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<p>Yeah, 'cause straights don’t spread AIDS at all. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>OOOOO, getting mean now. gotta agree with UCLAri, most of the cases of HIV I see are straight people. In fact, in the past at least 6 years, all of them. I see much more from IV drug abuse than gay sex. poor form, poor form.</p>
<p>Getting back to bird flu -</p>
<p>As has been said, even with a low death rate of 1 - 5% the numbers killed will be huge. And the real disaster will be economic more than medical. Remember SARS? It had a death rate of around that, and it delivered a staggering blow to the economies of Toronto, Hong Kong, and other affected cities. Conventions and sporting events were cancelled. Tourism went straight to zero. People and businesses were avoiding those cities like, well…the plague. Fortunately SARS was able to be stamped out by strict application of tradtional public health measures. Fancy new vaccines weren’t needed. Flu will likely be a different story.</p>
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<p>This is incorrect. The death rate for untreated AIDS is over 90%. It just often takes a long time (8-10 years) to finally kill the patient off.</p>
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<p>When people who have no close contact with birds start catching it.</p>
<p>The fact that a flu outbreak actually can kill millions is not merely some abtract theory. Influenza has already shown us that back in 1918.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info, Coureur. I guess I was just hoping that there would be a test that could be done on victims for early warning that it mutated.</p>
<p>Oh coureur, stop fear mongering with these silly “facts” things of yours.</p>
<p>Now remember, the plan is to isolate parts of the country that “get” the flu, quarantines will be announced and the military will stand guard.</p>
<p>Isn’t that Bush’s plan?</p>
<p>And are the pharmesutical companies stepping up and doing their patriotic duty, and will vacines cost a fortune or will they be low cost or free, like what I grew up with ie polio</p>
<p>We shall see</p>
<p>UCLAri, you might want to read up on the early history of AIDS in the US. Gay activist Dan Savage has written extensively on the subject. A little more caution early would have greatly slowed the spread among gays and to the general public.</p>
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<p>Oh, they will jump all over the virus and fully characterize any mutations it has. Non-bird people getting bird flu will just be the first sign that something really bad has happened. It is unlikely that anyone would stumble across this mutation prior to someone coming down with it.</p>
<p>Any of you with kids already in college–is there any indication that any college is preparing to protect students in dorms/ central dining facilities in case of a pandemic–would they just send them all home ? but what if there were travel restrictions? has any institution made any official statement about preparedness?</p>
<p>They won’t send them home, because QUARANTINE…
WASHINGTON President Bush, increasingly concerned about a possible avian flu pandemic, revealed Tuesday that any part of the country where the virus breaks out could likely be quarantined and that he is considering using the military to enforce it.</p>
<p>“The best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins,” he said during a wide-ranging Rose Garden (search) news conference.</p>
<p>Obviously I was once again unclear about what I meant by death rate when I said that no disease in history has had a 50% death rate. I was referring to the <em>overall death rate</em> during an epidemic, not the death rate of those who contract active disease.</p>
<p>Untreated AIDS does appear to kill more than 50% of those who get it. But it does not kill 50% of the population, nor does it kill 50% of those who are exposed to it, because it IS possible to be exposed without getting it (even babies exposed in utero get it only 1/3rd or less of the time). And there are people who they KNOW have had the virus for more than ten years without showing any symptoms.</p>
<p>Dmd77 - I’m sorry, I should have made it clearer - of the people who get bird flu, the worst case scenario was a 50% death rate, in a disease with a high attack rate. Influenza traditionally has a high attack rate - everyone has seen flu fly through a school. The public health dept said 100K deaths in a 300K population - roughly 33% - the attack rate would have to be very high.
I did not say I actually believe that these numbers will ever come true for the entire US, given the natural history of flu, and allowing that some degree of quarantine/vaccination/treatment response will take place - I think Coureur’s 5% death rate is much more realistic.</p>
<p>I do see a couple of scary scenarios, that are realistic, whether you believe me or not - one is when the virus first makes the jump from bird-human to human-human transmission. At that point, if there is not a concomitant mutation reducing virulence (Coureur, do you know what the death rate in unvaccinated chickens is?), then that first population to get sick will have a very high death rate, possibly a high attack rate. Let’s say one of those sick people goes to a big wedding there in Vietnam, infects all his relatives, and the relatives go back home to Minnesota (does this sound like a familiar story?) - you could have a primary or almost primary mini-epidemic in Minnesota - that’s the kind of thing that demands quarantine, blanketing a population with vaccine and drugs, and yes, maybe calling out the National Guard (that would have been a great idea in NOLA) - this is exactly what happened in Toronto with SARS - I don’t know that they called out the Mounties or whatever, but I think it was touch and go for awhile, until they sorted out who was sick.</p>
<p>By the way CGM, isolate and manage the pandemic, is the bedrock of the WHO’s approach to flu worldwide - not GWB’s idea - and it may take the National Guard, and will take some degree of quarantine - why do you think the medical community is so nervous about this? We don’t want to trample peoples’ rights, we’re trying to save their lives.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why the vaccine for bird flu can’t be mass produced? just incase it does happen to become a pandemic somewhere in the near future, according to pharmesutical companies only 300 million for the whole world can be made.</p>
<p>Cangel, thanks for the clarification. Historically (I happen to read medical and epidemic histories as a hobby), epidemic diseases behave exactly as you describe them, with a high death rate in the initial population. I agree that isolation of that initial population is key to preventing a pandemic.</p>
<p>And I’ve seen flu “fly through a school” but never had more than 5-10% of the total students be absent—and if you assume reasonable public health precautions (closing affected schools temporarily), it should be much lower. A lot depends on how long one is contagious with bird flu BEFORE one shows symptoms. And since human->human transmission is (as yet) theoretical, no one knows what that number is.</p>
<p>Well, that’s what everyone is hoping, “reasonable public health precautions” will go a long way to controlling the virus - particularly with aggressive control efforts re:international travel.
