<p>Can we learn anything from the Swine Flu non-epidemic of the '70s that might be relevant here?</p>
<p>Saw the show, and it appears as tho we have become so complacent that by the time it does hit, we won’t have the time to get ready. Not to diminish the AIDS problem, but the Dr. projects over 300 million dead, vs. 30 million of AIDS victims. And we need to do something more about AIDS, I agree, but we also need to do everything possible to prepare for this. He projects total worldwide economic collapse, because people won’t be leaving their homes or going to work. We don’t have enough ventilators, nor masks as of now. Can’t hurt to be prudent and get some supplies in, etc., because even healthcare workers won’t want to be treating people, unless any vaccine is reserved for them. There is so little medicine that can help, that the little ther will be will be rationed. And whereas other countries come to each other’s rescue now, there will be none of that when it hits. Every country will be affected with no place to turn for help. Pretty scary show.</p>
<p>Had breakfast the very beginning of this month…with some VERY smart folks…we were all kvetching about our disappearing pensions… and some changes effective 1/08…and one of the guys put it all in perspective when he said bird flu was gonna kill 300M of us before 2008. Needless to say we stopped feeling bad about our pensions!!! </p>
<p>Frankly, shows like Oprah’s make me think my friends may be onto something…while they are more “math” guys…and pandemics are wonderful examples of exponential math…I tend to believe that they just really grasp the danger sooner than the average bear!!</p>
<p>Just came back from Vietnam. No eggs, no chicken on menus in the central and northern provinces.</p>
<p>Hepatitis is much more transmittable than HIV
I know because I picked Hep B up someplace .
All my family members test negative
I tested negative when they tested me when I was pregnant with my youngest ( its standard) but when I tried to give blood when she was 5, they tested me several times and refused the blood because of the Hep.
It resolved itself, by itself, I apparently didn’t even realize I was ill.
BUt it does live much longer on surfaces than HIV and could have caused real problems- just a warning</p>
<p>One thing I am sure of: We are all gonna die.</p>
<p>Haha, i get it…</p>
<p>anyway, here is a story about flu vaccine:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5133306[/url]”>U.S. Plan to Stockpile Bird-Flu Vaccine a Big Gamble : NPR;
<p>we are having an earthquake anyday so the combo tidal wave epidemic oughta clear up the housing market real nice</p>
<p>Weren’t we all convinced a few years back that we were all going to get SARS? Or was that Ebola?</p>
<p>Not everyone who is exposed to bird flu will get it. Not everyone who gets it will die of it. One precaution you can take is to get a pneumonia vaccine to prevent some kinds of post-flu secondary infections. If you look at the history of flu pandemics, many people die of bacterial pneumonia that takes advantage of the weakened state. </p>
<p>Since they haven’t done exposure studies (that I can find)–where they test an entire population in an area with known infections–we don’t even really know how serious it is. Yes, people have died from it. But we don’t know how many people had it. If 10 people in a town died of it and 1000 were exposed (have antibodies) and only 50 showed any symptoms, that is a very different issue than if only 10 people have antibodies and all 10 die. </p>
<p>This article <a href=“http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2006/Jan/23-560680.html[/url]”>http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2006/Jan/23-560680.html</a> is the best summary I can find (the CDC web site appears to be down–at least I can’t get to it).</p>
<p>I watched an American Experience on PBS on the pandemic of 1917/1918. I also heard my great aunt tell stories of the effects it had on her small town. Scarey stuff. Troops on both sides in World War I were affected horribly by the pandemic as well. I can’t remember the numbers of soldiers that died, not from weapons, but from flu. It was shocking to me.</p>
<p>We worry about one or two cases of menengitis in a dormitory. Why can’t we worry more about this without seeming like pansies? Right now, bird flu is in Turkey and military officials are keeping an eye on any possible cases in Iraq. My husband flew back from Baltimore last week with a plane load of airmen returning from a six month deployment in Iraq. Friends routinely fly to places along the Pacific Rim for business. It just takes one infected person on a plane to create very real problems.</p>
<p>80 cases in the world so far- IN THE WORLD</p>
<p>we shall see</p>
<p>we are so afraid of everything, it is sad</p>
<p>yet we still allow smoking- which we KNOW kills millions every year</p>
<p>so we have a virus that is only transmitted by birds, has not yet mutated to human to human, and may never do so. I just can’t worry about it now when people are dying from heart attack, cancer, stroke, drug abuse, alcohol and on and on. I know it has potential, and I’ll keep an eye out. but every year it’s the same thing. sars, now bird flu, and it never comes to fruition thank god.</p>
<p>I’m hoping that you’re right, amith and cgm. But history does have a way of repeating itself. And we saw how prepared the gov’t was with Katrina.</p>
