ah, I get it, THAT excludes them as authorities for sure!
I would also grant that some people (unspecified) have vested interests, but if money and vested interests diminish people’s credibility as he seems to be suggesting (notice Larry that we didn’t make that one up at the fluwikie to discredit him, he did it himself) surely that applies to himself?
Larry, you keep saying people attack his work because he is downplaying the risk, or because he has money interests, or because they doubt his credentials.
For me it is very simple. The bottom line is HE HASN’T MADE THE CASE.
I have no axe to grind what you personally believe or not believe. There are lots of different opinions on this forum and it is not a problem if we are respectful of each other’s positions. But if you make allegations of unreasonable behavior on the part of forum participants, don’t complain if it backfires onto you.
I’m wondering who you think IS in the main stream, if Dr. Butcher is not?? And why is he not in the mainstream? Clearly he is not in the alarmist main stream, but is that THE ONLY mainstream?
Dr. Butcher has been and will be traveling the world, working with governments around the globe. His work is VERY mainstream in my opinion.
‘’Butcher has been an extension veterinarian at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine since 1988. He was trained as a veterinarian specializing in avian diseases, and has a Ph.D. in poultry virology.
As the only poultry veterinarian in the state, Butcher fields phone calls and e-mails about avian flu every day.
Lately, he’s been traveling the world, speaking to alarmed government officials and industry groups dispelling the myths and reinforcing the realities of avian influenza or so-called “bird flu.”’‘
Larry I respect Dr. Butcher’s opinion. I just fundamentally disagree with his conclusions. Since everyone in the world, with expertise, has an automatic conflict of interest ie. doctors and ministers,I do not believe that it should enter scientific discussions. Conflict of interest seems to be his main argument.
Hmmm.. not sure I get this - I think most people (including the WHO) are scared and are prepping for pandemic flu and not necessarily the H5N1 strain. Given that most experts, including Butcher, seem to agree that we are at risk of a pandemic be it from H5N1 or some other flu strain isnt most of the prep and monitoring transferable to other strains? He seems to be whinging that hes not getting his fair share of the grant money but he doesnt say what we should be spending it on.
Without commenting on Dr Butcher’s suggestion that your wild ducks pick up their avian influenza infections every year when they migrate to Canada (no sweat, neighbours, we’re used to that blame game!), he doesn’t seem to have a good handle on the risks of virus transfer from those wild birds to commercial poultry flocks, which aren’t all that rare. See: http://tinyurl.com/c96ac (although they could of course have invested all of that to pad their budgets) and: http://www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/issues/AvianFlu/WBAvianFlu.htm (see above caveat) and http://pandemicflu.gov/issues/#ahealth (ditto).
Most worryingly, though, he doesn’t seem to understand that the particular virus of concern in the current pandemic context is not among those types and strains that circulate in North America. It is the current Asian strains of H5N1 that have been evolving in worrying ways and starting to infect humans and that are thought to pose a threat. Indeed, no one seriously suggests that a human pandemic in the U.S. is likely to emerge directly from American (or worse, still, Canadian!) birds — domestic or wild. The pandemic scenarios under discussion all involve a human strain that would in all likelihood arrive in North America via an international airline passenger, just as SARS did. This makes his arguments about wild birds and poultry flocks in the US entirely irrelevant.
Name. I agree. The pandemic from a chickens perspective in the USA will be h-c…same pandemic reversed causation.
I would like to hear Dr. Butcher present his case in detail, much the same way that Dr. Niman does. Heck, maybe we could arrange a “face-off” on the grounds of the CDC in Atlanta. Maybe that would get the public’s attention.
Here’s some more info, not from anyone on the fringe but from the respectable folks at CIDRAP:
This piece (http://tinyurl.com/bp3so) discussing AI in the agriculture context illustrates just how inaccurate is Dr Butcher’s suggestion that in North America: “We very, very rarely have infections spread to commercial poultry.”
(I’m also reminded that we’ve had two recent outbreaks of avian influenza in two years in the Fraser Valley farming area on Vancouver’s outskirts.)
