The Big One? Avian Flu Transmission In Humans Found

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-10-01 12:11pm

Mange the Swede wrote:In my opinion, all unnecessary travel to the affected countries should be put on hold until the outbreak is fully contained and until there's no danger of spreading. It may sound harsh, but that's a necessary measure to deal with a potentially dangerous virus.

You do realize this will bring the world's economy to a halt, right?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-10-01 12:12pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote: I never said they didn't, Mr. Kneejerk. I said that we, the West, do likewise.

Oh bullshit, do we in the west hand out fucking antibiotics like goddamned
candy? You have to have a prescription to get them here. Over in China,
all they need is cash...so the idiot quotient comes into play.

PainRack · Post by **PainRack** » 2004-10-01 12:16pm

MKSheppard wrote: Bullshit, when the chinese come down with a scratchy throat, what do they
do? They run right to the store and pick up a FUCKLOAD of antibiotics instead
of simply bearing out the sore throat.

Antiobiotics in China is not cheap. Nor is it generally available through legit channels.

But black market pharmancies on the other hand.............

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-01 12:16pm

MKSheppard wrote: Oh bullshit, do we in the west hand out fucking antibiotics like goddamned
candy? You have to have a prescription to get them here. Over in China,
all they need is cash...so the idiot quotient comes into play.

And your source for this is?

It doesn't matter if you need a prescription since the fucking GPs hand them out like candy. What? You think Average Joe can get tetracycline off the shelf for no reason? Not only is it GPs and pharmacies exacerbating this problem, it's bloody eejits that take the pills until they feel better than throw the rest away without ending the treatment. Well done, jerkoff, you've just added another drug to the growing list of "resistant to" for the microbes.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-10-01 12:20pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote: I never said they didn't, Mr. Kneejerk. I said that we, the West, do likewise.
Oh bullshit, do we in the west hand out fucking antibiotics like goddamned
candy? You have to have a prescription to get them here. Over in China,
all they need is cash...so the idiot quotient comes into play.

well, according to this, up to 40% of all antibiotics are prescribed for viral infections. Yes, I think it makes no sense, too.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-01 12:23pm

Shep, you need to go talk to some doctors sometime about how often people come in demanding antibiotics without even knowing exactly what's wrong with them.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-01 12:25pm

As I've said in the past, a lot of people don't know the real difference (the media is a constant irritation calling a bacterium a viral plague and vice versa) since this is equivalent to all guns being machine guns, all warships being battleships etc. How should they know a virus is totally unaffected by antibiotics? So they beg the doc, the doc caves in before litigation is mentioned and we have one more drug being needlessly wasted on a sore throat from a hangover and open to resistance factors.

By the way, Shep. Try explaining why MRSA and now VRSA first arose in first world hospitals like in the UK, US and Japan. I'll give you a hint; antibiotic frenzy.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-10-01 12:30pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:And your source for this is?

Washington Post articul a while ago on precisely this.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-01 12:34pm

MKSheppard wrote: Washington Post articul a while ago on precisely this.

If you can find a link, I'd be grateful. I don't doubt it since a similar thing has happened here in the past; we're shaping up now though since we sort of have to. Pharm. giants can't sell drugs at a profit to corpses.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2004-10-01 02:33pm

I was reading some articles where it was theorized that part of the reason why the Spanish flu killed so many people was that it killed people who were already infected with TB, even if just mild cases that they didn't know about. The combination of the two overwhelmed people and they died. To back up this hypothesis, the writers of this article showed some statistics that TB infections were down tremendously after the flu went through and didn't start picking up again for over a decade.

If this is true, then probably deaths in the US and other western countries wouldn't be so high as they were last time since much fewer of us have TB. TB though is still a major problem in nonindustrialized countries and a growing one in the old Soviet Bloc. AND, now there's AIDS. People who already have weakened immune systems won't be able to survive. Of course, most of them are also in third world countries and many of them end up dying of TB, amongst many other diseases.

But no matter what, a new flu pandemic is going to be bad times.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2004-10-01 03:01pm

[quote="Mayabird"]TB though is still a major problem in nonindustrialized countries and a growing one in the old Soviet Bloc. AND, now there's AIDS. People who already have weakened immune systems won't be able to survive. Of course, most of them are also in third world countries and many of them end up dying of TB, amongst many other diseases.[quote]

Ooh, ooh, I know! Let's see what happens when the humanized Avian Flu spreads to Africa!

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2004-10-01 11:08pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I can't say. I always say around 40 million for Spanish Flu over a 24 week period, but it fluctuates because it's so damn hard to pin down. No one can honestly give an exact figure, but 40M is the most quoted.

