Not if but when the flu pandemic strikes

[hedgehog]

Why aren't hospitals being prepared? The federal government should be ensuring that durable goods such as gloves, gowns and masks are already in stock and be prepared to support hospitals with other supplies once a flu pandemic strikes. Instead, health care policies are forcing hospitals to cut costs wherever they can while the federal government cheerily tells us that each area is responsible for making its own preparations. How do you control a pandemic flu when county by county the public health system is underfunded and overworked already?

[valerief]

1. I think they want us to shut up and die. That would fix the

social security problem.

[savemefromdumbya]

2. fake flu pandemic

[BrklynLiberal]

14. I tend to agree with you. This is another " TERRA TERRA TERRA"

[prolesunited]

3. Why are you so convinced it's when and not if?

Remember the Swine Flu?

[hedgehog]

5. Just following the natural history of the influenza virus.

It tends to mutate to a fast spreading new version every 20-25 years and we're about due. That doesn't mean that it has to be a lethal super virus, just that something no one has immunity to is overdue. Generally, these new versions effect the sick and elderly the most. The concern that the new mutation will be based on a strain now effecting birds AND that the last time this happened it was a pretty nasty strain seems to be a worldwide concern, so I don't think it's the Bushies yelling terror! terror! I just wish they were a little more educated about public health.

[Ecumenist]

6. thank you, I just posted that very thing...

[hedgehog]

8. I was there for the Swine flu

I didn't get a shot then, but I get one every year now. Times change, and epidemiology and virology have advanced in the last 30 years. Fact is, Ford wasn't listening to the experts when he warned people about the Swine flu.

[Ecumenist]

33. I was a young girl but I was there for it as well and it was no more

virulent for MOST people who are outside of the normally susceptible groups than other flus have been. In fact, most of the people who got VERY sick were the ones who GOT THE VACCINES. I remember because my mom worked at a hospital and was had to get a shot. She, for the rest of her life said thaths'e never been as sick as she was that year.

[Ecumenist]

4. Hedgehog...

Most, if not all, influenzas are zoonotic meaning that they have a intermediate species that the viruses languish in. If they're not a bird flu, they're a swine flu. I'm not saying that we have nothing to worry about but I would take everything with a lump of salt. These crooks have been using fear at every step of the way since they stole the white house in 2000.

[PublicWrath]

11. maybe even two grains of salt, since a certain person

in the administration seems to be making big bucks over the bird flu issue.

[hedgehog]

13. A lot of good those bucks will do him .

There will be no place to hide from this and 6 months to develop and distribute a vaccine. Tamiflu has been only partially effective in treating known cases so far.

And another thing - why aren't we pushing to develop a faster method of producing vaccines? Right now as far as I know we're still dependent on 1 company that inoculates the virus on chicken eggs. It's going to be fun coming up with 300,000,000 chicken eggs.

[BrklynLiberal]

15. You can't develop the vaccine until the virus mutates to its final form.

[PublicWrath]

18. Yes,

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/avian_faqs/en/index.html

What is the status of vaccine development and production?

Vaccines effective against a pandemic virus are not yet available. Vaccines are produced each year for seasonal influenza but will not protect against pandemic influenza. Although a vaccine against the H5N1 virus is under development in several countries, no vaccine is ready for commercial production and no vaccines are expected to be widely available until several months after the start of a pandemic.

Some clinical trials are now under way to test whether experimental vaccines will be fully protective and to determine whether different formulations can economize on the amount of antigen required, thus boosting production capacity. Because the vaccine needs to closely match the pandemic virus, large-scale commercial production will not start until the new virus has emerged and a pandemic has been declared. Current global production capacity falls far short of the demand expected during a pandemic.

[hedgehog]

36. I'm not talking about developing the vaccine

I'm talking about the fact that the method of vaccine production has not kept pace with advances in biotech. Identifying the virus is one thing that we have down pretty good. the problem is ramping up production to produce enough doses for everyone. Innoculating the virus on fertile chicken eggs is just a step above scratching people in the arm with cow pox pus. We need to be able to produce the vaccine quickly once the virus is identified and the vaccine developed.

[Ecumenist]

30. Yep, exactly. I wouldn't trust these creeps

enough to throw an church. They always have an ulterior motive.. all the more reason to look at this with a jaded eye. I would expect that anything that made this virus more virulent would be as a result of engineering meant to make into a type of "Friendly fire Biowarfare agent" against the people of the the globe.

[dysfunctional press]

7. Breaking- bird flu found in florida trailer park...!!! (it's inevitable)

http://imageshack.us>

[hedgehog]

10. Looks like my front yard!

It only stands to reason that bird flu is always around(if you're a bird). I've had free range chickens for 20 years and they've never been sick. When the flu mutates, I'll be catching it from a human , not one of my chickens. Yet somehow now backyard flocks are a great hazard while hospitals go unprepared. The response just doesn't make sense.

