Article

2007-12-15 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

One dead, six infected by bird flu outbreak (Pakistan)

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Posted by phil_b 2007-12-15 07:37|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 My heart ~~pumps purple piss~~ goes out to these people.

Posted by Excalibur 2007-12-15 08:01|| 2007-12-15 08:01|| Front Page Top

#2 Who is going to be the first to claim this is a CIA action - Islamofascists or Democrats/MSM?

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2007-12-15 08:03|| 2007-12-15 08:03|| Front Page Top

#3 The Chinese have problems with the Islamics too. Given the normal origins of these things, I wouldn't put it past them to take the 'long view' and play the game under the table. Let the Yanks take the 'usual' blame.

Posted by Procopius2k 2007-12-15 10:03|| 2007-12-15 10:03|| Front Page Top

#4 The big one will start with "village zero", when in just a day or two, *almost* an entire village gets the disease. The authorities will rush in and will be certain that the disease is contained.

Then, in about two weeks, in some adjacent area, just a few people will get the disease, which will further reassure them that they caught it and contained it.

Then about two weeks later, there will be a few more outlying cases. And THEN, the big one will hit. Hundreds of people in part of a major city will be smitten all at once.

But even then, the disease will seem to have stopped. In truth, at that point, it will have traveled to every corner of that country, and will be crossing international borders, invisibly.

From that point on the pandemic will be in its full growth phase.

Unfortunately, this progression will only be obvious after the fact. While it is happening, it will be pretty much out of the picture, with only two brief glimpses. At the "village zero" point and at the "city zero" point.

Most of the news will follow the extraneous circus surrounding the disease, rather than the disease itself.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-12-15 10:41|| 2007-12-15 10:41|| Front Page Top

#5 The only hope in said scenario would be containment to the continent of origin. Very low odds of that.

Posted by bombay">bombay 2007-12-15 12:46|| 2007-12-15 12:46|| Front Page Top

#6 No hope for containment, as H5N1 is now endemic to Asia, so in a manner of speaking the niche is filled, and the H2H strain will just be supplanting the other versions of H5N1 already in the niche. Or they will mutate in the same direction as the H2H strain.

The element of control, or the lack thereof, comes from a variable only discovered in the last few weeks. Humidity and temperature.

At the optimal temperature of 41F and under 20% humidity (cool and dry), the influenza virus can spread easily on the wind over large areas. As the temperature and humidity increase, its ability to spread by air declines, until at 80% humidity and warm temperatures it cannot propagate *by air alone*.

This means that in warmer and wetter climates, such as much of southern Asia, it is *dependent* on surface contamination transfer. That is, this is how it will spread among the human population in those regions.

But in the temperate regions, it will more commonly be spread by cool and dry air.

This is ironic, in that warm and wet southern Asia is one of the places where there is expectation of poorer personal hygiene resulting in contact contamination. But in the temperate zones there is much greater awareness of contact contamination, but sanitation will be less effective because infection will be spread more by air.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-12-15 13:49|| 2007-12-15 13:49|| Front Page Top

#7 Moose, in the (northern) winter, Pakistan is cool and dry.

The flu virus finds new ecological niches by jumping species. Something it has clearly evolved to do.

The reason I had an 'oh shit' moment is that despite what you may hear, containment is a very effective strategy for eliminating an epidemic, H2H transmitted, infectious disease in its early stages.

Therefore, pandemic H5N1 will almost certainly come out of a place where the government is too weak or inept to implement adequate containment measures, Pakistan's NWF Province for example.

Posted by phil_b 2007-12-15 14:19|| 2007-12-15 14:19|| Front Page Top

#8 i won't bore you with the numbers, but isolating just 50% of early stage cases makes the probability of a pandemic strain developing, vanishingly small.

Once the pandemic strain has developed then it's game over and all the containment in the world won't make any difference.

Nobody tells you this, because it is an unpalatable truth in our multicultural world.

Posted by phil_b 2007-12-15 14:29|| 2007-12-15 14:29|| Front Page Top

#9 You'll love this.

A brother of one of the victims flew to the USA less than 2 weeks ago and was apparently tested by the CDC on arrival.

Meanwhile, U.S. health officials have confirmed they conducted H5N1 testing on a man who had recently visited Pakistan and was complaining of mild respiratory symptoms. The man is believed to be another brother from the affected family. A spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed Saturday that the CDC sent its plane to Albany last Saturday to collect specimens taken from the man, who lives in Nassau County. Tests done in the state lab and confirmed at the CDC in Atlanta showed the man was not infected with the virus.

Posted by phil_b 2007-12-15 15:37|| 2007-12-15 15:37|| Front Page Top

#10 Let me get this straight. The CDC thought a Pakistani man might have the bird flu so they take specimens, but don't take the guy?

Posted by Mike N. 2007-12-15 16:02|| 2007-12-15 16:02|| Front Page Top

#11 Phil_b: Containment is almost not a possibility in southern Asia, so it's hardly at issue. Not only from there lack of development, but because H5N1 has already been declared endemic.