But mull this over. Those figures for a new outbreak are based on the new H5N1 strain.

The Spanish Flu, H1N1, had a mortality rate of around 2-3%. The H5N1 strain emerging in Thailand and likely spreading has a mortality rate of over 70%. Think those numbers are too high now?

Not only is it better able to travel the globe and resist destruction thanks to our overzealous vaccination programme, but it has a mortality rate an order of magnitude higher.

I'm not worried yet. Remember that some isolated villages and populations were either severely depleted or in some cases totally wiped out by the Spanish Flu? If we studied just one of those villages we would conclude it had a fatality rate of 100%--and yet half of the world's population (the infected half) did not die. We don't have a sample that's large enough to make a determination like that. We're dealing with about a hundred people who have been infected in sufficiently isolated areas that bodies are (as of yet) not piling up in Krung Thep hospitals.

I fully expect that a worldwide epidemic would still only have fatalities in the 3% range and that what we're dealing with here is a skewed fatality rate due to the conditions and nature of the infection of people on a micro level in isolated areas. This skewing between the global fatality rate and local fatality rates is exactly what happened in the original outbreak and because these local fatality rates are happening in the countryside in conditions not dissimilar to those of the highly isolated areas that saw near or total fatalities in the original outbreak, I think it is logical to conclude there is a probable correlation and that such fatality rates on a macro level are unlikely at best.

Furthermore, I am not so concerned about the ability of the PRC to handle a major outbreak in the sense that no matter what they do they cannot handle it worse than the government of China did in 1918, when China effectively had no modern health system nor ability of a central government to enforce quarantines whatsoever.

The main thing I see is that the infection rate could be higher than fifty percent thanks to modern travel, which would lead to--in theory--up to twice as many deaths proportionate to the size of the population, though probably not more than one and a half times as many proportionate to population size. Even in the worst case, then, I think it unlikely that more than one-fifteenth--at the extreme maximum--of the world population would die, and most of those deaths would be concentrated in the developing world.

President Sharky · Post by **President Sharky** » 2004-10-02 12:00am

This talk of a super-epidemic is fucking scary. I believe that it would be wise for, at the first sign of major trouble, for people to stock up and prepare themselves for long-term isolation. Does anyone knowledgable enough know what kind of measures one should take to prevent infection in the event of an epidemic? Should my entire family be vaccinated for the flu? Should we all wear face masks?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-03 03:12pm

They've just found a 9-year old girl has the virus now and is in critical condition. To make it worse, a dog has been found to carry the disease too.

President Sharky · Post by **President Sharky** » 2004-10-03 03:44pm

We are all so fucked.

The_Last_Rebel · Post by **The_Last_Rebel** » 2004-10-03 03:45pm

This is why I've hardly ever taken any antibiotics. I hardly get sick anyway, and the worst I usually get is a sinus infection, and the past few years I just ride it out. The only thing I used to take for them was a sulpha drug, and I'm not even sure if that could be considered an antibiotic. It works by flushing your system out. (got to drink alot or it'll dehydrate you.) At least if I ever do get anything real serious I figure an antibiotic will work better for me since I figure I've got a pretty strong immune system.

This talk of a super-epidemic is fucking scary. I believe that it would be wise for, at the first sign of major trouble, for people to stock up and prepare themselves for long-term isolation.?

kurtsaxon.com For all of you survivalist needs.

Does anyone knowledgable enough know what kind of measures one should take to prevent infection in the event of an epidemic? Should my entire family be vaccinated for the flu? Should we all wear face masks?

Limit contact with people, I guess.

I've never had a flu shot in my life, but I haven't been really sick (by that I mean stay in bed all day sick) since high school.

I don't think face masks do all that good. Oh, sure a peice of cloth or paper's gonna keep you from inhaling something that travels through the air you breath through the mask anyway.

Probably have to don a gas mask to get that kind of protection.

You worry too much about a problem, the worrying's more likely to kill you than the problem is.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-03 03:55pm

Masks won't stop shit for something that's micrometre in dimensions, the SARS masks were useful because SARS is useless in airborne transmission. Influenza is most assuredly not. It's like using a sieve to stop water (literally).

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2004-10-03 07:04pm

President Sharky wrote:We are all so fucked.

Just calm down. Just stay healthy and don't get stressed so you can fight off diseases better. If you're that worried you could go get tested to see if you're a carrier for TB (just in case that theory I read about was true and it's the same this time around). It's just a prick in the arm; I had to get it to enter college. And remember that when the Spanish flu went through, it was 1918 and medical science has advanced quite a bit since then. Developed countries (like Canada where your location says that you are) will be better able to handle it.