Do you think that the avian flu will kill 50 million people?
Avian flu and pandemics
If you need any convincing that humans are not "above" nature, then the passing of disease between animals and humans with the resultant illnesses, deaths, and economic repercussions should do the trick. There are many examples of animal diseases that are believed to be linked to diseases of humans, including Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Chimpanzee simian (monkey) immunodeficiency virus
(SIV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (the precursor to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)), and West Nile which is transmitted from birds to people by mosquitoes.
For an understanding of how diseases have spread in the past, see "The Arrow of Disease" by Jared Diamond, published in Discover (October 1992 vol. 13 Number 10 pp. 64-73). Since then, jet travel has made the spread of disease much faster and easier, as was seen in the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in recent years.
There have been 3 pandemics in the past 100 years:
- 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed 50m (H1N1, swine flu)
- 1957 Asian flu pandemic killed around 1m (H2N2)
- 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic killed 1m (H3N2)
In comparison:
- 2003 SARS killed 774
- 2004-5 Avian flu (H5N1) has killed 51 so far
The World Health Organization (WHO) fears that bird flu (H5N1) could be far more deadly than SARS, perhaps killing as many as 50 million people, infecting up to 30% of the human population. It kills up to a third of those it infects, compared to 15% for SARS, and is able to infect more hosts - for example birds (including ducks), cats, pigs and tigers. The WHO also believes that we are near to the next pandemic. In fact, last November, the World Health Organization was so concerned about the possibility of a flu pandemic like
the "Spanish flu" which killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people between 1918 and 1919 that it called for an emergency summit. The WHO has produced factsheets on Influenza and Avian Influenza. It also issues statements.
These diseases do not only cause death and grief and loss of earnings. They can change our economies and ways of life for good, as the stories on AIDS in South Africa and funerals in Angola mentioned below demonstrate. SARS may have been a warning to us to reconsider how we jet from continent to continent. Perhaps a little forethought could reduce the effects of any pandemic.
Bird Flu Widespread in Mekong Delta
71 percent of ducks and geese sampled in the southern Mekong Delta of Vietnam have tested positive for bird flu. 21% of chickens also had the disease. There are nearly 20 million birds in the region, of which officials recommend that over 10 million be slaughtered. Farmers have been refusing to slaughter their flocks because the government is only offering them compensation of between a quarter and a third of their value at market.
The bird flu has infected humans, killing 36 in Vietnam and 15 elsewhere in the region since late 2003. So far there is no sign that the virus has spread from one human to another, rather than from a bird to a human. If it were to mutate into a virulent version that could easily spread between people, it could create a global pandemic that would kill millions of people.
Vietnam Finds HIV Carrier Infected with Bird Flu
A woman in Vietnam has both the HIV/AIDS virus and bird flu and 2 more people have caught the H5N1 virus recently. Vietnam has seen 41 cases of bird flu since December 2004 (68 since late 2003) with 16 deaths. H5N1 first struck Asia late in 2003. 12 people from Thailand and 3 from Cambodia have also died of the illness. There is said to be no evidence so far that the disease has been spread between humans.
The World Health Organization (WHO) fears that the virus could mutate into a form that is more easily spread between humans, causing a major pandemic with millions of deaths. It has already changed slightly since last year's, becoming less virulent but spreading more easily.
Feds at Loss on How Flu Strain Got to Labs,
U.S. Tracking Dangerous Flu Strain Sent to Labs,
Company Thought Flu Virus Was 'Innocuous'
Federal officials do not understand why more than 4,000 labs around the world were sent test samples of the potentially deadly H2N2 Asian strain of influenza, which did the rounds in 1957 and killed 1 to 4 million people. Such tests samples are used to check that the labs are capable of identifying viruses, but do not usually include types that can harm people. The company that sent out the virus said that it had not realized that this was a dangerous virus; it had inherited it from another company. The virus does not appear to have escaped and infected anybody; all samples are to be destroyed, and the CDC is keeping track of progress. Anyone born since 1968 will not have immunity to this particular virus as it has not been included in vaccines since then.
AIDS to Kill 1 in 5 Southern Africa Farmers
Food production in southern Africa is threatened because 1 in 5 agricultural workers are likely to die of AIDS by 2020 according to researchers speaking at a conference on AIDS and food security in Durban.
...[Message truncated] Sue [sysop in NewsForum and World Issues forum] | 
