Devastating bird flu pandemic one step away - expert

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Devastating bird flu pandemic one step away - expert

The world is one step away from a bird flu pandemic that cannot be averted by quarantine or vaccination, a Russian expert said Tuesday.

"One amino-acid replacement in the genome remains to make the virus transferable from human to human," said Dmitry Lvov, the director of a virology research institute at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

Lvov said the pandemic virus could strike at any moment, and would most likely come from China, leading to tens of millions of human deaths, or one third of the global population. He added quarantine measures could delay the pandemic for a few days but not prevent it, and that vaccination would not stop people getting sick.

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The drum beat continues...

OK, tell me this isn't beyond bizzare!!!!

Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America

In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

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Canned tuna and powdered milk under your bed????

Are they freakin' kidding me???

Somewhat bizarre, yes.

Chertoff is pushing the looming pandemic line too. ...These creeps blocked all the early prevention proposals - because they would have lowered industry profits - and now we're stuck with the fallout.

Poultry needed to be quarantined long ago. Poultry quarantines still might have worked last fall. Now, ...? They're talking human quarantine instead.

Swiss scientist Samuel Jutzi says bird flu still can be eradicated. He's recommending agricultural measures for poultry similar to those implemented for pigs years ago, and designed to prevent microbes from mixing and creating hybrids.

How bird flu can be stopped

swissinfo: Do viruses of this nature typically cross over to other species? Presumably the risk increases the more other species are exposed to the virus?

S.J.: The H5N1 influenza virus is an RNA virus, which tends to mutate rather dynamically and to adjust to new hosts. And the transmission of the virus has been observed for some time, most recently in cats in Europe.

The species barrier is being crossed, also to humans and to pigs. That is of particular concern because pigs and humans can be the so-called "mixing vessels". If they are both infected with a human and an avian influenza virus, there may be a crossover. In that case, the combination of the genetic material would then result in a virus which would be transmissible from human to human and have the same mortality rate of H5N1.

So the concern is indeed justified. We are currently looking at the role of cats in the crisis, particularly in Indonesia, and it is not excluded that cats may have a role that has been underestimated in the epidemiology of the disease.

The Secretary of Health is warning people because of what happened in 1918. The 1918 virus was nothing compared to what the H5N1 has the potential to become. If the virus mutates human to human mass panic will set in. You better play it safe than sorry. I used to work on Ft Devens in MA and I have seen the mass graves from the last bird flu.

I heard on the news over the weekend that they are saying Canada will see the virus in approx. 6 months due to Bird migration to our areas.

I was hoping we would be one of the last places to see it.

Incidentally, where would the safest place be to reside in the world today? In respect to the Bird Flu.

What, you dont keep canned tuna and powdered milk under your bed?
Fear mongoring.
I also keep powdered water just in case. Fear mongoring.

Originally posted by loam
OK, tell me this isn't beyond bizzare!!!!

Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America

In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

More...

Canned tuna and powdered milk under your bed????

Are they freakin' kidding me???

Oh yeah, the plague is coming and we're all going to DIE!!!

Please I mean come on. Remember when we were all going to die of AIDS? Oh and how about the time we were all DOOMED to die of SARS? or how about Ebola?

These so called "Experts" have been predicting doom and gloom as far as disseases go for years now.... and besides a few isolated incidents all of us are still here and healthy. So I wouldn't be freaking out and start duck taping the windows and storing a 3 year supply of food and water in the basement.

This is just fearmongering. Everytime you turn on the TV its always something new that's going to come into your home and kill you, if it's not "terrorists" its a dissease or something else.

...... I would like to add however that Im completely full of crap and this time the "experts" might actually get it right and we'll all get infected and die by the thousands in the streets.

*runs to the market to stock up on goodies*

Yes it all sounds like scare mongering. It still would not hurt to have a little extra on hand if something even such as a minor outbreak happens in your area. With all the scenarios on ATS for doom and gloom this is probabley the only one that has happened (or ever came to pass ) over and over again through out history.

[edit on 13-3-2006 by IntelRetard]

Originally posted by IntelRetard
Yes it all sounds like scare mongering. It still would not hurt to have a little extra on hand if something even such as a minor outbreak happens in your area. With all the scenarios on ATS for doom and gloom this is probabley the only one that has happened (or ever came to pass ) over and over again through out history.

Yeah. It's never a bad idea to be cautious just as long as people don't start freaking out.

When one day you look out your window, and the scene you see outside looks like something out of Land of the Dead......... then start freaking out.

Originally posted by loam
"One amino-acid replacement in the genome remains to make the virus transferable from human to human," said Dmitry Lvov, the director of a virology research institute at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

I think this claim makes this statement highly suspect. From all I've heard it's not well understood what really allows some viruses to be spread easily from human to human and others not, so I don't think anyone would be able to say this with certainty.