And here’s another updated CIDRAP-authored piece (http://tinyurl.com/by2r8) just put out today & summing up known facts about H5N1 as it relates to human disease, including parallels to the 1918 pandemic.
I would be much more willing to believe Dr. Butcher (by the way, I just love that name), if he were willing to join the other scientists and doctors at the scene of human infection in northern Iraq right now…that is, if he were willing to show up without all the fancy protective equipment.
Hi Scaredy Cat!
Congradulations! I am bestowing on you a PHD of your choice. However, you don’t need it. You are so highly intelligent, you put me to shame! We don’t need fancy degrees, to see what may be ahead, to see the threat to our loved ones. WE NEED TO CARE ABOUT ONE ANOTHER! We need to take our heads out of the sandbox and pay attention to what is going on around us, everyday. You, Little Kitty Cat, have done this. We need to do all we can to warn others, to teach them how to prepare! No parchment degree, will help us with this. It takes an intelligent brain and a hugh heart. You have both! These dopes that come in here and try to demean good and caring people, who are causing no harm..well…could you share your litter box with them!? I think I may have pitched my degree in the trash…useless! Nah! Maybe I could use it to investigate Dr. Butcher’s “FACTS!”
I realize Dr. Buthcher has an advanced degree, but I don’t see where he has any facts to back up his statements. These statements are nothing but opinion. Many birds do die, each year of other avian viruses, but how often do we die, from catching them?
We’ll all you that are attacking Dr. Butcher have proved my point. He is one of the world’s authorities on poulty/avian viruses and he’s expressed his expert opinon. Because his opinion is different that the Niman’s or Osterholm’s, he’s dismissed out of hand. I would be willing to wager that his knowledge on H5N1 is superior to both, but it still comes down to opinion.
By the way, he posted the following response to others that have attacked his attacked his connection to the poultry industry:
“In reference to my agenda, I do not make money as a consultant looking at healthy chickens. I am only called in when there are problems. As a consultant, I am booked always at least one year in advance so I do not expect to lose or gain from this manufactued crisis. I do not want and am not looking for additional consultant opportunities. There are few poultry vets in the world so the work load is overwhelming without this flu issue.”
“Yes, I am a veterinarian and then earned a M.S. and Ph.D in pathology and virology, using the chicken as the experimental model. As for the value of my degrees—I earned a 4.0 for my B.S. and at least a 3.8+ for both my M.S. and Ph.D. Yes. some people can get a Ph.D. by simply sticking it out. In my years of experience, there is no relationship to a students GRE graduate school entry scores and their performance in graduate school and in their career. Give me an average student who likes what he/she does over a student with high scores and good grades with a lazy attitude! There is no comparison.” - Gary Butcher
Larry: I like your pluck even though you seem to be a bit monomaniacal about this issue. And just in case you blew right by the most salient points regarding this issue (or nonissue), please reread De Jure’s post of today at 13:17.
Keep posting. We love converts to controversy. It is a nice little sideshow while the virus keeps on evolving.
The strange logic of Gary Butcher’s disciples, in one act.
Whereas L = Larry, F = folks on the fluwikie, luv = luv2cmwork
Scene one
L “you guys are biased!”
F “no we’re not, show us the data’
L shows ‘data’
F “we are not convinced and here’s why…. Do you have more proof?”
L “see, you guys are not convinced, proves that you are biased”
luv “how can you not be convinced, Dr Butcher travels”
F “Uh…what?”
luv “see, you are biased”
CURTAINS
In the end, I don’t count up opinions of “experts” and put them on a balance to see which side “wins”. The bottomline is that the reasons for concern advanced by the “highly concerned” experts are much more convincing, to me, than the reasons advanced by the “don’t prep, be happy” experts. We all must make our own decisions and live with the results. Or not. Evolution isn’t done with our species.
Hey guys settle down, I don’t think my differing opinion should call for personnal attacks. I’m not trying to “prove” anyone wrong, I’m just showing the bias towards those with more extreme predictions.
