No stopping bird flu, studies conclude

Associated Press

Washington — If pandemic influenza hits in the next year or so, the few weapons the United States has to keep it from spreading will do little, a new computer model shows.

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 U.S. government acts fast enough and has enough anti-viral medicine for preventive dosings — which the United States does not — that could drop to about 28 per cent 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.”

So far this year, H5N1 bird flu — which is not yet pandemic because it doesn't move easily between humans — has infected 204 people and killed 113, according to the World Health Organization. Most of the human cases and deaths have been in Asia, but birds with the disease have been found in Europe.

Dr. 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.

Measures such as closing schools to halt breeding grounds and the use of the anti-viral Tamiflu could reduce the disease's toll, Dr. Ferguson said. But efforts to stop flu from entering American borders — usually on planes with sick passengers — won't work, he said, adding that at most they can buy a couple of weeks' delay before the disease sets in.

If a country gets enough Tamiflu for half its population, it could then act aggressively in dosing families of flu-struck patients and that could cut the flu-attack rate by 75 per cent, Dr. Ferguson said.

But even Dr. Germann, who conducted the more optimistic study, said no one knows which computer model is closer to reality.

“It would have to be a very weak pandemic strain for us to be able to stop it right now,” Dr. Germann said this week. “Most likely we wouldn't be completely prepared.”

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.

"I suspect we're going to see further spread of H5N1 into other countries," he said, referring to the deadly and virulent strain of the virus.

"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."

Yeah, we're a bit sydlexic

Fools, don't they know the sky is falling?

Poultry are more important carriers of the virus, and H5N1 avian influenza has probably been circulating, unseen and steadily, for years in Southeast Asian flocks, the experts in the Netherlands and Sweden said.

We disagree, if we can't eat them what good are they anyway, noisy polluters.

WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - The World Bank approved a $34.4 million loan on Monday to help Turkey combat avian flu in birds and humans, the bank said in a statement.

So, 4 deaths and they get a 34 million loan, that's about.... a lot per victim. Wonder what the world bank spends on real killers?

ABC will launch one of the first sweeps efforts on Tuesday, May 9. The thrillingly titled thriller Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America will examine what would happen if a major outbreak were to hit America.

Although experts have proven that this would be extremely unlikely, when has logic and common sense ever stood in the way of good TV? Nip Tuck’s Joely Richardson will play a beautiful epidemiologist who travels to China to study an avian flu outbreak that has mutated into a form that can easily infect humans. Eek!

Guaranteed to make hypochondriacs of us all, Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America may be worth a look.