What a bird-flu pandemic might look like...

[phantom power]

For your reading pleasure, a fictionalized "blog" about a hypothetical bird-flu pandemic, in the coming year:

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050523/full/435400a.html

To the right there's also some links to actual news. Progress (or lack of) on vaccines, etc.

[Warpy]

1. Public health is not that much of a priority, I'm afraid

and our gummint, unlike those in many European countries, is simply not stockpiling antiviral drugs. There is no vaccine available, although companies outside the US are working on one. Companies inside the US no longer produce vaccines, the NIH is not funded to produce vaccine, and an offshore supply is likely to be unreliable and extremely expensive.

Basically, offshoring has made the American people completely expendable. The wealthy will get their vaccines and they'll be overdosed with Tamiflu if they get as much as a sniffle. You and I will simply be on our own.

This is an epidemic that will kill only the poor of the world, I'm afraid, and we're prime targets, thanks to the psychopaths who are running the government and major corporations.

[phantom power]

3. yeah, one of those (real) articles was talking about "economics"

Drug companies don't want to produce vaccines because they don't make nearly as much money as important stuff like viagra.

And, of course, our fearless leaders would never want to increase our taxes, to pay the drug companies for developing them.

It sounds like vaccine will be in short supply, even for the countries that make it. I'm not holding my breath that we'll get much from anybody else.

All we can hope for is that it does a "slow-burn" long enough for vaccine supplies to build up. I figure the pandemic danger window is about a year. If it takes much longer, there will be a vaccine. Unless the vaccine researchers have a run of bad luck.

Oy vey. Invisible Hand, my ass.

[agates]

2. Thanks for the link

Well worth reading. Scary stuff -- we're not ready.

[Karmakaze]

4. Yes... Lets get people scared of FICTION cause the facts are ignored

I mean HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people die EACH YEAR from the common Human Flu strains - but let's not worry about those though, because some POSSIBLE future pandemic is far more scary!

[phantom power]

5. Good point. But this is a real virus. And it's more deadly than

the strains of flu we deal with currently. And we aren't well prepared for a pandemic. A 2% fatality is far from a slate-wiper, but it would be millions of people, just in the US. Everybody would know at least one person who died from it.

It's not a foregone conclusion that it will happen. I don't mean to cause mass panic, but it doesn't hurt to think about what it might be like, and take a few precautions.

[Karmakaze]

6. More deadly? They said that about SARS and only 800 people died

Higher mortality? Yes, I will give you that, but if it can't infect people as easily and doesn't spread anywhere near as easily and thus result in only a few dozen deaths in a year, how could it be classed as more deadly than the common Human strains of flu that in a SINGLE season infect millions and kill hundreds of thousands?

Propaganda.