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Avian flu

  • #21
I'm tellin you. Eat right to keep your body up in antioxidants, and stop drinking those sodas so that your body can get back to an alkaline ph, and you shouldn't fare too badly. Folks all this info is out there for you to take, if you would just rise to the occasion and search for it. Hehe, shoulda heard that woman on coasttocoast tonight. She had a dream that told her the exact same thing I said. Don't take the vaccine, and eat as healthy as you can. If getting the vaccine becomes mandatory, I'll be fightin.
 
  • #22
Lets take a flashback to 1918.........

Battlefeilds of WWI

Young fit soilders in crowded battlefeild and hospital conditions. This flu bcame virulent her ebecause it did not need tro keep its host alive long to spread. And it took what was a healthy soilder population and bred like mad. it used what was most readily available, young people, and ran with it. What came out was a flu that readily attaked healthy young pople in their prime and killed them. People who are weak and vunerable, like the young and old, took it hat hardest, of course. But this virus was unusal by its ability to easily kil tthe young men and weomen it affected, a trait probably gained from the crowded battlefeild where young people are vwery common.

You get a disease where young men and women are dropping dead in the streats. they are not the most immune. they are just as vunerable.

Because this virus did not beed in abttlefield conditions, bird flu may have less a tendancty to affect young people. But it DOES affect healthy chikens in their prime in crowded birdfarms. The question is if the virus can retain that tendancy if it mutates to humans. its a big ?
 
  • #23
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I wonder if the government needs to set up a NON-PROFIT lab that will manufacture vaccines in massive quantities.  Wonder if they ever thought about that?  Make medicine out of need, not greed.
You don't seriously think that politicians could come up with a common sense solution such as that.  That requires rational and innovating thinking.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I think I'm feeling a lil' feverish...maybe I need to go home...
PAK, I think you should take the rest of the week off...but don't forget to stock up on the "liquids".
 
  • #24
my canary has had a cough lately and im worried about him.
confused.gif


i think its air sac mites. no birdflu here
 
  • #25
I have a million and one things going on today but I will get back to all the comments here. Just letting you all know I'm not bugging out.
 
  • #26
Okay, sorry it took soo long but work takes priority over everything else and I have not had enough free time to sit and answer all this until now.

The stats I cite are not WHO because WHO only reports based on theior lab's results and kinda ignores everyone else. I got my info off my PubMed mailing list which is a daily email tracking worldwide emerging infections diseases and outbreaks. The stats there come from a variety of sources, WHO, CDC, local ministries of health etc. I also did a little background reading into flu in general and H5N1 in specific. More on that in a minute

As for the media looking like fools, it won't be the first time and I seriously doubt it'll be the last. Like the media, the population at large seems to have a 5 minute attention span and we all tend to forget the idiotic things the media says. Like I cited before, there was insane hype over SARS and West Nile and BSE and none of those ever went past the hype stage but everyone seems to "forget" the media contributions to those collective circuses.

Now, back to flu.

Since 1918 there have been 3 other pandemics (not that the public ever hears about anything but the 1918 one.) In 1957 there was the H2N2 pandemic. IIRC there were ~20 million dead from that. It is also worth noting that after this flu took hold the H1N1 strain that had been around since 1918 basically disappeared. Then in 1968 there was the H3N2 pandemic. Death toll for this one was <10 million I believe and the reason they say it was not worse was because of cross protection to the N2 antigen. Like before, the H2N2 strain disappeared. Lastly, in 1977 H1N1 came back and for the last 28 years it and H3N2 have been the source for all the flu we have had.

Now a breif genetics lesson. Flu naturally mutates. As an RNA virus it dose this a lot (the replication mechanism for RNA does not proofread like DNA replication so mutation rate is 1 per 100-1000 bases.) When a mutatin occurs in the H or N component of flu it can alter the infectivity/virulence. This is known as genetic drift. Genetic drift is the reason we have a "new" flu every year, a mutation occurs and the immunity you had to last years flu does not work for this years flu. Flu viruses are also capable of "swapping" whole genes (though the host for this is unknown.) In a case like this the H and/or N gene is swapped out for a totally new one. This occurance is known as genetic shift.

So in summary, yearly flu outbreaks are caused by drift and pandemics are caused by shifts.