[dysfunctional press]

16. the people who catch this flu have been getting it from birds...

and yes, when it gets to the u.s.- your initial danger is going to be from your flock and the feces, NOT from other people.

that's one of the reasons why they are slaughtering so many flocks of birds in other parts of the world...the other and more obvious reason is to try and protect remaining flocks and hopefully stem the spread....but realisticaly- how can you stop birds from spreading disease to each other...? it's pretty much impossible. it could be a rough summer in the u.s., birdwise.

[Mojorabbit]

9. Most experts think it is a possiblility with this one

This ain't no swine flu.
We have almost no public health infrastructure left in this country. It might not happen but then again it might. With wild birds carrying it expected in just a few weeks in Alaska and then here in the lower states it will be interesting to see the reaction if someone gets infected cause even if it does not go pandemic it will be in the avian population for a long time to come.

If it does go pandemic we are in for a world of hurt cause the op is correct. The hospitals say they cannot afford to stock up and will be the last place one will want to be anyway as health care workers won't want to be working without protection and it will be the best place to catch it. Fingers crossed and I hope it does not happen.

What it is not is a Bush scare tactic though he will fail us completely. This is a world wide concern.

[hedgehog]

12. The real problem isn't flocks of birds.

The real problem is someone getting on a plane with 60 other people for a few hours and exposing everyone. NBC ran a possible scenario Sunday night which pretty much matched what I would expect to see except that I don't expect the economic disruption they predicted. We did go through this is 1919. My grandmother remembered her friends who died. It wasn't the end of the world though. It's just plain stupid to se this coming and to have the federal government telling people "Good Luck with that"

[Mojorabbit]

20. I know this

but the general public does not which is why I have read that they already have a whole PR thing ready for when we get the first case in birds to keep the panic down. I have two chickens and I do wildlife rehab. I avoid doing birds if I can help it but I do get a few in every year even if only to stabilize then turf to the bird rehabbers so I am very aware of what to look out for.

If it follows the pattern we have seen in other countries the poultry industry will tank as soon as the first chickens test positive and the price of beef will skyrocket.

[Mojorabbit]

22. They also have a made for tv movie coming up

that Is supposed to be more realistic and the author who wrote the book on the 1918 flu was one of the advisors I believe. I think the special on Sun lowballed it myself. With no restaurants open, no tourism,limited to no food in supermarkets, etc I think it would be a ton worse than what the special showed.

[uppityperson]

43. mumps outbreak happened this month in USA, traced back to 2 planes

are you and your kids vaccines up to date? for source just google search "mumps" news. Too many to post.

[Mojorabbit]

17. Also Effect Measure Public health blog had a great rant on this

http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/
It's beginning to sink in. The federal government is telling hospitals to get ready in case a pandemic arrives and the hospitals are looking at the bill and saying, "No way."

The U.S. government may be urging local officials and hospitals to get ready for a bird flu pandemic, but top hospital executives said on Tuesday they cannot do everything that is being called for.

"If the federal government doesn't help run this, it really isn't going to go well," Dr. Frank Peacock, who heads emergency preparedness at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, told a conference. (Maggie Fox, Reuters)

Department of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt is doing yeoman's duty traveling to all 50 states, trying to get them to get ready. He is also telling them not to expect much help from the federal government. That's realistic, at this point. But how did we get to this point? You can't tell hospitals to do things they don't have the resources to do. And one reason they don't have those resources is a Republican Congress that has repeatedly slashed funding for essential services and starved the public health sector. After abandoning states and local communities, the message that they are "on their own" is a maddening one, made more so by Leavitt's comment that maybe they should be buying ventilators rather than renovating swimming pools.

"I think it is a good thing for the Secretary to say we have to stockpile ventilators. But I think a lot of us know we don't have the resources to buy another two, three, four hundred ventilators," he said.

snip

So it is a matter of the bottom line. And if you want The Real Bottom Line, here it is:

Peacock said much of the response to a pandemic will involve very basic medical care -- including triage, or sorting out which patients cannot be helped except through heroic measures.

"Those patients are going to get some morphine and get sat in a corner. That is the definition of a disaster -- need exceeds resources," Peacock said.

Then health workers will turn to patients who are more easily helped, and the very sickest may have to be allowed to die as comfortably as possible, he said.

[SaveElmer]

19. There is no more chance of this strain going pandemic...

Than any other...it most certainly is a matter of "if." Not to say preparation is not wise in any case, but there is no scientific evidence to back up those who say this particular strain will go pandemic.

[baby_bear]

23. But what are you suggesting, SaveElmer?

That we ignore the potential or prepare for it?
It seems awfully easy to say there is no evidence that
this will go pandemic.

And when you speak of a pandemic, are you referring to
human health or avian health?