Please note, I’ll ask you to refer again to the article regarding Dr. Butchers call for being prepared. He’s openly stating that we’re due for a pandemic and we should be prepared…don’t misrepresent his position (read Monotreme). In his expert opinion it just won’t be H5N1. If that makes him, one of the world leading authorties on avian viruses, uninformed or stubborn then that’s pretty unfair.
Thanks for the debate and you’re openmindedness….
LarrF - I have not attacked your Sainted Dr. Butcher. I have made a simple request, which I will reprint here. By your own response to this request, you will establish my viewpoint and position toward his illustrious teachings:
LarryF - I have to tell you that I am not a partisan to any particular virologic belief. I don’t give a rip who is right in the arguments in this thread. I am among the most ardent wishers that this H5N1 thing would just disappear in a puff of blue smoke.
But I have to tell you that the article that you cite, and the way it expresses Dr. Butcher’s views is not helpful to your position. From my read, he is ignoring the current events of H5N1 and soft peddling the idea of an avian virus in the US. Primarily, it appears, because of his affiliation with the poultry industry.
I am currently more convinced by the materials I have seen from the more mainstream scientific authorities on this subject. Can you offer me additional material written by Dr. Butcher beside this article in an Ocala paper which clearly and understandably state his objections to the current thinking on H5N1?
Thank you for your help.
And based on your last rant, I have to tell you that a seermon on how PhDs are gotten is not convincing to me. Some virological data (he claims a PhD in the subject) or some pathology analysis of human victims debunking the beliefs that are rampant here would be most convincing.
Eccles, if you question the merits of the “Sainted Dr. Butcher’s” opinions, then take it up with him. I’m done with this subject as it’s obvious that it’s quickly becoming personnal in nature.
Larry. I am a veterinarian and am surprised by the second part of your comment. I can’t think of a reason that a professional would feel the need to provide marks to defend a position. What do you call a veterinarian who graduated with a 50% average? Doctor. This question will be settled in the near future…one way or another.
Larry: Let’s get down to brass tacks. What is your stake in this line of inquiry? All of this concern by you that we were riding the wrong horses in this race surely wasn’t just academic on your part. How will you proceed differently, now that you BELIEVE that you have settled this issue to YOUR satisfaction. You have come to the conclusion that you sought, and now you will do what? What action (or nonaction)? Under what timeline?
Please answer Larry. Remember, I like your pluck.
Tom, he did so because he was accused of having a manufactured PhD (an honorary degree).
LarryF - A great way to duck out of an argument you can’t win. As for personal in nature, I refer to your own opening comments, which included quotes like:
‘Wow, I guess your really at the far end of the bell curve. Not too many experts are with you on that one.’
While I have been trained in 6 sigma quality issues, I never thought I would be declared to be 6 sigma as well. Thank you very much.
Larry. I’m sorry that anyone’s qualifications would be questioned in that way. After all this is, at it’s essence, an interesting scientific debate with the potential of tragic consequences for each participant and their family.
MM, I’m not saying you’re necessarily on the “wrong horse” I’m saying there are other horses in the race which seem to be ignored/dismissed.
Again, I’m done with the subject as it’s obvious that any position that differs from the “mainstream” here is not welcome even if we’re both recommending preparedness. For the “mainstream” here, it’s simply H5N1 or “your an idiot”. Just go back and re-read the thread if you don’t believe me.
~Cheers
Larry. I’ve been accused of a lot of things in my lifetime but this is the first time that I have been grouped in the mainstream. My opinion is that Dr. Butcher is misguided but as I said last night I hope that he is correct and I am wrong.
“LarryF - A great way to duck out of an argument you can’t win.”
Eccles, if you think you “won” then congrats. It was never my intent to “win”, only in offering another opinion. I guess the idea of an open scientific debate doesn’t work with some.
As your involvement here has demonstrated
Surprise! You ducked my questions.
Cheerio Larry
Why do you need to argue? Pandemics occur. Other natural and man-made disasters occur. You can count on this with 100% probability. Should we take a look at just this last year? Be prepared. And, be prepared (as much as possible) for anything. It is important to prepare mentally and spiritually, as well as physically. I love this site for the information. It will help you to prepare for a pandemic, be it H5N1 or another. Anyone ever read the “Hot Zone”?
