Has the world averted a pandemic? Probably, says the chief medical officer of Australia, John Horvath. “In your dreams” is my response. Why does he think so? Basically, he says it is because of extensive culling (killing) of birds world wide and the isolation of infected individuals. Does this guy not keep up with the news? In the past year, despite over a billion birds being culled, bird flu has spread to over 60 countries, and human infections have been CONFIRMED 10 countries. Now what does it take to get a confirmed case? First of all you have to have a medical facility in a rural area staffed by doctors with proper equipment to take blood draws and send them properly to one of only 200 labs worldwide. In most of the countries reporting human infections there are very few rural doctors, almost no proper equipment, and the chances of knowing where to send a sample let alone shipping it properly is a dream.
And how about culling? Once word gets around that poor farmers will have all of their birds killed, leaving many destitute, there is an extremely strong reluctance to report future findings of sick or dead birds…worldwide. And who could blame them?
For more details on why confirmed cases are only the “Tip of the Iceberg,” check out birdflubeacon.com/
I’m cross-posting this on the News Thread, where it belongs.
That article is available here and should win sort of Booby Prize for whoever formulated its headline because the point of the article is that though a bird flu pandemic may have been temporarily averted, the threat still looms:
World may have averted bird flu pandemic: expert Sat Nov 18, 11:20 PM ET SYDNEY (AFP) - The world may have already averted a bird flu pandemic by widespread chicken culls and the isolation of infected humans, Australia’s chief medical officer has said.
But if a new flu virus did begin spreading rapidly among humans all the world’s preparations might be shown to be insufficient, John Horvath wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia.
“It may be that the world has already averted an influenza pandemic by actions it has taken in response to H5N1, such as extensive culling of poultry and isolation of infected humans,” he said.
“Yet all preparations may seem insufficient if the world comes face to face with a rapidly spreading novel virus like the one that emerged in 1918.”
Scientists fear the H5N1 virus, which has spread from poultry to humans and killed more than 150 people worldwide, mainly in Asia, could mutate to become easily transmissible among people.
That could lead to a global flu pandemic which could kill more than the tens of millions killed by the “Spanish Flu” in 1918.
Horvath noted that the changes in the world since previous pandemics, such as faster and cheaper international travel and more densely populated countries, would make it easier for disease to spread.
Leading immunologist Peter Doherty said in the same government-sponsored report that while some kind of pandemic outbreak was certain in the future researchers were divided over whether it would be caused by the H5N1 virus.
“There’s the quandary: the potential threat has horrific proportions but it is not clear whether anything will actually happen,” he wrote.
The top UN coordinator on avian influenza, David Nabarro, said earlier this month the H5N1 virus was likely to remain a significant global threat for the next decade.
“The risk of a mutation to cause pandemic is still very much there,” he said. “As long as the virus is present in birds, there will also be a threat of sporadic human infection, and a possibility of a mutation which would cause at the end of the day a pandemic.”
Wonder what the public would think if there were no headlines at all, and they had to hear entire articles read to them… Baa!
(Save a shovel for John Hovarth; locals need to draft him for the Mortuary Reserve Corps of Oz.)