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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Jan-05
Bird flu is causing panic in Asia -- as well as in Geneva and Atlanta

Web Log - January, 2005

Bird flu is causing panic in Asia -- as well as in Geneva and Atlanta

Bird flu is spreading across Vietnam, forcing the culling (killing) of thousands of birds, severely harming the Vietnamese economy, and raising widespread fears of a possible human bird flu epidemic.

Under the direction of the World Health Organization (WHO), hundreds of thousands of birds have been culled in the last year. Last March, when Vietnam announced that the bird flu had been completely eradicated, it had been hoped that further culling wouldn't be necessary. But it turns out that the virus is capable of living dormant in ducks through the summer, and then start spreading again when it turns cold in the fall. So the virus has reappeared in Vietnam, Thailand and China, and culling began again last month.

This is having a devastating effect on the Vietnamese economy. Chicken production is big business in Southeast Asia, and culling chickens has cost a lot of money. Small peasant farmers, who have only a few birds as their main source of income, have had to cull them all.

These huge sacrifices are all being motivated by a very real fear. The World Health Organization in Geneva and the National Institutes of Health in Atlanta are expressing concerns greater than for SARS or any other recent world health issue.

The bird flu is spreading wildly among chickens and ducks. It's also spread to a few humans -- almost 40 people have died from it in the last year.

However, the people who have gotten the flu have caught it by rubbing against an infected bird. If the flu mutates so that it can be spread from human to human, then there'll be a major worldwide pandemic.

How many people will die? The following figures tell the story. The last major flu pandemic was the Spanish flu in 1918-19. Most people in the world became infected, and about 3-5% of those infected died, for a total of about 40 million deaths.

So far, among those who have been infected by bird flu, the death rate has been around 75%. If the flu mutates, then that percentage may drop, but even a death rate of 10% could mean hundreds of millions of deaths.

What does it take to cause a mutation? No one is sure, and no one is even sure that the bird flu is capable of mutating into a form that can be transmitted from human to human. However, some scientists believe that it could happen very easily if the some person become simultaneously infected with the bird flu and an ordinary human flu at the same time; the two flu viruses could recombine within a single human body into a new, mutated variant.

When will it happen? It could happen any year, and it could even being next month. That's because it's already spreading quickly, and next month's Lunar New Year celebration will vastly increase the marketing, transportation and consumption of poultry for a brief period.

According to one official from WHO, speaking to the BBC World Service, the disease is spreading so fast among birds that there's a good chance that we'll know the answer in 2005. "It could turn to the left, and create a pandemic; or it could turn to the right, and prove to us that it can't mutate." Either way, we should know the answer soon. (18-Jan-05) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Jan-05 Bird flu is causing panic in Asia -- as well as in Geneva and Atlanta

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Jan-05
Bird flu is causing panic in Asia -- as well as in Geneva and Atlanta