I am sorry for the tone this thread has taken. I appreciate the citation of Dr. Butcher’s remarks regarding onsulting, as I have not seen them elsewhere. I appreciate all the contributors. there are salient points raised by everyone, and it’s clear we will not all agree.
There are many assumptions that can not now be proven; they include the current degree of H2H ( we don’t agree on this board) and the probability of H5N1 going pandemic (we don’t agree on that, either). However, the continuing reports of cases alone should suggest that something is happening that bears close watching.
Dr. Butcher may be (may, I say, be) correct about the risk of this virus causing a pandemic, yet others equally expert or expert in different fields than he feel otherwise. In fact, if he is right there is little harm done in preparing as he seems to acknowledge a pandemic from some source is eventually inevitable. And if he is wrong, it’d be tragic not to prepare.
My biggest beef with Dr. Butcher is that his interviews suggest that since there’s no reason to be concerned, he or his interviewers downplay the need to prep. I therefore fault him on risk communication, which btw is not his area of expertise.
But I see no reason to be disrespectful of each other as part of this debate. There are those who want to talk more than they want to listen. None of us are immune from that. I suggest we take a break, think on what we’ve said, and come back to it at a later date.
It’s an easy thing to suggest at 11:37 pm EST. ;-)
Larry, I am going to apologize for myself. I got carried away with the “wordplay”. Actually, I do like your pluck. You kept coming back. Dive back in, anytime.
Dem, if the threat is remote, then we shouldn’t prepare. And our level of agreement on H2H and P(H5N1→pan) is not so bad,IMO. We don’t fully agree, but we agree to some amount. Yes, Butcher is only one and most others disagree with him. He must have noticed that - yet he insists. It follows that he estimates his expertise larger than that of the others ;-)
we won’t take a break, just because it’s night in USA … now it’s fluwiki-Europe,Asia time, where the news will come out when you sleep.
indeed, i hope to read more in the am.
DemFromCT and Medical Maven, thanks.
-Larry
It seems to me that in order to appreciate the gravity of the situation, it isn’t necessary to be an expert in virolgy, or to even attempt to predict the probability that H5N1 — or any other particular pathogen — will emerge in a pandemic form within any given time frame. All you really need to do is take a good look at how interdependent modern networks of distribution of critical goods are, at how dependent millions of people are on the smooth operation of those systems, and at just how delicate is the balance that maintains them. It is this — even more than the lack of immunity to a particular new subtype of influenza virus — that makes us so vulnerable; it is this that makes a pandemic with the same rates of attack and mortality as those seen in the Spanish flu pandemic an even more ghastly proposition than was that world-changing event. It is unavoidable that at some point, a pathogen will emerge which will have the capability to push those systems beyond the breaking point — on this, the entire epidemiological community is of one mind. What is [i]avoidable[/i] is that those systems be so vulnerable to sudden, widespread disruption. We have both the resources and the knowledge to make them more resistant to failure, just as we have the resources and knowledge to design low-lying cities and the flood control systems that protect them in ways that make them more resiliant in the face of extraordinary weather events.
We lack only the motivation.
Hi Mom11!
Thank you so much for your kind words and the honorary PhD. Tomorrow when I go “down the hill” to do my “one last preps” (famous last words) I’ll be thinking on what I want my degree in.
I recall Dr. Butcher posting on the curevents boards a few time and then disappearing when serious questions were posed.
……………………………………….
Corky52 – at 01:14 For you number collectors, I’d suggest a trip to your local historical society and some reading. Diaries and journals from the 1918 flu are very enlightening in many ways. The big numbers are scary, but nothing to compare to the feelings of the people living through it! I spent a week reading when I first started looking in to this, one of the more depressing weeks of my life. The mass numbers won’t speak to the tragedy in your neighborhood, the raw impact on your world view. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
My grandmother is 95 and sharp as a tack. She grew up in Philadelphia during 1918. She was just 7 years old and she witnessed most of her neighbors die, bodies piled all around the city in the weirdest locations and smelled unbearable stenches. Thats why she remains a staunch agnostic to this day and can’t say I blame her. Anyway she is a very practical woman and not given to undue worry. But she says she has an inkling that the bird flu could become a pandemic. She also gets some of her insight from my cousin who works in China and tells her that bird flu is bad over there and he ‘believes’ its worse than the Chinese Govt will ever reveal.