The 5-10% absentees reflect attack rate/virulence, I’m not sure which is the proper epidemiologic term - in “normal” flu, not everyone who gets the virus gets sick, there are all degrees of illness - but all infected people can pass on the virus to others, if they are shedding virus. Lots more than that 5-10% absentees have the virus.
One of many things that is unknown about bird flu is how many people get the virus and don’t get sick. I think WHO/China public health has some idea about that, I think I’ve seen some numbers, but I won’t speculate. Another thing that we don’t know is the underlying health status of the individuals who have died - certainly these are rural people in poor countries, but a lot of them died in the ICU, so they are getting medical care - there are just a lot of what ifs.</p>
<p>Like I said, I don’t want to be fear-mongering, but as the MD in the Oprah report says - it is just a matter of when, where and how bad will it be, not if it will happen.</p>
<p>Maybe it is because we live on a stretch of the Gulf Coast that has had some many hurricanes the past few years, or so many scares, but it does not seem unnatural to have a few weeks worth of food on hand and water and batteries, etc. Common sense stuff - gas up the car, keep cash, etc. we just sort of do that now.</p>
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<p>There are technical problems. The basic problem is that viruses cannot grow in a petrie dish by themselves like bacteria. They have to be grown in live cells. Now the way that flu vaccine is normally produced is that it is grown up in live chicken eggs. The virus is harvested from the growing egg/embryo, killed, and then purified into a vaccine preparation. Now the problem peculiar to bird flu is that it is particularly deadly to, well, birds. Thus, the virus quickly kills the egg outright instead of growing up a bunch more virus to be harvested.</p>
<p>They have developed some work-arounds. But it is very slow going. They have a prototype vaccine that is being tested. But no one knows how well it will work with the mutant virus should it appear, because the mutant will be somewhat different from the virus that is available to work with now.</p>
<p>In the Neatherlands, 83 got the flu, 1 died</p>
<p>yet:</p>
<p>Mortality from tobacco in developed countries: indirect estimation from national vital statistics", Lancet, 23 May 1992:
1930-59: 11,000,000
1960s: 9,000,000
1970s: 13,000,000
1980s: 17,000,000
1990s: 21,000,000
TOTAL (1930-1999): 71,000,000 tobacco-related deaths in developed countries. (US, Europe, USSR, Canada, Japan, Australia, NZ)</p>
<p>Smoking Kills 5 Million People Annually</p>
<p>Every year, almost 5 million people worldwide die prematurely from the effects of smoking, Harvard University researchers report in this week’s The Lancet medical journal.</p>
<p>In 2000, the toll is developing countries was 2.41 million, versus 2.43 million among wealthy nations. The researchers say theirs is the first study to determine that smoking’s toll among poorer nations has caught up with that of the industrialized world.</p>
<p>More than three-quarters of the smoking-related deaths worldwide are among men, the researchers say.</p>
<p>Its hard for me to get all excited about the governments reports on bird flu, when they really could care less about smoking and its death annually</p>
<p>But, heaven forbid, my sick aunt should have a little pot for her cancer</p>
<p>The government is using this to create fear, while some concern is warranted, we have issues that have been affecting people for YEARS</p>
<p>We have soldiers coming back with all kinds of health issues that the governemnt denies</p>
<p>We have kids who are starving in this country</p>
<p>We have people all over the world DYING because of dirty water</p>
<p>We have children going blind that need a simple vacination</p>
<p>Those our government cuts funds for</p>
<p>Yet, wow, bird flu</p>
<p>citygirlsmom -</p>
<p>Your analogies between bird flu and tobacco are bogus. They are not the same sort of public health threat. Smoking is not a contagious disease. People can avoid death and disease from smoking by choosing not to smoke, and public health officials have been promoting exactly that for decades. There is no similar choice that people can make to avoid influenza. If the bird flu happens, unlike tobacco it’s going to come get you. It can come right into your home and kill you and your family whether you want it to or not. You and millions of others.</p>
<p>I agree that there are many other health problems in the world that are not adequately addressed. But another 1918-style flu epidemic will soon make you forget about all of them. Unlike in 1918, the scientists and the government now have tools at their disposal to win this fight. It may well never come. I pray that it doesn’t. But it would be irresponsible to fail to prepare. The tobacco-is-worse argument is a red herring.</p>
<p>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>
<p>I would have appreciated it- if our Republican president had acknowledged the threat to the blood supply for all people and insisted on testing instead of assuming that it was just the part of the society that wasn’t “moral” anyway being affected
my daughter who was born 10 weeks early had to have mulitiple transfusions of platelets over her first few weeks of life and it would have done a great deal for our confidence in the health system, to know that AIDS had been screened out.</p>
<p>That does not change my facts one iota. Yes, others made mistakes in judging the problem initially but the radical gay element successfully opposed such basic health measures as contact tracing that are applied to every other communicable disease. They own the lion’s share of the blame for the initial rapid spread of AIDS in the US.</p>