With H5N1 we are looking at a genetic shift (remember there are wildtype H1N1 flu out there). Because of the nature of this shift (only the H component) there is every likelihood that there will be cross protection against the N1 component because for the last 28 years we have all been exposed to the N1 component in various forms from typical flu infections. And if you are a habitual flu vaccine person you are getting exposure too because the vaccine is built on the H1N1 strain for that year.

Now just a few other nuggets to mull over.

H5N1 has actually been around since 1997. There were outbreaks that year through 2000 and then it went silent again until 2003 (though there is one contended case in 2002.)

The numbers most often tossed around for the 1918 flu are always the highest ones because they add to the shock value (hooray for the media!! ) The calcualted range was between 20 and 100 million and it was more likely that it was toward the 20 million as being directly caused by the flu. It has been discussed that more than half of the quoted cases were probably due to some type of secondary infection (pneumonia, bronchitis, sepsis, etc.) And you also have to remember that there was a war going on so there were likely a number of casualties that got mis-reported both on and off the battle field.

This past summer WHO held a conference on H5N1 about what needs to be done. One of their major points was that NO sero-prevelance studies have been done and that that should be a top priority. For those of you not familiar with the word, sero-prevelance means people who test positive for exposure to the virus but have never displayed clinical signs or have only had "typical" flu and so no need to go to the hospital. As of the end of October the sero-prevelance studies have still not begun.

Canada DOH, on a whim, decided to test some local birds (non-migratory.) And lo and behold they found H5N1. This tells us that H5N1 is probably already a "global" virus and probably has been for some time. I'd be willing to bet $5 that I could get the H5N1 virus out of the geese in my back yard lake. This is not some new freak virus that is coming out of the blue.

There is a method to rapidly create a vaccine against any new strain of flu. The sick irony of it all is that it is a genetic method that would basically do in the lab what genetic drift accomplishes in the wild (this same method can be modified to handle a genetic shift) and provides a cleaner end product and a higher response curve, plus no nasty reactivation of virus effect that the current vaccine can cause. Now because of the "genetic engieneering" aspect of it, the cause heads have managed to convince the public to convince the government that this method is "dangerous" and "wrong" and "against nature" and all that garbage. And now it is those same cause heads convincing the public that the scientists are all worthless because they can not make a vaccine fast enough. Remeber, a little information is a dangerous thing. You can not have it both ways, you can either let us work or you can shut us down but don't get ticked at us when your collective butts are in the fire through something you yourselves brought about. You made your bed, you lay in it. One word here ladies and gentlemen: MORONS!

I was glad to hear that Bush had released the restrictions against this method and would allow us to get vaccines faster and more efficiently and not have to rely on chicken egg purified extracts (Ewwww! ) Unfortunaly with FDA restrictions in place (not something I argue against) it will still take 3 years or so to get it cleared for humans so it won't stop H5N1 any time soon. Of course if the governemt had actually listened to the scientists (who know what they are talking about) rather than the general public (who more often than not get their information from the under informed talking heads) then we would not be in this little predicament. But you can not change the past, all you can do is hope that people will learn from their mistakes.

Iknow there were other things I wanted to say but for the life of me I can not remember them. Maybe later.
 
  • #27
It's all stupid. Just stupid. Knowledge is a powerful thing, and can be dangerous. But for those who actualy try to follow god's law, I find there is little detriment. Certainly can't say that about the politicians and government. I said it before, and I'll say it again. I wont be taking a vaccine that isn't for this strain, and I wont be taking the vaccine for this strain when it does come out. A good knowledge of health, meditation/prayer, and perhaps some electro therapy will get the job done. There is nothing to make us think that as apposed to5 years ago, this strain will now jump to humans. Could jump at any time, but not anytime soon. Notice how the stupid media has cut back on there little bird flue scare stories? Got one quote for these people and their poultry flue

"If your vodka and cranberry is really dark like BlOOOOD, that's because it's not vodka buddy! And that's why it's only $3 a glass!"
 
  • #28
Pyro et al.,
One thing that is scary is that the entire genome for the
poliovirus and Spanish Flu (1918) have been described in their
entirety in Scientific journals. (Possessing even fragments of 1918 Flu are now considered to be Select Agents)
The poliovirus has been synthetically replicated in laboratories from the template and it is infectious.
Terrorists could synthesize their own pathogens.