Im still young and want to have fun in life, but this notion of a pandemic keeps bugging me
WHEN YOU HEAR HOOFBEATS, THINK HORSES, NOT ZEBRAS
H5N1 has spent a lot of time developing and mutating into what has become a very lethal bug. It would not make sense to ignore it. It might be, that the next emerging HXNX causes the coming pandemic, but in preping for H5N1, we will fare better against it if it is and be better prepared for the next one if it isn’t.
There are some good excuses for extinction, but stupidity is not one of them.
Iceland lost 50–60% of its population in a epidemic in 1402 that could not have been Yersinia Pestis- there were no rats in Iceland at the time. It is absolutely inconceivable that the 1918 flu pandemic was a once in a million years event. My guess is that 1918 was a mild manifestation of the flu which was called the Black Death during the middle ages. The reason Europeans lost only 1–2% was a certain immunity gained from their forbears who survived 1347 onwards. Other naive populations like the Inuits and the Western Samoans had losses in 1918 similar to the mortality in England in 1348–49. The fact that some Inuit villiages lost 85%−100% of their populations in 1918 seems to have completely slipped off of people’s teflon minds. This virus will go its own way and will not be swayed by our opinions or beliefs. I doubt that it even realizes that we humans are made in God’s image. How crass is that?
Was Bubonic plague the cause of the Black Death?
http://www.abc.net.au/science/featu…ath/default.htm
The descriptions given by Boccaccio and others didn’t seem to fit with what we know about bubonic plague. That was the view of two British researchers, Christopher Duncan and Susan Scott from the University of Liverpool, who in 2001 published a book called Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations. In it they pointed out several things that didn’t make sense if indeed, the Black Death was caused by bubonic plague. For example;
How did it spread so quickly? According to written accounts at the time, the Black Death spread on average about 2 miles a day. This implies packs of rats scurrying at breakneck speed across the countryside. But there were no such observations from observers at the time. In fact, eyewitness accounts of the Black Death in towns and villages don’t mention rats at all.
How did it get over the Pyrenees and the Alps? How did it reach Iceland and Greenland? Those are long cold journeys for a plague-ridden rat that prefers warmer climates.
Why did it spread along trade routes and where crowds of people gathered - in urban centres, at fairs, and amongst armies and processions of people?
And why was quarantining the only real measure that was effective? Quarantining wouldn’t have worked if the plague was spread by rats, because the rats would have escaped from quarantined houses and villages and continued to spread the disease.
Was the Black Death a virus?
Was the Black Death contracted by the rat/flea/human pathway? There had to be some other means of transmisson than the rat/flea/human pathway. It made much more sense if transmission was from person to person - by an airborne particle - probably a virus, argue Duncan and Scott.
Medieval descriptions of the Black Death - where dark spots appear in the skin - sound more like viral hemorrhagic fever, similar to modern day Ebola, than bubonic plague, they say.
If so, it would explain why it spread so quickly. The virus, they argue, had a long incubation period of about 20 days. During this time -the period between exposure to the virus and getting the symptoms - the person was infectious and spread the disease, unbeknownst to the population.
Here’s what they think probably happened. A person - a soldier perhaps or a travelling tradesman who was infected with the Black Death, but wasn’t yet ill, arrived in a new town and took up lodgings. That person infected the rest of the household who spread it to other households (usually via visiting children) to the entire village or town. After about two to three weeks the traveller died. Then others fell ill and died. Meanwhile someone from the village had travelled into another village spreading the disease and so on. That’s why the disease appeared to travel so fast - two miles a day was the rate at which travellers on average moved across the countryside on foot.
The village of Eyam
Parish records from about 1540 help paint a picture of the Black Death.