So this issue might be containment of the H5N1 H2H subtype. But even that is mathematically questionable. Here's the logic:

Say there are 18 mutations that have to occur before H5N1 becomes H2H. Until you have all 18, the H5N1 only affects birds, so remains unnoticed, except when a human gets infected from a bird or some farmer's flock dies.

This means that in just the bird population, the majority of mutations may already be at "mutation 14", because that is the best mutation for birds.

But that establishes a new base level of the virus, which only needs four of the right kind of mutations to become H2H. And to mutate with just four variable in the right pattern takes a LOT fewer number of mutations than with 18 variables.

So it would seem that the successful containment of one lineage of 18 mutations, while stopping it, would not stop all the other sub types out there that are at 14, 15, 16 and 17 out of 18. They are not yet H2H, but may unpredictably be about to become H2H, even though they have no connection to the first subtype to achieve the proper 18 mutations.

Now this pattern would almost uniquely apply to influenza, because it has such an extraordinarily high number of "plastic" genes very prone to mutation. For about any other disease, containment would be much easier, and only hidden reservoirs of a particular type would be likely to cause a reemergence.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-12-15 18:37|| 2007-12-15 18:37|| Front Page Top

#12 Moose, the key is that the pandemic strain has to arise just once and that will occur in a chain of H2H transmission, because the final adaptations can only occur in human infections. No one knows how long that chain will be, but I'd guess somewhere between 10 and 20 transmissions.

Break that chain and the human pandemic strain doesn't arise.

Statistically, if the chain is 20 persons long and you isolate 5% of infected people before they infect someone else, then you have halved the probability of the pandemic strain arriving, put another way you have doubled the amount of time it will be before the strain arrives.

Now this is logarothmic relationship. Double the percentage you isolated and you quadrupled the length of time before the strain arrives.

Assuming that without isolation the strain will arrive in exactly one year (statistically speaking), then by Isolating 50% of infected people, it will be a million years before the pandemic arrives.

Posted by phil_b 2007-12-15 19:43|| 2007-12-15 19:43|| Front Page Top

#13 I don't understand that Phil_B, therefore it's gotta be wrong.

Posted by Thomas Woof 2007-12-15 19:52|| http://www.cybernations.net/]">[http://www.cybernations.net/] 2007-12-15 19:52|| Front Page Top

#14 IMO, it ain't serious until Saudis start blocking Pakistani hajjis.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2007-12-15 20:09|| 2007-12-15 20:09|| Front Page Top

#15 Sounds like the Andromeda Strain.

Posted by Deacon Blues">Deacon Blues 2007-12-15 20:25|| 2007-12-15 20:25|| Front Page Top

#16 What Phil is say is that you'll need my bunkers someday. I have a special offer just for those of you that would liek to upgrade the ones you bought from me 8 years ago. Call Now! This Deal Cant Last Forever and It's Going Fast!

*Also, see my website for special deals on the latest generation of power generation.

Posted by Y2K 2007-12-15 20:33|| 2007-12-15 20:33|| Front Page Top

#17 phil_b,

That's where I was heading with things. Probably a semantics things.

I guess by nature we are saying the big one, the pandemic, so at that point it has already risen, so there is no hope for containment.

I was thinking more along the lines of prior to pandemic and a small hope for containment in the scenario. Sort of an 11:59:59 stop.

However, in that regard it is semantics again with the whole, say a regional vs. global pandemic.

Posted by bombay">bombay 2007-12-15 21:26|| 2007-12-15 21:26|| Front Page Top

#18 Phil_b: That a final adaptation can only happen once it is in humans is a new one on me.

Because swine and several other mammals also share human transmissible influenzas, I would assume that even patient zero may not be the first animal to have the fully H2H subtype. That is, H5N1 could adapt to human type influenza in a pig or other animal that carries human influenza types.

The chief epidemologist of Vietnam discovered a swine herd that was acting something like a calculator to create better H5N1 strains. Each pig had about five different strains competing for dominance. Then the best strain of each pig would compete with the best strain from other pigs. Eventually the entire herd would have the best strain of them all.

I gather, physically, the only reason that H5N1 has not yet become readily H2H is because it tends to accumulate in the lower trachea instead of the upper trachea and sinuses, and thus is harder to cough and sneeze out.

However, there also may be a genetic component, in that in one noteworthy case an entire family was wiped out, but not the family spouses, of different blood lines.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-12-15 22:00|| 2007-12-15 22:00|| Front Page Top

23:25 trailing wife
22:53 Frank G
22:50 twobyfour
22:48 3dc
22:19 Frank G
22:16 Old Patriot
22:00 Anonymoose
21:49 Mike N.
21:47 tzsenator
21:36 Cyber Sarge
21:26 bombay
20:33 Y2K
20:31 Seafarious
20:25 Deacon Blues
20:18 Mike N.
20:17 Deacon Blues
20:09 g(r)omgoru
20:06 Frank G
20:02 Oztralian
19:58 Thomas Woof
19:52 Thomas Woof
19:47 Thomas Woof
19:43 phil_b
19:41 Darrell