Anti-Americanism causes polio to spread in Nigeria

[Rogue 9]

How did it spread room to room in the Reston monkey house, then?

[Admiral Valdemar]

You want to know the real deus ex machina we scientists fear?

Flu. The common Influenza virus.

Why? Because it once killed tens of millions of people who were perfectly healthy and young in a matter of a couple of months and then disappeared.

The fact is, the US gov't is so busy prosecuting anyone who researches into bugs like bubonic plague and then making vaccines and antibiotics that they ignore the fact that Flu is far more of a threat than HIV, plague of haemorrhagic fevers like Ebola or Yellow Fever. I mean, everyone gets the flu, right? It's not bad...

Sounds like famous last words.

[phongn]

You want to know the real deus ex machina we scientists fear?

Flu. The common Influenza virus.

Ugh, don't remind me.

[tharkûn]

AV: Its more a case of what the hell do you expect them to do? Influenza is so terribly mutagenic you can't make lifelong vaccines and it has among the better lethality/communicability profiles.

The blunt fact is antibiotics are much easier to make the anti virals. Bacteria have a huge amount of unique cellular machinery that one can wreak havoc with to kill them. A virus doesn't come with unique DNA polymerases, unique ribosomes, unique protein synthesis pathways ... it simply hijacks the ones used by the human body. Where an antibiotic will literally work for thousands of diseases an anti-viral medication is LUCKY if it works on more than a single family of infections.

Work is being done to combat viral infections, and we actually do have medications that can help prevent the common influenza strains (remantadine and amantadine); but unfortunately numerous strains are not effected.

If a pharmaceutical company could cure influenza they'd have a billion dollar product on their hands.

[Mayabird]

I wish I remember where my source was, but I read a theory somewhere that said that many of the deaths from the influenza pandemic were from people who had mild or just-developing cases of tuberculosis. Some evidence for this theory was that cases of TB were very low for many years after the pandemic, possibly because most people who had it were killed by the one-two punch of flu and TB.

A possible parallel with our times would be if a flu pandemic started killing people with AIDs. When I heard about SARS in China I was wondering what would happen if it jumped from the cities to the countryside, especially in the areas where a large portion of the population is HIV positive. I mention that because China is considered one of the areas where a killer flu would probably develop; many peasants raise pigs and ducks together, so that avian, pig, and human flu viruses can mix and jump species repeatedly until one fatal combo develops. Combine that with the HIV/AIDS epidemic as well as the huge number of people with TB...it's just scary when I think about it too much.

[Master of Ossus]

You want to know the real deus ex machina we scientists fear?

Flu. The common Influenza virus.

Why? Because it once killed tens of millions of people who were perfectly healthy and young in a matter of a couple of months and then disappeared.

The fact is, the US gov't is so busy prosecuting anyone who researches into bugs like bubonic plague and then making vaccines and antibiotics that they ignore the fact that Flu is far more of a threat than HIV, plague of haemorrhagic fevers like Ebola or Yellow Fever. I mean, everyone gets the flu, right? It's not bad...

Sounds like famous last words.

While I agree that many strains of the flu are inordinately dangerous, I would disagree that they are more so than the HIV virus. When you look at the infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa (and, by extension, the mortality rates), you see a socio-economic nightmare developing. That whole region will soon have LARGE populations of very young children and elderly, and virtually NO working-age people. No society has ever had to exist with similar problems in recorded history, and no one's really sure how it can be dealt with. Influenza kills lots of people when there's a really bad strain going around. HIV has the potential of wiping out entire societies. I see the latter as being significantly more dangerous.

[Mayabird]

Returning to the original topic:

It seems that despite the well thought out "Let's kill ourselves with polio so we can declare outselves Anti-American" Plan, hope is not all lost.

But I'm staying pessimistic on general principles.

Mass immunisation campaigns that aim to vaccinate 250 million children against polio have been announced following an emergency meeting at the World Health Organisation.

After discussions, representatives from the six remaining polio endemic countries committed their governments to eradicating the virus by the end of this year.

Nigeria's health minister was the first to sign the declaration followed by Afghanistan, India, Egypt, Niger and Pakistan - the remaining polio endemic countries.

The $3bn campaign has already missed its initial target of ridding the world of polio by 2000, and many doctors suspect this could be the last chance to achieve it.

When the Global Polio Eradication Campaign started in 1988, more than 125 countries were affected.

Last year, there were only 700 cases of polio around the world.

But there has been a major setback over the last few months.

Immunisation schemes in Nigeria's northern states stopped last year after some Islamic clerics claimed the vaccine could cause infertility and was unsafe.

Independent scientific tests carried out in South Africa and Nigeria have shown no traces of anti-fertility agents in the vaccine.

But it has led to neighbouring countries - already declared polio-free - being re-infected with the virus.

Extra campaigns

The declaration is being seen as a major push by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to achieve their goal by the end of the year.

Dr Bruce Aylward, the co-ordinator of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the WHO, said the six countries had recognised that the issue required action from the top levels of government.

"I think this declaration is incredibly important because the countries are committed," he told the BBC.

"They were committed before, but there is a renewed commitment and a different scale of commitment now. Polio eradication is no longer a health issue. It is a political issue."

Unless every child at risk is immunised the effort will have been wasted and the virus will spread quickly throughout the world.

Additional campaigns in countries reinfected by polio from Nigeria are estimated to cost more than $10m so far.

Once this containment is achieved, the next step will be to rid the six remaining endemic countries of polio by the end of this year altogether.

With increased political support and a detailed immunisation programme planned by the remaining endemic countries, there is a feeling of hope here that the world may soon be polio free.

Source link here

[Admiral Valdemar]

While I agree that many strains of the flu are inordinately dangerous, I would disagree that they are more so than the HIV virus. When you look at the infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa (and, by extension, the mortality rates), you see a socio-economic nightmare developing. That whole region will soon have LARGE populations of very young children and elderly, and virtually NO working-age people. No society has ever had to exist with similar problems in recorded history, and no one's really sure how it can be dealt with. Influenza kills lots of people when there's a really bad strain going around. HIV has the potential of wiping out entire societies. I see the latter as being significantly more dangerous.

While that is the case in Africa and may one be in the First World, there is more being done to combat it.

It's not so much the fact that Influenza is, for all intents and purposes, the perfect parasite, it's the principle that the gov't sees the unlikely chance of bioterrorism as being more worthy of funding than research into true threats.