It’s hard to prove the causative agent was a virus because of course in those days there were no blood tests for viruses. And today it’s impossible to extract viral DNA from 700 year-old skeletal remains. But in the last few years some evidence has emerged that seems to support the viral theory.
There may not have been blood tests, but in England at least there were parish records from about 1540. They give a detailed picture of what happened to the inhabitants of even the smallest village - births, deaths, marriages, and baptisms. One such village was Eyam, a lead-mining village in the county of Derbyshire in an area known as the Peak District, in central England.
The Black Death suddenly struck this tiny village in September 1665. The town’s rector persuaded the villagers to quarantine themselves to prevent the disease from spreading through the region. During the period of isolation, food was left for the villagers at a well on the parish boundary high up on the hill above the village, and paid for by coins which were dipped in vinegar to disinfect them. It seemed to work, because none of the surrounding areas were affected by the plague. A year later, the first outsiders ventured into Eyam. About half the town had survived.
Genetics to the rescue
In 1996, researchers from the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C. led by Dr Stephen J O’Brien, tracked down the modern day descendents of Eyam from parish records and tested their DNA. They were curious to know whether the survivors shared any genetic similarity that had helped their ancestors resist the plague. They found high levels of a gene mutation called CCR5-delta 32 amongst the descendents. CCR5 is a gene that codes for a protein on the surface of white blood cells which acts as a receptor for other molecules involved in inflammation
These researchers knew about this protein from previous research on HIV which showed that HIV can slip past the protein, using it as a gateway to get inside and kill white cells. But people who have the mutated form of the gene - CCR5-delta 32 - don’t have this protein and their white cells won’t allow HIV in. So people with the mutation are resistant to HIV infection - they either don’t get HIV at all or are much slower to get it than people who have the normal gene.
Here was the mutation showing up again in the population of Eyam. And not just Eyam. Areas of Europe that had been affected by the plague (including America, which was mostly settled by European plague survivors and their descendents) also had unusually high levels of CCR5-delta 32 - about fourteen per cent of the population compared to two percent in areas that never experienced the Black Death - such as Asia and Africa.
The big jump in the percentage of the population with the mutation has been calculated to have occurred around 700 years ago - around the time of the first major plague epidemic, say Duncan and Scott.
It appears that, beginning 700 years ago, the Black Death increased the genetic frequency of CCR5-delta 32 mutation in the Caucasian gene pool. This protected these populations from later epidemics of both the Black Death and also HIV. The populations of Asia, and Africa had no such protection - and this also explains why HIV/AIDS has spread more quickly there. It also appears that, like HIV, the Black Death was caused by a virus, say Duncan and Scott.
They say that during the period of the Great Pestilence there were probably two separate plagues - a viral haemorrhagic fever in Europe, the Black Death; and a bubonic plague in Asia and parts of the Mediterranean coast caused by Yersinia.
The plague and globalisation
From 1348 to 1352, twenty-five million people died - a third of the population of Europe. Both epidemics are examples of an evolutionary struggle that has gone on for millions of years between disease causing micro-organisms and hosts. If a micro-organism mutates into a form that makes transmission easier - to a new host for example - then it has the advantage. If the host in turn develops a mutation that protects it from the micro-organism, or develops immunity to it, then it has an advantage over that micro-organism.
The Black Death, dying out in the 17th century, lost the fight. The last great epidemic was in 1670 - after that smallpox took over as the number one infectious disease killer. The Black Death was a victim of its own success. It killed so many of the population so quickly that those left either had genetic resistance or immunity. It had nowhere to go. Bubonic plague was more successful from an evolutionary point of view. It was (and is) deadly too, but it caused sporadic outbreaks in isolated areas, leaving the rest of the population disease free possibly to be infected in future. So bubonic plague survives.