There are ecological and economic results that could come of
this, not hust human health.

And that in itself is something to think about.

b_b

[SaveElmer]

32. We should prepare soberly for future pandemics...

But panicking ourselves into overreacting to this one can do severe harm to other areas of more urgent need. We are spending millions of dollars on short term measures that will be useless unless this particular pandemic occurs. We ought to be spending the money on preventing influenza pandemics in the future. Work is being done on new vaccine technologies that not only will protect us against a particular strain, but against all strains. This work is underfunded and should be accelerated.

The flu is most certainly a pandemic among poultry (not so much wild birds). Largely the result I am afraid of modern use of factory farming. Those systemic problems ought to be solved so this does not become a recurring problem, rather than concentrating all of our effort assuming this strain is the one, a conclusion that has no basis currently.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

21. My advice - Don't sleep with your chickens

and don't eat them raw.

Everyone who has gotten sick has been in very close proximity to the chickens, like living in the same room with them close.

IF it mutates enough to be passed from human to human, then I might start worrying.

[Mojorabbit]

24. This is not true

There have been some troubling cases in China esp where there has been no contact with chickens.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

34. I hadn't heard about those...

gotta link?

[Mojorabbit]

40. Here are a couple

On Tuesday, Xinhua News Agency reported that a 21-year-old man in Central China's Hubei province had been infected with the H5N1 avian flu virus and is now in a critical condition. The man, surnamed Lai, is a migrant worker in Wuhan, capital of Hubei.
He developed fever and was suffering from pneumonia when admitted to hospital on April 1, the Health Ministry said.
Lai brings to 17 the total number of human cases of bird flu reported in China, 11 of whom have died.
Hong Kong University microbiology professor Yuen Kwok-yung said it is possible that the latest mainland victim may have contracted the virus through - what he called- casual contact.
Yuen said it is possible for people to catch the virus just by walking through a wet market near seemingly healthy chickens.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=11&art_id=16929&sid=7570224&con_type=
*No poultry outbreaks were noted in the province where this person became infected and he did die. He was a security guard.* mojo

also
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11020408/from/RL.1/
BEIJING - A Chinese woman infected with bird flu has died, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, and Indonesia treated a chicken seller suspected of contracting the virus.

The victim, a 29-year-old woman surnamed Cao, was the seventh person to die from bird flu in China since November.

The WHO said the woman died on Monday after falling ill with a fever on Jan. 12. It said she worked in a shop selling dry goods and added it had no evidence of exposure to diseased birds, but was investigating.
snip
The death is the second in the Sichuan province this month.

The victims lived in prefectures around 150 km (90 miles) apart. The WHO said it was concerned that no outbreaks of bird flu in poultry had been confirmed in areas where they lived.


There are more but these were two easily found.

[Mojorabbit]

44. One from Dec

QUESTIONS ABOUND FROM NEW CASE

The questions that surround this new case in China might have come from a mystery story. The woman had no known exposure to poultry. Agriculture officials have not been able to detect H5N1 in the poultry found near where she worked or lived. None of her close contacts have developed disease symptoms, three weeks after this patient first took ill December 6.
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2005/Dec/30-292685.html?chanlid=globalissues

It is worrying. China is vaccinating a lot of chickens and there have been complaints of substandard vacs. I have no idea how it will turn out but I suspect they now have a lot of chickens carrying the disease without sx. Then again perhaps it was a cat or something else the people got it from. No one knows.

[dysfunctional press]

25. Bird flu is a Bush/CIA plot to save social security...

it was developed in cooperation with the chi-coms, who have a population problem they'd like to get a handle on...

geez...don't you people know anything...? :silly:

[NNN0LHI]

26. Shouldn't we be preparing for a meteor strike also?

Its not a matter of if but rather a matter of when one of them rascals nails us.

Maybe that is what all the plastic sheeting and duct tape is for? :shrug:

Don

[ConcernedCanuk]

27. "Why aren't hospitals being prepared?" - pretty simple really

.
.
.

Think NOLA and Katrina

sort of kill off the poor people thing

The rich are well insured/medicated

PNACers are ready for major "collateral damage"

doesn't matter to them whether it's Iraqis or the homeless and welfare recipients in the USA

anything for a buck

and power

(sigh)

[BrklynLiberal]

28. I don't know how serious you were, but I know that the neocons and

Bushites are perfectly capable of having those exact plans and executing them without a moment's hesitation.
"Let the poor, the old, the weak and the sickly perish..... If they cannot survive on their own, then they were not meant to survive."

[ConcernedCanuk]

35. I am absolutely serious - and worried -

.
.
.

My nick as ConcernedCanuk was more relative than I could have ever imagined

I chose my nic the same day I saw the first bombs drop on Baghdad - "brave" Americans shooting missiles from a thousand miles away.

on a country that was not at war with anyone

explain that to me can you??