Think about it...

Kirk
Fitchburg, MA

P.S. So far the Avian Flu has not been shown to transmit person to person. Could happen though..

P.P.S. The listserv that Pyro mentioned Pro-med is an excellent resource sponsored by Harvard University. Check the CDC Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases too It's in electronic format.
 
  • #29
Hi Pyro,

Saw your notice about the Canadian migratory ducks.
I believe that they have only been confirmed for H5 and are
awaiting further confirmatory testing for the second N1 assay
(See below).
AVIAN INFLUENZA - WORLDWIDE (03): FAO UPDATE
***************************************
A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
<http://www.isid.org>
Other strains/strain not yet confirmed:
- ---------------
Germany (as of 25 Oct 2005)
- ---------------------
On 24 Oct 2005, a total of 25 geese and ducks were found dead at a
lake popular for migratory birds in Rhineland-Palatinate State. The
preliminary test on a wild goose was positive for influenza A.

Canada (as of 31 Oct 2005)
- ---------------------
A survey of 4800 wild migratory ducks conducted during last summer
[2004] found evidence of H5 in 28 migratory ducks in Quebec Province
and 5 in Manitoba Province.

Japan as of (2 Nov 2005)
- ---------------------
On 31 Oct 2005, antibodies to AI virus were detected in chickens by
AGID and HI tests at an open-type farm with 82 046 chickens in
Ibaraki prefecture, within the quarantined area of a previous
outbreak in August 2005. No virus was isolated. All the birds at the
farm have been culled. AI infection was also reported on the same day
in a duck farm in Osaka Prefecture. AI H4 strain was diagnosed.

Other AI viruses (non-HPAI-H5N1) were reported in Sweden (LPAI H5),
Columbia (LPAI H9) and Iraq (in Erbil, H9).
 
  • #30
So, if this is not a big deal, then why are all the world's health organizations so concerned over it? I know its all just "possibilities" at this point (since it hasn't mutated to human to human transmission). Granted "the media" is giving it a lot of airplay but what they are reporting isn't staged actors...I've seen world conferences and heads of various medical/scientific groups discussing it. Bush has already set aside several billion dollars for future use for this issue.

I'm not in any panic over it but it just seems strange so many people would be in such a tizz over something that isn't really a big deal.

I am hoping it IS a lot of hype over nothing. It would be horrible if the dire predictions came true. All flus pose a threat to the general population but this seems to have caused more concern than normal.
 
  • #31
This virus might be like a Magnitude 6 earthquake in California.  It causes some damage and gets some mention in the news, but it isn't the Big One.  It should motivate us to prepare for what's coming someday; not reassure us that there's little to worry about.  Our public health system has been so crippled ... oops ... pardon my liberal leanings, I meant to say it's been made so efficient that we can't hope to handle even modest increases in emergency room visits and acute care.
 
  • #32
Not to minimise the threat H5:N1 could cause, but it has killed 60 people. The regular old flu will kill 30,000 people in the US this flu season. But I do agree that it is something to keep an eye on.
 
  • #33
remember its not the current H5:N1 thats a big threat to human life. its what it could mutate into
 
  • #34
LOL,

I am not saying everyone need so get a vaccine. I have never gotten the vaccine because I too believe in good health and all that jazz and if I do get the flu then I cough and I sneeze and I have one more immunity to my bodies list. All I was pointing out was that the same people who shut down the best, fastest way to get an effective pandemic flu vaccine are now saying that the scientists are worthless because there is not a vaccine. Double standard hypocracy IMHO.

Kirk,

More than just the polio and Spanish flu have been full sequenced. There is a full sequence for anthrax and both of its toxin plasmids, for flesh eating strep, VREF, VRSA.. The list goes on and on. And while it is possible to "build from scratch" any bug that is published it would have to take place in a lab using equipment that your average terrorist just can not get, not even black market. And I know it sounds trite but terrorists like to do things the "easy" way which is why, even after 30 odd years, they number on thing they use is stuff like plastic explosives and such. Any monkey with a low 2 digit IQ can carry a home made bomb around that was made by another monkey with a slightly higher 2 digit IQ. Genetics takes at least 3 digits and I really don't think many terrorists qualify in that regaurd

And thanks for the correction. It is indeed ProMed and not PubMed. What can I say, Mondays
smile.gif


Also, not on ProMedbut on another EID list I follow Canada DOH has confirmed N1 but since WHO has not confirmed it in a WHO lab as well then CDOH is not allowed to "officially" say it is H5N1. Bureaucracy at its finest.

