Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2640
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Sturcke J.
Bird flu pandemic 'could kill 150m'
The Guardian ( UK) 2005 Sep 30
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1582197,00.html
Notes:
Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:
Every now and then the Media goes into a collective feeding frenzy over an issue which is entirely imaginary. (On the other hand, the Media often fails to report on monumentally significant real events such as the collapse of the Larsen B ice-shelf which was one of the most important events of the last 14,000 years and scarcely rated a mention in the mainstream media).
One such imaginary event is the ‘Bird Flu Pandemic’.
Type ‘Bird Flu Pandemic’ into Google and you will come up with 1/2 a million hits.
Now the skeptically inclined might be wondering what this is all about.
The Avian Flu Virus lives in its Avian hosts as it has done for centuries. Every now and then a human is accidentally cross-infected. At the same time every creature on earth from the size of bacteria upwards is in the same position. There are millions of different viruses out there which have non-humans as their natural hosts but which can potentially jump across to humans or other species on occasion. But the very factors which make a virus well adapted to one host are likely to make it poorly adapted to another host. This is why viral infections in humans, where humans are not the natural host, tend to fizzle out rather than spread ( with some notable exceptions). In order for the Avian Flu Virus to cause a serious pandemic in the human population it would have to undergo some serious evolution. It would have to learn how to be spread by aerosol droplets rather than excreta, and how to transmit from human to human without losing its infectivity or virulence. This is a big ask. Sure it could happen soon, but more likely it will happen long after we are all dead from other more probable causes which we failed to notice because we were too busy jumping at shadows.
The skeptic always likes to ask- “Who stands to benefit from all this publicity?”
The beneficiaries can be loosely divided into 4 groups-
1/. The Media- which thrives on hype and fear.
2/. Governments- which can divert attention away from their failings and appear to be ‘seizing the initiative’ and expand their powers.
3/. Pharmaceutical companies- which manufacture anti-viral agents and vaccines.
4/. Academics, researchers and ‘public health experts’- who are looking for funds for their work.
Full text:
Bird flu pandemic ‘could kill 150m’
James Sturcke
Friday September 30, 2005
A global influenza pandemic is imminent and will kill up to 150 million people, the UN official in charge of coordinating the worldwide response to an outbreak has warned.
David Nabarro, one of the most senior public health experts at the World Health Organisation, said outbreaks of bird flu, which have killed at least 65 people in Asia, could mutate into a form transmittable between people.
“The consequences in terms of human life when the pandemic does start are going to be extraordinary and very damaging,” he said.
He told the BBC that the “range of deaths could be anything between five and 150 million”.
A highly pathogenic form of bird flu, known as the H5N1, has led to the culling of tens of millions of birds in south-east Asia, but efforts to contain it have not prevented it spreading as far as the Ural mountains in Russia.
Carried by wildfowl, it spreads quickly among poultry flocks and has killed people living or working in close proximity to infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could evolve into a form which could be passed from human to human with catastrophic consequences.
Last month Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, told Guardian Unlimited that up to 200 million people could be killed.
“Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,” said Prof Ferguson. “There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.”
A Department of Health contingency plan states anywhere that there could be between 21,500 and 709,000 deaths in Britain.
Last week, veterinary and medical chiefs from the European Union held talks aimed at drawing up an EU-wide action plan to prevent the spread of bird flu. Experts say spotting any outbreak immediately and treating local people with anti-viral drugs and vaccines will be the key to containing any outbreak.
Rich countries are stockpiling anti-viral supplies. Britain announced in March that it was spending £200m on treatments for up to 14 million people. In July the government also said it would buy 2m doses of vaccine for key workers, though it will take around six months for it to arrive.
The problem facing governments and the WHO is that it is difficult to know what vaccine to produce until an outbreak occurs and then to manufacture treatments in sufficient quantities.
“A flu outbreak is imminent but no one knows if it will be next week or in three years’ time,” a WHO spokeswoman said. “It is really difficult to know how many people will be infected but we know we have to get prepared.”
She said the “best case scenario” would be 7.4 million deaths globally.
South-east Asia’s agriculture ministers announced a regional plan today to combat bird flu and pledged to co-operate with international agencies in stamping out the virus.
The ministers from the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) said in a statement that bird flu requires “an all-out coordinated regional effort”.
The plan covers eight strategic areas including a disease surveillance and alert system, vaccination, improving diagnostic capability and establishing disease-free zones.