But both epidemics were only possible because of the increased movement of people from place to place. In the Middle Ages, disease could only spread as fast as a person could walk or a ship could sail. In the twenty first century, a new disease could cross the globe by air in twenty-four hours, say Duncan and Scott. Will there another epidemic? Undoubtedly. Will it be as deadly as the Black Death? It’s possible. If it happens in the twentieth first century it will travel much faster than two miles a day. Reply With Quote
My grandfather was stationed at an army base in the States during the 1918 pandemic. He told me that they set aside certains barracks for those that came down with the flu. It wasn’t hard to figure out that most of the men that went into those barracks did not walk back out, primarily because of secondary infections. He did get the flu, but hid it from his squad leader. Only his best buddy knew and he helped my grandfather with his work details. Grandad said it was horrible, he had never been so sick in his life and he came very close to passing out many times while standing in formation. His decision not to report that he was infected, whether it was morally right or not, more than likely made it possible for me to be here today.
and how many died because they were infected by Grandad ? Let’s hope, that sick people won’t do the same nowadays. Maybe that’s why they don’t want us to store Tamiflu privately ?
clark - that you for a very interesting read - I think I’ll look through my genealogy records and see where my ancestors were at those times.
gs - It will be worse in today’s world - many employers don’t give their employees paid sick time, so those people will go to work if they are able.
Just yesterday we had someone come in who was obviously NOT WELL. That person was sent home, and did not come in today.
One place I worked gave you a week of sick time, but then you would be “written up” if you used it, and it would lower your annual review score, which would then lower your annual raise percentage.
Many places will terminate your employment if you are out 3 days without a doctor’s note. The people who are infected early in the first wave may face this (doctors will be too busy to send notes to peoples’ employers).
Selkie - Could you start a new thread to tell about your grandmother’s experiences during the 1918 pandemic?
Disappointing — I came back hoping that someone would have come up with some credible arguments by now about why we are being overly alarmist about H5N1. I have a lot of other things that I can do with the $1,000 - $2,000 that I’ve budgeted for flu prep, and buying Spam wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of my list if I could find any credible reason to cross it off!
Larry F., a primary difference between Osterholm, Niman and Butcher is that Butcher is the only one of the three that routinely is called in to access h5n1 outbreak areas.
I believe Dr. Butcher never answered those “hard questions” on Current Events board simply because he got too busy and it started to become a lesson in futility. I think most here would agree, that the tone over there is quite alarmist and Dr. Butcher’s point of view was even less welcome there, than it is here. I expect him to post as time permits. I know he IS involved with the Turkey governement and will be there soon, as well as other countries in that region.
As Larry pointed out, Dr. Butcher HAS stated that a pandemic is likely. Just not convinced it’s H5N1 and expresses concern that all this attention given poultry could devastate the industry.
You have to realize he has worked with this for years. Bird Flu isn’t all that uncommon but every case is now drawing world wide attention.
luv2cmwork, that’s a fair comment although these days, I think poultry vets get plenty of respect and attention (and they should - they do have experience with the virus and it’s consequences).
For the record, I’ve learned more about Dr. Butcher’s views from this thread than I have from the media interviews, which generally concentrate only on the ‘fearmongering’ change, which is a term I have come to loathe. As soon as I see it, I want to write off the article and have to force myself to read it.
And there ought to be some concern about the effects on the poultry industry. Even if it never goes H2H, this is one nasty virus, and worldwide, the poultry toll is enormous.
DemfromCT. Its already gone h-h for more than three years.
Tom DVM, your opinion of H2H cannot be substantiated. If you can prove me wrong then by all means do so. I don’t care what niman says regarding clusters, H2H cannot be proven. Virtually all of the subjects were exposed to infected bird and no health care workers have become infected.
“I came back hoping that someone would have come up with some credible arguments by now about why we are being overly alarmist about H5N1. I have a lot of other things that I can do with the $1,000 - $2,000 that I’ve budgeted for flu prep”
Name- I totally understand your feelings on this. We’re spending a ridiculous amount of money on this too. On something that we have no idea or confirmation that will ever happen. But I’ve adopted the thinking that
1. Everyone should have food & water supplies in their homes ANYWAY. For all kinds of possible reasons.
2. There’s no hurt in stocking up on medicines, antibiotics and other treatments that can be used for various other things.
