Continued from here
Last 3 posts from old thread:
Monotreme – at 00:19 Leo7, I looked at the Supplement and did not see any sequences. What I saw was diagram relating the sequences from A/Beijing/01/2003 to other strains, not the sequences themselves.
btw, if anyone does write the NEJM or NCBI, the strain that we are interested in getting sequence information from is A/Beijing/01/2003.
Monotreme – at 00:26 Just to be clear, Mainland China has not released any sequences from any H5N1 isolates from humans. All the human isolates related to China were released from Hong Kong. Dr. Niman, are you seriously going to argue that the degree of openess or scientific standards in Mainland China are the same as in Hong Kong? Mainland China never acknowledged the cases of the family from Hong Kong that likely got H5N1 while visiting Fujian province. Mainalnd China closed down Guan Yi’s lab on the Mainland and have actively tried to stop his work, as you well know. I don’t understand the 180 degree change in your attitude toward Mainland China. You used to be very strong in your condemnation of their secretiveness. What happened?
Tom DVM – at 01:16 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck and swims like a duck it is not a rhinocerus.
China is never going to change for one good reason…it works for them. Money talks, China knows it, the WHO knows it and the rest of the world knows it.
They have spread a Foot and Mouth epidemic around the world…have not controlled it in their own country…and now it is recirculating through Vietnam, their unfortunate neighbour. The official word from the Chinese Government is Foot and Mouth outbreak…What Foot and Mouth outbreak?
Guandong is the world greatest petri dish for culturing emerging diseases for a reason (last decade THAT WE KNOW OF SARS, strept. suis and H5N1). They have the highest concentration of people mixed with the highest concentration of a wide variety of animals…and a Government that could care less…
…under the watchful eye of our gaurd dog the WHO Which is old, lost its eyesight and its teeth…and now appears to have lost its bark as well… I hear nothing, I see nothing, therefore I make it look good.
Tom DVM, I agree with your last post on the old thread (which is not yet on this thread).
I had read that Tianamen square almost toppled the government. Only hardened and ruthless shock troops from the provinces were able to put down that rebellion.
SARS caused chaos, panic and flight from Beijing. If it had spread to other major cities like Shanghai and not been stopped when it did, I think the government would have fallen.
A severe flu pandemic will cause enormous suffering to the Chinese people, especially to those in major cities. The only hope the government has is to blame nature or Viet Nam or Indonesia or anyone but themselves. It it turns out the government of China had anything to do with the virus or even knew about it earlier and did nothing to stop it, a la SARS, bye-bye government of China.
Somehow my last post came in after BB’s closing of the thread so I repeat it here. Thanks.
In my opinion, there is only one thing they could be concerned about at this point. I don’t think the 2008 Olympics is it… they have bull-****** themselves out of worse trouble before and many times since Tianamen Square…
…I think they are afraid of panic…internal strife…revolution.
I think it was Randolph M. Kruger on Effect Measure who said…if each Chinese citizen throws one stone at the head office of the Communist Party of China, what happens?
Avian influenza is the quickest route to anarchy…The Chinese Government isn’t stupid…they read the same tea leaves that we do plus they have all of the inside information supplied by their colleagues the WHO…we know what’s up and they know what’s up…and they know that things are past the tipping point…there is no going back.
in my opinion and for what its worth.
Well, China could always blame it on the U.S. saying WE released H5N1 because we could no longer compete militarily with them since they got our missle guidance technology from the previous administration (that’s going to upset the mods…) so now to maintain our superpower status, we are releasing bioterroist agents. No doubt the Islamofascists would take up that rallying cry also. Either way, if H5N1 does go pandemic, no amount of spin is going to save any government.
“The only hope the government has is to blame nature or Viet Nam or Indonesia or anyone but themselves.”
They have done this in the past too. Foot and Mouth around the world and not one word of criticism for the creator and initiator and disseminant.
The rest of the world are pretenders…the Chinese Government are the real spinners…look what they have spun themselves out of since 1988.
They should know however that there are two types of luck…and we are all destined to get equal measures.
They have ‘beat the bullet’ a lot of times…if I were them I would say that when you are always running these odds, eventually your luck runs out.
The best proof of that I know of, is the BSE outbreak in Canada in 2003.
Many Cats. Agreed.
You just raised a point I had not considered…we are all in the life raft with China…
…and I will keep my final comment on that to myself.
monotreme, really, would you expect the Chinese government to fall because they have hidden some desease ? Without civil war ? Where are the troops to bring down the government ? Where is the opposition with a better bird-flu politics ? Bird flu is not a priority in Chinese people’s perception. And even if it were, there is no democracy in China. Show me any example in history where a government was replaced this way.
Anonymous: You don’t need an army, you only need anarchy which is what pandemics typically bring and often with civilization-changing results as history has shown.
I should add…anarchy and a loss of a good percentage of the population, governmental and non-governmental.
Tom DVM: Have you STARTED prepping yet???? A post-pandemic world would need the expertise you would bring!
Many Cats. I really don’t feel like much of an expert but Thanks anyway.
Seacoast just reminded me on the China thread that I can’t claim strawberry jam as prepping so I had better get started…
…I am definitely going to look pretty stupid if after warning everyone I know for two years that it is coming…only to have to borrow food from them because I didn’t bother to prep.
manycats, black death, 1918 pandemic, anarchy in general, people dying from desease usually didn’t result in government changes. Where are your examples ? I can give many, where an army was involved in irregular government changes.
