A dead swan in a Dresden, Germany zoo signals the return of bird flu to that country (AFP). It is not the only locale where the disease is reappearing after a lull. Laos and Thailand have cases in birds and Thailand has just registered its second death in a week, a nine year old girl. Several more cases are hospitalized and over a hundred are on a watch list because of symptoms that might indicate infection (Reuters).
Vietnam is looking on with worry.
Deputy Agriculture Minister Bui Ba Bong said bird flu, which erupted across much of Asia in late 2003, often hit Thailand first and broke out in Vietnam next, the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper reported."This year the situation is similar and it will be hard for Vietnam to escape," Bong was quoted as saying as another senior official fretted about ducks, which can carry the virus without showing symptoms.
Nguyen Dang Vang, head of the Agriculture Ministry's Husbandry Department, said Vietnam's waterfowl stock had doubled to more than eight million since February despite a government ban on waterfowl hatching.
"We are nearly unable to control the waterfowl stock," Vang told the newspaper.
A rice harvest in the Mekong delta means ducks are roaming freely from one field to another to collect spilled grain, raising the risk of spreading bird flu.
Adding to that risk, wild birds believed to carry the H5N1 virus would soon migrate from the north, Vang said. (Reuters)
In other words, the bird flu situation much the same as before, despite news reports the danger is waning. No one knows the actual risk but whatever it is, it either hasn't changed or has increased. Nothing is different than a year ago, or two years ago or three years ago, except that on the plus side a pandemic strain has yet to emerge and on the minus side the virus now happily resides in more places, more ecological niches, more species and has killed more and more humans.
It is possible the failure of a pandemic strain to emerge is a consequence of some biological barrier that will prevent it from ever happening. Of the many things that are possible explanations, that is by far the most optimistic.
The spread of the disease and widening of its host range are not optimistic signs, however. Most of the other explanations are more mundane and amount to saying that whatever is needed hasn't happened yet through luck or insufficient time.
Whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, you are guessing like the rest of us. Meanwhile, it makes sense to spend some money on insurance in the form of a robust public health infrastructure and strong community social networks. Usually insurance has no value if the insured against event doesn't happen. In this case, it pays off handsomely even if a pandemic never happens.
Too bad all insurance doesn't work this way. All the more astonishing we are declining to pay the premiums.
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Thanks for the continued updates on bird flu. Just an edit note: you probably mean "pays off" and not just "off" in the second to the last sentence.
The pot (humankind) has been sitting on a fire (H5N1) since at least 1997; we're watching the bubbles (outbreaks/clusters) come to the surface a little faster each year; a full rolling boil (ie panflu) is getting much more likely each day.
IMHO, it will take a much briefer time frame to go from Stage 3 to 6 than it took to go from 1-3. And we are damn well not prepared.
The human and cat sequences from Indonesia have been released
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08040601/H5N1_Indonesia_Release.html
The Indonesian sequences from Hong Kong have also now been released at Los Alamos (all that was required was the removal of the password protection).
we don't know how long it takes a flu strain to become panflu, as we have not been able to track such progress before. To assume "it has not happened yet, therefore won't happen" totally ignores this point, and therefore invalidates the statement.