PAK,

World health organizations still concerned about AIDS and syphillus and gonorrhea and VREF and VRSA and anthrax and Ebolaand a whole slew of others but you never hear about it. Heck, they have been concerned about just run of the mill flu every year. But all those things are pish-posh and "old news" the general public does not care a whip. When was the last time you really heard some every day person express concern over contracting AIDS?? AIDS is to my generation what gonorrhea was to my parents generation and syphillus was to my grandparents generation. They are all something that only "dirty" "filthy" people get and then they just go to the free clininc for a shot and it is all better. WRONG!! Diseases don't just go away because the public loses interest in them and scientist don't just quit studying specific diseases just because the media gets done hyping them.

Herenor,

I agree with you in so many ways

April and Finch,

Yes and maybe. I believe that all diseases need to be watched and paid attention to. Bird flu is just this years hype. Could it go BOOM! Maybe, but then so could so many other things. How many people have heard about VREF?? This will probably kill more than 2 million Americans in the next 5 years but since they will likely be "just the elderly and the immunocompromised" then it is not news worthy enough. 2 MILLION PEOPLE IS NOT NEWS WORTHY!! Or how about this, how many of you knew that last week was supposed to be the announcment of the world wide erradication of polio?? Any one know why the announcment got canceled? I do. Or, and this is a really good one, does anyone know the name of the last person to contract wild smallpox? and do you know what he did when he learned that smallpox is probably not under the lock and key we the public had been led to believe it was.

The sad fact is that diseases mutate and evolve and we have to evolve right along with them. That is what immunity is all about. And in our hyper clean, triclosan nation our immunity is crippled. There are 10 commensial bacteria for every 1 cell in/on your body. We are not ment to be sterile creatures.

End of rant
 
  • #35
Pyro is right.  Every year my son is on the HIGH RISk list.  Due to his disorders and diseases that he lives with everyday he is high risk.  I did not like hearing about the newish flu, but I did know of its existance for years. I get my son the flu shot and pray he does not get very sick.  He does off and on, but you learn to live with it.  You can not let the media get to you.  They make money off of hype.  "Tell you about a plan crash with a smile on her face"  Live life well.  Get the most out of every day and everyone that you love.  Pryo is the expert of this forum when it comes to this stuff.  I am listening to him and I am not going to worry (any more than usual).
 
  • #36
Avian flu is already here. there are cases of it every year in North America. It's just not the H5:N1...I can't see worrying about anything you have absolutely no power over, at this point.

There's a disease, a bullet, a car, a truck, a virus, or old age, a natural disaster out there with my name on it. I guess a person could make themselves crazy worrying about it...
 
  • #37
I'd rather worry about Dr. Turi's prediction for the end of the month. Big event coming around the 29th, and it won't be pretty
smile_h_32.gif
.
 
  • #38
Large dead birds will appear in houses all around the US.
 
  • #39
I get sick all the time, and somehow this whole avian flu thing doesn't really bother me. Maybe it's because I've read about too many other gross diseases like hemorrhagic fevers and meningitis and rabies. There's a lot of scary stuff out there and there always will be - it's an unavoidable consequence of being the planet's dominant species and constantly traveling and sending goods between populations. That's just the ecology of infectious disease.
What I find scary is how everyone on the news calls it the 'avian bird flu.' It's somehow become ingrained into people's speech - I even caught my biology major friend say 'avian bird flu' despite the fact that he knows just as well as I that avian means bird. It's a sign of the times.
~Joe
 
  • #40
[b said:
Quote[/b] (seedjar @ Nov. 09 2005,2:34)]It's a sign of the times.
What? Stupidity??
smile_n_32.gif


[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Pryo is the expert of this forum when it comes to this stuff.  

I am not an expert (though I appreciate the thought behind being called that.) I am just someone in the field so I do know a bit more than the average person. I get all my info from primary literature and any one else can get it there too. It is easier for me since I have unhindered access through the university but for anyone really interested there are always libraries, a very under used source in this internet age.
 
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