[BrklynLiberal]

38. No explanation is possible.

x(

[pitohui]

29. oh brother not this again

it makes me sick that there are still people on DU who think donald rumsfeld still hasn't got enough money and they've got to help him peddle his tamiflu stocks

stop spreading rumors

stop spreading conspiracy

fear only puts $$$ in the pocket of the people we are fighting

have a little pride in yourself and don't be so easily buffaloed

[rainbow4321]

31. Cuz they will quarantine cities and hospitals will be shit out of luck

as will the people that live there. My city has 250,000 people and only 750 hospital beds (we have 3 hospitals within city limits). Takes just a little mental math to figure out we are screwed. I work at one of those hospitals and know we get crushed with admits from nursing homes as soon as the weather just fluctuates a little..there is no way in hell we will be able to handle any kind of epidemic. We're lucky to get nurses NOW, never mind if half the community is hit w/ a flu.
Most of our nurses live outside the city limits. Think officials are gonna let them come and go across any kind of quarantined boundaries..think the nurses are going to WANT to?

I've noticed whenever there is an article about bird flu/epidemics, there is always a little blurb quote from a federal official buried in the article saying that the LOCAL officials better start making preparations or else bad things will happen. In other words, don't look to the feds to do shit, you all are on your own. They are ALREADY setting the stage to be able to blame local governments for the thousands that will die in the quaratined areas.

[hedgehog]

37. As if quaratining a particular city will do any good.

By the time this is identified, it will already have spread. IMO, the best way to stop the spread would be the simple measure of hand washing. It would be nice if someone would develop and distribute masks capavble of stopping the virus, but that's too easy I guess.

Every flu season is an opportunity to try out methods of stopping the flu, but we can't spend money on that and bomb the hell out of Iraq at the same time.

[noonwitch]

39. If it's really bad, we're all going to die anyways (fake flu fears)

If it's a flu like Captian Trips or something, then, we are all going to die. Otherwise, I plan on being able to fight off any bird flu, like I have the asian flu bugs that come along every year, or the rotovirus I caught from my neices a few years back. If I even catch it-I didn't catch anything major this year, or last-ever since I started taking vitamins, I've had less cold and flu type of illnesses.

The media is just trying to scare us with the bird flu so we won't be paying as close of attention to everything else.

[Mojorabbit]

41. From the who today

U.N. Says Bird Flu Spreading
April 26th, 2006 @ 1:46pm
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

http://www.620ktar.com/?nid=36&sid=137174
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Bird flu has hit 45 countries, killed more than 100 people and seems to be spreading quickly, the U.N. official in charge of tracking the virus said Wednesday.

Dr. David Nabarro said the virus has led to the deaths of some 200 million birds and has impoverished millions of small poultry farmers.

Between 2003 and 2005 the virus was reported in 15 countries. But in the first four months of this year it has moved rapidly to 30 new countries, with major outbreaks in Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, India, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Bukina Faso.
snip
"This is very similar to the virus that caused the influenza pandemic of 1918," Nabarro said. It's not identical but it's similar. ... So therefore, the 1918 virus, which caused this huge pandemic associated with 40 million deaths, seems to have a successor waiting in the wings."
and
Latest computer model not optimistic
A pandemic flu is likely to strike one in three people if nothing is done, according to the results of computer simulation published in Thursday's journal Nature. If the government acts fast enough and has enough antiviral medicine to use as preventive dosings _ which the United States does not _ that could drop to about 28 percent of the population getting sick, the study found.

"Both cases we came up with were very pessimistic," said lead author Neil Ferguson of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. "There is no single magic bullet for stopping pandemic flu."
snip

Ferguson's computer simulation is the second released this month and is more pessimistic than one led by Timothy Germann of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who said the flu could be less infectious and that efforts could slow it a bit.
snip

Bill Hall, spokesman for Department of Health and Human Services, said his agency has 28 million courses of the antiviral (9.3 percent of the U.S. population), but acknowledged that on hand, there's only enough medicine for 5 million people (1.7 percent. The other 23 million courses are on order and should arrive by the end of the year. The plan is to have 81 million courses (27.1 percent) by 2008, he said.

snip
"Twenty-five percent doesn't go very far and we don't have anywhere near that," said study co-author Donald Burke, professor of international health and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health. "If it does occur before we have enough drug and enough vaccine, then the epidemic will have a substantial impact."
http://www.620ktar.com/?nid=36&sid=178773

[Media_Lies_Daily]

42. Don't tell the naysayers...it just upsets them. Additionally, Avian Flu..

...has been around longer than the NeoCons have been in power...that really torques up the naysayers.

Oh...one more thing...the more the current variant of Avian Flu spreads around the globe, the more likely it will become a variant that will easily pass between humans. But, hey...it's easier to blame a naturally happening event on the NeoCons, isn't it?