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<p>Cangel is correct. You see numbers like a 40 or 50% mortality rate reported for the few cases of bird flu so far. If the epidemic comes it won’t be anything near that high. The virus will HAVE to mutate to a less virulent form if it ever expects to get widespread. Any disease that is that virulent will burn itself out before it can spread very well. </p>
<p>You need a lot of sick people walking around coughing and sneezing to really get an epidemic going. If they end up in the hospital or the morgue too quickly, the outbreak will be small. That’s one reason why hemorrhagic viruses such as Marburg and Ebola have never spread much beyond the initial village - they just sicken and kill too quickly.</p>
<p>My guess is that if bird flu happens the real mortality rate will be less than 5% and probably closer to 1%. But even at 1% it will still be a disaster. In the US alone that will be over 2 million dead.</p>
<p>One thing you can be certain of is that the flu virus is capable of mutating to this less virulent form needed for a full-blown epidemic. Unlike say smallpox virus, flu virus is a remarkably flexible and changeable bug.</p>
<p>It’s amazing how completely people have forgotten the devastation of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. You know Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia don’t you? - the old silver-haired and silver-tongued guy. He was not born with the name Robert Byrd. He started out with another name but was adopted out as an infant. The reason why he was adopted is because BOTH of his parents died in the flu outbreak of 1918 – just one small remnant of the kind of tragedy I sure hope we don’t face again.</p>
<p>So I repeat: how is this different from the Swine Flu non-epidemic of the '70s?</p>
<p>Mootmom: it could be exactly like the Swine Flu non-epidemic of the '70s; it could be exactly like the very real Spanish Flu epidemic of 1917. The real issue is that it could go either way.</p>
<p>Mootmom - one thing that we have learned from the swine flu, is that mass vaccinations are only effective with very careful surveillance strategies, containment strategies and new ways of making vaccine. The problem is that you need a year and half lead time (help me out Coureur) to produce a completely effective vaccine. With modern travel - which wasn’t quite as big an issue in the 70s - we don’t have a year and a half. One strategy to deal with this problem would be do mass vaccinations with vaccine to the flu bug as its antigens exist now, and hope you’ve got the timing right - that’s what they did with the swine flu - problem is the expected mutation didn’t happen, people got vaccinated and sick from the vaccine, but no epidemic materialized.</p>
<p>The swine flu fiasco, and improving relations with Vietnam and China, has allowed the world to shift to a strategy of carefully monitoring bird and swine pops in Asia, where we know these mutations originate - vaccine makers make vaccines that correspond to the most current versions of flu as seen in China, etc. Tamiflu is stockpiled, with the hope that when the bird-human shift comes - lots of people in that area can be vaccinated and treated with Tamiflu slowing down the spread. Airport passengers will be traced, and the same strategy followed with their contacts. Quite frankly, it is sacrifice a few to prevent widespread disease in the many. You can’t prevent flu at its origin, but maybe you can manage the pandemic.</p>
<p>The real fear I have is worldwide economic collapse because of panic. That could happen with Coureur’s death rate of 5% - look what happened with SARS. I don’t know how long we “hold out” if no one goes to work - a week, two? A collapse like that could be temporary if enough people keep their heads - 9/11 was practice for that scenario.</p>
<p>I know I’m fearmongering, and like Coureur, I think the real death rate will be 20% tops, more likely 5% after the epidemic really gets going, BUT the scenario our local public health officer briefed the MDs here in town on, was a 50% death rate - now that will get your attention, when you talk about a disease with a high attack rate - 100,000 deaths in a metro area of about 300,000. Not a lot of reason to worry about that, what could you do anyway?! That’s what most of us who live on the Gulf Coast said about NOLA - if the levees break, realistically what could you do?</p>
<p>Cangel: no disease in history has had a 50% death rate. EVER. Even before modern medicine. The worst was the long-term effects of the plague, which took over 50 years and multiple sweeps through Europe, to reduce the population by one-third. (That is, the population went down by one-third between 1350 and 1400, so that was deaths from all causes.)</p>
<p>“80 cases in the world so far- IN THE WORLD”</p>
<p>There once were only 80 cases of AIDS. DMD, doesn’t AIDS have a 50% or better death rate?</p>
<p>Thank you coureur and cangel for the information. I have a question, though. I am not in the medical profession, and I must admit I only have 8 hours of college biology. Here goes: Multiple members of one family in Turkey died of the virus. When and how will those studying the virus know that infected persons contracted the virus from other humans and not birds?</p>
<p>In the US it was once predicted that tens of millions would die of AIDS. It never got remotely close to that amount. People adjust rapidly to REAL threats. If the gay activists had not been so intent on preserving their lifestyle without compromise the deaths would have been far less and the spread far slower.</p>