Monotreme at 00:26
Just to be clear. You have no idea what you are talking about and continue to post facts that are not only misleading, but blatantly false. I broke down the sequences sumbitted by China. Initially I did not include Hong Kong, but added the Hong Kong sequences as additional sequences from China.
There is nothing unusual about the sequences from China, either H5N1 or SARS (and Beijing submitted more SARS sequences than anyone in the world). There is considerable animosity between Beijing and Hong Kong, and much of thet animosity comes from SARS collaborations, but the number of submissions from China (not Hong Kong) is relatively high.
In the Mammalian area the only H5N1 swine sequences at GenBank are from mainland China (not Hong Kong). There are 3 isolates (all 8 gene segments for each). Recently there were 5 more (also all 8 gene segments) which were relased at the beginning of May and pulled at the end of May (but still accessible as pulled sequences).
No one else in the world has released H5N1 sequences from swine and the pulled sequences were much like the sequences that have been on deposit for over a year. The swine sequences were not “unusual” to anyone who had spent any time looking at flu sequences.
China has also submitted human sequence from 2005 and 2006. The most recent, from Zejiang was a 2006 isoalte and had 6 of the 8 gene segments (I woudl expect the other 2 when they are ready). The HA of the other three were described here. All three isolates were submitted by Beijing (not Hong Kong). The H5N1 swine sequences were also submitted by mainland China as were many of the bird sequences. Much additional data on both the bird and human sequence in China in 2005 or 2006 is in the report from the Ministry of Health, which is here and described here.
The battle between Hong Kong and Beijing was evident in the Nature and Science papers released back to back on the Qinghai outbreak last year. However, part of that tension was due to the fact that China concluded the Qingahi strain was from migratory birds and Hong Kong said they were from south China (Beijing was correct).
Hong Kong did release more Qinhai sequences (12 vs 4 isolates), but in reality, all of the Qinghai sequences were almost identical and both groups had examples from three species (bar headed geese and black and brown headed gulls).
China has also revealed a great deal about additional sequences at Qingahi Lake last year as well as this year 9and they are slightly different tahn the sequences released by Hong Kong and Beijing) in the presentation in Italy last month. The data came from Harbin, which does most of the sequencing in China, especially bird isoaltes. The report was quite detailed and many of the phylogenetic trees are linked here.
The number of sequence withheld by most countries remains very high. The CDC has the human sequences from Indonesia, as does Hong Kong. Only the HA and NA have been released from the first isolate in July, 2005. CDC has many bird sequences from Vietnam in 2005. Only HA and NA have been released. CDC has never released the resuklts from the 1000 serum samples in Vietnam in 2005. Weybridge just relased 4 human sequences from Turkey, but they have at least 73 bird sequences from Europe that have not been released, listed here.
China undoubtedly has more huamn and bird sequences that have not yet been deposited but the number of bird and mammalian sequences, including human, are among the highest, and the sequences are not “unusual”.
when you say, there is nothing unusual in the Chinese sequences, then let me mention this thread.
H5N1 does a lot of evolving in China, but right now (2006) the two dominant strains in China are Qinghai and Fujian (which have both spread outside of China.
when you speak of strains, it seems to me that it makes much more sense to distinguish Qinghai,Vietnam,Indonesia,maybe Japan-Korea, and then about 10 different Chinese strains. Maybe 2 Vietnamese and Indonesian strains meanwhile.
Whichever anonymous: Just think of what smallpox did to the American Indians. ENTIRE TRIBES were wiped out, and those that survived were often exterminated by rival tribes or settlers. Go to eyewitness accounts (Edward S. Curtis, etc.) I would consider those a whole lot of governments going under.
Dr. Niman, I did miss the recent release of a few sequences from human isolates (all within the past few months, I believe) from mainland China. I intend to create a fluwiki page listing all the available H5N1 sequences by species and country of origin. We’ll see how Mainland China compares to Vietnam and Thailand. We’ll also see how timely they were in releasing these sequences.
As regards the CDC and the other sequences hoarders, I have been quite loud in my condemnation of this behaviour. But two wrongs doesn’t make a right. How many other countries have retracted H5N1 sequences? And it will be interesting to find out exactly who sent the fake emails to block the NEJM paper.
Although you are perfectly within your rights to defend the behaviour of the Chinese government with reference to the sequences they have not deposited (which is almost all of the sequences from human isolates), I still do not understand why you have changed your mind about them.
Here are some commentaries that, were they written by someone other than yourself, I would expect you to attack today, given your current attitude. These commentaries may also provide some interesting insight for those who are not familiar with reports they discuss:
Raging Stage 6 Bird Flu Pandemic in China?
The Export of a H5N1 Bird Flu Pandemic By China
The Dr. Niman of 2005 who wrote these commentaries seems to be quite different than the vociferous defender of mainland China in 2006. I’m just trying to understand why.
Hello Y’all It’s been a while. And I see nothing has changed Niman and Mono-T are still going at it. You two bring the best of both sides out. Keep up the good work. I seem to be leaning towards Mono-T’s side Mr Niman. Just thought I would and some fuel to the fire. He does have a point Niman.I’l stand aside now……..Talk to you all later……..Everyone be good stay safe& keep an eye on the wiki
monotreme, this was just only about the recent retractions. He needn’t have changed his mind on China.
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