And if, God forbid, this flu pandemic does break out and reach from one end of the world to the next, I won’t be one of the people scrambling to get supplies & knowledge. I will already have it. Because of that, I sleep better at night, and that’s worth the money.
krunchie. Two healthcare workers in Vietnam, I believe, caught H5N1 after treating infected individuals. There was also a case of a mother from a remote city visiting an infected daughter in hospital. Dr. Niman is absolutely correct on the H-H. He explains it very well in an earlier post today. I respectfully disagree with him on widespread mild symptomatic cases but he is absolutely correct on everything else.
What was offered was not proof. And the fact that you agree or disagree means nothing.
Probable human to human transmission has been published here. Cat to cat transmission was proven here.
Here is some cluster information?. People can make their own minds how to interpret this data. I prefer Occam’s razor.
Thanks Monotreme…errr….Tom DVM
Tom DVM, the probable H2H in Thailand published in 2005 that Monotreme cites took place in 2004. I think it’s the first well-documented instance. I’m not aware of anything prior. The Vietnam publications I know of showed no positive serology in health care workers (it’s on the seroprevalence page).
The clusters Dr. Niman has cited (and Monotreme has gathered) I find very worrying, especially in Turkey. But without epidemiological field data regarding exposure, I don’t know how anyone can interpret it. Why kids? Exposure to egg gathering? Plausible. Are time gaps because of continued bird exposure? Possible. H2H? Certainly possible.
To me they point out exactly where the epidemiological field teams should investigate rather than in and of themselves proving H2H.
And if anyone has more data, I’d really like to see it published.
DemfromCt. There certainly seems to be more trouble with serological efficacy with H5N1 then ever in the past. I saw a documentary on a male nurse in I think Vietnam who definitely had the virus and had no contact with chickens so I’m not sure what that means for the official record. I guess the question is what do their positive serologies prove. Many vaccines have produced serology for antibodies that were not protective against field challenge. Are they testing for any indication of antibodies and would the level of response indicate achieved immunity from future viral challenge. With Flu viruses the argument appears to be mute because they are so darn mutable.
has someone access to that article from Monotreme’s link ? how did they transmit virus to sentinal cats ? what’s horizontal transmission ?
1: Science. 2004 Oct 8;306(5694):241. Epub 2004 Sep 2. Related Articles, Links
Avian H5N1 influenza in cats.
Kuiken T, Rimmelzwaan G, van Riel D, van Amerongen G, Baars M, Fouchier R, Osterhaus A.
Department of Virology, Erasmus Medical Center, 3015 GE Rotterdam, Netherlands. t.kuiken@erasmusmc.nl
During the 2003 to 2004 outbreak of avian influenza A (H5N1) virus in Asia, there were anecdotal reports of fatal infection in domestic cats, although this species is considered resistant to influenza. We experimentally inoculated cats with H5N1 virus intratracheally and by feeding them virus-infected chickens. The cats excreted virus, developed severe diffuse alveolar damage, and transmitted virus to sentinel cats. These results show that domestic cats are at risk of disease or death from H5N1 virus, can be infected by horizontal transmission, and may play a role in the epidemiology of this virus.
PMID: 15345779 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
gs: There was horizontal transmission between the cats. I have abstracted some information about animal studies here?.
gs, I’m assuming horizontal transmission means cat to cat, or H2H but someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
Name: Horizontal transmission does mean cat to cat. Horizontal transmission in humans is the same as H2H.
Dem, I fully agree with your comments on Turkey. On the face of it, what Dr Niman points out is worrying re those clusters. I’d love to hear confirmation that someone at WHO is indeed studying this for evidence of H2H and if so to know when they might expect to tell us more about it.
but how did cat to cat happen ? Breathing ? Eating ? Droplets ? Droplets nuclei ? Airborne ? Do cat’s sneeze ? Do they step in feces and lick their feet ? Do cats touch their nose,eyes ? Did they have open wounds ?
‘Sentinel’ cats - These are normal healthy cats not previously exposed to the virus that they place together with the ones that are already infected. If these sentinel cats then becomes infected, that proves cat to cat transmission.
If you can experiment with humans, this would be the definitive proof of h2h.
Old threads being closed.