WP: World Not Set To Deal With Flu

[Pirate Smile]

World Not Set To Deal With Flu
Strategy for Pandemic Needed, Experts Say

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 31, 2005; Page A01

Public health officials preparing to battle what they view as an inevitable influenza pandemic say the world lacks the medical weapons to fight the disease effectively, and will not have them anytime soon.

Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades -- the H5N1 "bird flu" in Asia -- is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost by the month, global health officials say.


An Indonesian farmer prepares to burn dead chickens suspected of having bird flu. The virus has been reported in about 100 people in Asia since 2003. (By Rizky Noval -- Associated Press)

If the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions. If the vaccine proved effective and every flu vaccine factory in the world started making it, the first doses would not be ready for four months. By then, the pathogen would probably be on every continent.

Theoretically, antiviral drugs could slow an outbreak and buy time. The problem is only one licensed drug, oseltamivir, appears to work against bird flu. At the moment, there is not enough stockpiled for widespread use. Nor is there a plan to deploy the small amount that exists in ways that would have the best chance of slowing the disease.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/30/AR2005073001429.html

[wli]

1. neocon strategy: privatize vaccinations, "pay up or die"

Doubtless, Cheney's sitting on a stockpile of Cipro; how else would his colon get so enlarged?

[rawtribe]

2. Feed your immune system

Raw fruits and vegetables. Limit meat and dairy.

Could work?

[oscar111]

4. RAW? NO NO. bacteria,etc-- in, on them will get you ill.

farmhands in some places, birds, all put germs on/in those fruit and veggies.
farmhands defecate in fields some places.

better cook them. Small loss of nutrients compared to the risk of germs from uncooked.

my theory is we evolved to like hot food, because those who liked it avoided germs in food, lived to reproduce.
Any experts second this theory?

[Conservativesux]

3. World not set to deal with Peak Oil disaster either......

its all the same.

Flu or oil, millions of people are going to die because almost no one is ready for anything like these impending events.

[mom cat]

7. Or global warming, or environmental degradation, or over population,

or growing fascism, or.........

[Conservativesux]

8. Indeed so. Its a shame that we didnt learn from the past once again.

[oscar111]

5. Nationalize Osel. factories, ignore patent

the two part solution to all this.

use Search feature for my thread about a week ago in Health forum giving some detail on such a pathway. OR Go to Health forum and look for it visually.

Osel. is tamiflu and perhaps also amantadine.

[oscar111]

6. RECOMMEND FOR GREATEST PAGE button at bott of orig post

thanks amigos