[edit on 3/13/2006 by djohnsto77]

"I think this claim makes this statement highly suspect. From all I've heard it's not well understood what really allows some viruses to be spread easily from human to human and others not, so I don't think anyone would be able to say this with certainty."

Although we don't know all the sequences and their particular isolates, we do know what changes are required for substained H2H. H5N1 has already aquired two human polymorphisms that enable more efficient H2H although it is still an avian virus and thus more prone to avian receptor cells in the respiratory tract.

During the Qinghai Lake outbreak in China, H5N1 samples were sequenced and low and behold...H5N1, which all of a sudden starting killing its hosts (ducks and geese which normally don't get sick , they just spread it) shocked the world by having aquired a HUMAN genome (E624K) which allows the virus to exist in the human respiratory tract environment (cooler than avian). This was the 1st time this has ever happened in an avian virus!!!!

The next outbreak in Turkey showed another aqquistion to its sequence.
S227N, which had been previously found in only two H5N1 isolates. That change increased the HA affinity for human receptors and decreased the affinity for avian receptors.

It's projected that H5N1 needs only a few more amino acid changes to become fully transmissable between humans (H2H)

So....it's not 100% proven, but really what is?

I'd rather prep now and hope that I never need the supplies in my basement than try to run out when it's too late.

[edit on 14-3-2006 by gman55]

I have actually bought a few things to keep in the closet just in case. Mainly some jugs of water, can food of many vairieties, and different types of non-perishable items. I have about 30 days worth of food for 2 people, eating normally. I just found things on-sale at the store that we normally eat anyway and bought some extra. Now that I have a food backup, and if all this turns out to be nothing 9 months from now, I have plenty of regular food to eat for a while.

Now, I just have to go gun shopping....

More people die from falling in the bath tub everyday than have died from the bird flu total. Anyone who believes this crap is an idiot and you have a better chance of getting aids that you have of getting bird flu.

Am I the only one who thinks they may be preparing us for something else? I remember reading something along the lines of, "don't sit around waiting for the gov't to help you, because they will be unable."

Ala Katrina, anyone?

Maybe they want us prepared for a terror attack? Maybe more weird weather? Maybe it really is the bird flu, but they have made it clear that when IT hits the fan, we wont be able to rely on Uncle Sam.

Originally posted by DaFunk13
Am I the only one who thinks they may be preparing us for something else?

Bird flu isn't the only disease poised to go pandemic - and many already have. Authorities admit there is world wide chronic disease epidemic - and evidence shows clearly that the infectious component is a huge factor.

....The REAL problem is that we're going back to the dark ages with respect to medical treatment - drugs don't work any more. Not anti-virals, not antibiotics.

Tripped over this article today that shows how the problem is growing - by leaps and bounds.

Antibiotic resistance has long been an important human health problem. But now it is also showing up in a small but growing number of pets in this country, Canada and Europe, scientists and federal health officials said on Tuesday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases here.

The health officials said they did not want to sound too loud an alarm. But they said they wanted to learn more about the problem that has developed involving the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, the most common cause of staphylococcal infections among people.

The same genetic strains of S. aureus have been found among human and animal cases, suggesting a connection. ...Dr. Nina Morano, an official of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here, said at a news conference that the problem was serious enough that her agency was adding questions about exposure to dogs, cats and other pets in large studies intended to determine their role in human staphylococcal infections.

Pet-Human Link Studied in Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

So we're back to good nutrition, clean water, fresh air - and the money to buy health.

[edit on 22-3-2006 by soficrow]

More on the preperation front:

Schools Told to Prepare for Bird Flu

The nation's schools, recognized incubators of respiratory diseases among children, are being told to plan for the possibility of an outbreak of bird flu.

Federal health leaders say it is not alarmist or premature for schools to make preparations, such as finding ways to teach kids even if they've all been sent home.

School boards and superintendents have gotten used to emergency planning for student violence, terrorism or severe weather. Pandemic preparation, though, is a new one.

They have a lot to think over, top government officials said Tuesday.

Who coordinates decisions on closing schools or quarantining kids? If classes shut down for weeks, how will a district keep kids from falling behind? Who will keep the payroll running, or ease the fear of parents, or provide food to children who count on school meals?

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I find the "quarantining kids" part worrisome.

And for the pathway issue:

Bird flu's human-attack pathway revealed

Two separate research groups have independently discovered why the H5N1 bird flu virus causes lethal pneumonia in people, but is – so far – hard for people to catch. In the process, they have found a way to predict which mutations might make the virus more contagious, and potentially become a pandemic strain. To date, confirmed human deaths from the disease stand at 103 worldwide

The H5N1 virus binds to sugars on the surface of cells deep in human lungs, but not to cells lining the human nose and throat. So report the two research teams, led by Thijs Kuiken at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the Universities of Tokyo, Japan and Wisconsin at Madison, US.

This fits the few autopsies that have been performed on H5N1 victims, who had damage to the alveoli – the delicate sacs deep in the lungs, where oxygen enters the blood.

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