Director of OIE tries to recover from comments about bird flu (doesn't make it)

When we complained the other day about World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Director General Bernard Vallat's ill-considered remarks about how stable H5N1 was and that earlier fears were "overblown" we were not alone. Mike Osterholm at CIDRAP issued a similar remonstrance and the latter was publicized by the folks at Avian Flu Trackers on a press release that was picked up by a number of papers. Now DG Vallat is busy trying to extricate his foot from his mouth (or wherever he lodged it):

At an informal meeting with the press on 10/1/08 , the Director General of the OIE, Dr Bernard Vallat presented an overview on current and future activities of the organisation while addressing the need for global animal health strategies to control emerging and re-emerging infectious animal diseases worldwide.

In this context, the issue of highly pathogenic avian influenza and the current situation with H5N1 was raised by some of the reporters.

Dr Vallat said - as he has said in the past - that although the H5N1 virus is extremely virulent, it has shown to be quite stable over the last few years and its epidemiological behaviour remained the same from the beginning of the crisis in 2003. He added that this observed stable behaviour of the H5N1 strain of the virus does not allow ruling out the risk of a mutation into a new dangerous form for humans, thus becoming a potential candidate for an avian influenza pandemic. (OIE, Press statement)

Translation: Yes, I said it, but I was just sitting around bullshitting with some press buddies. And anyway, it wasn't wrong.

Since M. Vallat seems to be using the word "stable" as part of a private language I can't comment on what he means except to say there doesn't seem to be anything particularly stable about this virus. AS far as I'm concerned his clarification only emphasizes he doesn't seem to understand what he is dealing with. This virus has changed in a great many ways, well documented. Most of the changes are of unknown significance. As for its epidemiological behavior remaining the same over years, perhaps if we had good epidemiological data we could say that. We don't. The data are scarce. The only epidemiological fact I feel confident about is that so far there hasn't been a pandemic. But there is a broad range of epidemiological behavior (whatever he means by that) which falls short of pandemic behavior and about which we know little. Has the host range increased? What is the true geographic reach? Has transmissibility changed in any way? Are the modes of transmission changing? Where are the reservoirs? Maybe all of those things have remained the same since 2003. If so, show me the data.

It's true that M. Vallat adds all the usual caveats that there could be a pandemic at any time, that we need to strengthen national veterinary services and infrastructure and collaborate between disciplines. But his statements, which were careless and were probably spiced with more than a touch of arrogance, don't make any of those things easier to accomplish.

Here's a sign for your office, M. Vallat: Engage brain before opening mouth.