America's North Shore Journal » Entries tagged with "h5n1 virus"
One Quarter of Bird Flu Cases Unexplained
Reuters The H5N1 bird flu virus may sometimes stick to surfaces or get kicked up in fertilizer dust to infect people, according to a World Health Organization report published on Wednesday. The WHO team reviewed all known human cases of avian influenza, which has infected 350 people in 14 countries and killed 217 of them since 2003, and found that 25 percent of cases have no explanation. Most are passed directly from bird to people, they noted in their report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And very rarely one person can infect another — always close relatives via intimate physical contact. … Read entire article »
Bird Flu Deaths By Year
YEAR KILLED TOTAL CASES 2007 49 73 2006 79 115 2005 43 98 2004 32 46 2003 4 4 World Health Organization … Read entire article »
Bird Flu in Europe
Two items from Reuters, France and Germany France confirms H5N1 flu virus in swans PARIS, July 5 (Reuters) – Tests have confirmed that three swans found dead in eastern France were killed by the H5N1 bird flu virus, the French agriculture ministry said on Thursday, France’s first cases of the disease in over a year. The government raised its alert level to “high” as a result, meaning that birds and poultry in mainland France will either have to be locked up or protected by nets to avoid all contact with wild birds, a ministry official said. Pigeon races and other events where birds are gathered will be forbidden. “Michel Barnier, minister of agriculture and fishing, is putting in place the risk-prevention measures corresponding to the shift from the ‘moderate’ level to the ‘high’ level,” the … Read entire article »
Bird Flu in Indonesia
It looks like some accomodations have been made by WHO concerning Indonesia. WHO WHO can now confirm 15 additional cases, including 13 deaths of human infection with H5N1 avian influenza that occurred in Indonesia from the end of January 2007 up to the present and has updated its table of confirmed human cases accordingly. Testing for H5N1 influenza virus infections is not done routinely by many laboratories and among the laboratories that do test for H5N1, experience and levels of diagnostic capacities can vary. (see WHO criteria) WHO had previously required external confirmation of laboratory results from Indonesia, but following a formal on-site assessment of the capacity of national laboratory in Jakarta to diagnose H5 avian influenza viruses, WHO will now accept the results from the national laboratory, in collaboration with the … Read entire article »
Not Just Bird Flu
Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, can be a poopy head at times, but he is very correct in this Reuters article. While many health experts see the H5N1 bird flu virus as a likely cause for an influenza pandemic, another influenza virus could just as likely mutate into a global killer, U.S. health experts said on Tuesday. “You can not accurately predict if and when a given virus will become a pandemic virus,” said Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci said too little is known about exactly how and when a virus will mutate. Focusing too much on one suspect — even a very likely suspect such as H5N1 — may be a mistake. … Read entire article »
Bird flu risk far from over
Here are some snips from the article. Worth a look. The usual doomsayers, Osterholm and Webster, get the big quotes. My take at the end of the piece. IHT “I’ve gotten at least 10 media calls in the last few months asking me to deliver the death sentence for avian flu,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But at any conference, if you get a group of virologists at the bar, after the fourth beer, they let their hair down and admit it — they don’t know what is happening. They’ve been incredibly humbled by this virus.” Robert Webster, a virologist at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, ended a talk with a slide of three animals in a reference … Read entire article »
Avian influenza – situation in Nigeria
Keep in mind that it ain’t bird flu until the WHO says that it’s bird flu. WHO 31 January 2007 The government of Nigeria has announced the death from suspected avian influenza infection in a 22-year-old female from Lagos. She died on 16 January 2007. The mother of the 22-year-old died on 4 January with similar symptoms. Preliminary tests on the samples from the 22-year-old were positive for influenza A/H5. Samples have now been sent to a WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza for confirmation. Results are expected shortly. No samples were taken from the mother. Contacts have been followed up and have shown no symptoms at twice the incubation period for avian influenza infection. Samples have been tested from these contacts as well as from three other suspected cases, including … Read entire article »
Avian Flu Death Rate
Michael Fumento comments in the Examiner. Ersatz experts like Laurie Garrett, a renowned pandemic panic-monger, warn of a horrific mortality rate from the bird flu virus. “Right now in human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects,” she told ABC News’s Primetime last year. St. Jude’s alarmist Webster referred to a similar death rate in his New England Journal of Medicine article, and the media routinely parrot it. By comparison, the devastating 1918-1919 Spanish flu is believed to have killed 2.5 percent to 5 percent of those it infected. The death rate in a typical flu season is less than 1 percent. It’s true that, of bird flu cases recorded by the World Health Organization, 59 percent have died. But this is a mere artifact with an obvious … Read entire article »
Bird Flu – An Analysis
Here is a little analysis of the current bird flu stats, timeframe and geography. 258 cases, 153 deaths. 111 cases in 2006, 43% of the total. 75 fatalities, 49% of the total. Vietnam has the most cases, 93, but two thirds of them occurred in 2005. The mortality rate is 45%. Indonesia has had 50% of the cases in 2006, and 74 in total. Their mortality rate has been 76%. 65% of the cases of bird flu were in just two countries, Vietnam and Indonesia. The death rate varied greatly in these two nation. If we were to try to draw conclusions from such a tiny data set, we would probably be incorrect. However, to date, I can state that this disease in humans has been geographicly isolated. I can also state that the death rate … Read entire article »
Filed under: Analysis, Avian Flu, Influenza, Medicine, Original writing, Pandemic
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