We've complained enough about the unwise words of M. Vallat, Director General of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE; see here and here). Nor was it the first time (May 2007).
What I didn't say was that whenever I hear an official like M. Vallat assure us that everything is stable, a chill runs down my spine. Invariably shortly afterward things start to come apart. These folks have an uncanny sense of timing. So now we have bird flu in Iran again for the first time since 2006 and the virus is marching relentlessly across India (things have gotten messy with culling teams attacked by locals; see crof's blog for excellent coverage). India. You know, the place that declared itself bird flu free in August 2006:
According to the letter of OIE regulations [no notifications for 3 months after culling begins], then, it would appear India has a claim to be considered avian-flu free. Realistically, however, it is not very likely. The virus is probably lurking somewhere in the vast Indian subcontinent and is certainly in the region. The unavoidable difficulty with criteria like the OIE's is that a single detection will begin a new round of culling and start the clock again. Thus there is an irresistible bias against notification and detection. (Effect Measure, August 14, 2006)
So the clock is running again. The big question is time running out? India was obviously not prepared for this outbreak. But not to worry. We are told there are no human cases: "Not even a single case has been reported so far," according to the Health Minister.
Oh, oh.
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I keep speculating two points:
1. The countries that heavily rely on chicken as meat source are prone to BF; Muslim countries (no pork) - Indonesia, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Egypt; India (no pork, no beef), Israel (not pork).
2. An accelerating breaking down of chicken immunity in poultry.
My further speculation in future solution directed at selective pressure on evolutionary immunity for poultry provided that we still consider the chicken as part of our meal plan.
Tan06-reported in from the NL today Revere with some 10 stories regarding "respiratory" cases being admitted in India. These cases number in the tens and they are "pneumonia". They are febrile and above 101 for the better part, less than 40 mostly and there are no antivirals, no beds.
Suppressed news? Can you imagine what would happen if the worlds second most populated country got BF in a high path way? It staggers the imagination and it would be in the UK in a week and here in two via JFK, BOS or YYZ direct.
" While cases of bird flu have been reported at primary health centres in Margram, it has no Tamiflu medicine to offer thanks to the district administration which is yet to pass a budget to pay the surveyors. These surveyors who have been working since 16 January have not been paid their daily wages following which they refused to work today. About 120 people visit the outward patient department (OPD) at the Margram primary health centre, of which about 80 are cases of fever. At Bosua block primary health centre, 220 people visit OPD daily, of which 170 are cases of fever. However, both of these government-run health centres (are) located at Rampurhat block II under Margram."
"With mounting public resistance to culling operations in the district, the teams engaged in the job have demanded police protection. The district administration said they were trying to arrange for some security, although no police escorts accompanied the culling teams today. Culling operations were also stalled in Nalhati yesterday, where villagers had attacked Health and Animal Resources Development (ARD) culling team while protesting against low compensation.
The Birbhum police arrested 12 people in this connection today. Pareshnath Chatterjee, Narayan Shaw, Mrinal Kanti Das and Sunil Banerjee, the four ARD staff, who were attacked in Surapahari village in Nalhati, had sustained injures and are admitted at the Bolpur sub-Divisional Hospital. The ARD employees have asked for police protection during culling. But we do not have such huge number of policemen to provide protection for each culling team, said Monosa Hansda, Zilla Sabhadhipati of Birbhum. Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare P Lakshmi today visited Bolpur Sub-Divisional Hospital and inspected the isolation ward meant for suspected cases of human bird flu. This is a bhoot bungalow out here. This cannot be an isolation ward. There are no equipment, no doctors. The Left Front government, which has been ruling Bengal for over 30 years now, claim to be pro-poor. But how can people be treated here? There is no infrastructure here, said Lakshmi, while speaking to mediapersons in Bolpur."
There are literally dozens more stories but you get the drift. I am like you in the respect that when a public official says dont worry, dont panic, its nothing....I lock and load.
Obviously the outbreaks in India and neighboring Bangladesh will burn on or burn out, regardless of the feebly attempts to stop the spread. So we got a testcase here. If the virus cannot find the jackpot under these very favorable circumstances - sick poultry eaten on a grand scale, dumped in ponds and waterways, kicked and/or plucked by children, smuggled out, sold all over the place, and in addition presumably a fair amount of seasonal flu cases around - then it's obvious that a rather complicated set of mutations is required to do so. If it sizzles out with no more than a couple of human cases, as seems to be the case in Egypt, then I can't help wondering what the virus eventually needs to go h2h, and if it can get it at all.
Randy: The questions, as always, is whether these suspect cases are the usual ones that are always of concern when there is flu in poultry but aren't BF (remember my previous posts on this topic; most will not be even if there are moderate sized clusters around and to date they haven't been anything) or whether there is bad stuff hidden in this noise. So these reports don't mean anything special because as usual they are not informative of what might or might not be happening.
christian: I'm not so optimistic. The virus has found a pretty good host and isn't under any pressure to find another one. So the place to look might be where there aren't a lot of birds infected. Who knows? We can all speculate, I guess.
I just read on the web, a possible bad new : "Bengal bird flu spreads to humans ?" (The Times of India)
India may record its first human bird flu cases if five persons in West Bengal, under observation for displaying "clinical symptoms" associated with the infection after handling backyard poultry, are confirmed to be afflicted with the disease..... The next 24 hours will be a nervous wait for officials monitoring the outbreak as final reports are expected on Tuesday...... We only have to wait, until tomorrow,and then, it's an other story.... MSFV
There are already two suspicious deaths of young children, and the authorities are running tests to see if H5N1 was the culprit. There is also an apparent increase in respiratory illnesses in the affected areas, which may, but need not be due to the regular flu season - all this does not bode well.
Meanwhile back in Indonesia they have confirmed the 120th death from bird flu from the Jakarta satellite city of Tangerang, he was 30 years old.
Five people have been admitted in India hospitals with "bird flu symptoms", they are running tests.
very scary if it crosses the animal-human species barrier.
Melatonin.
It already has, 100's of times...and when you think about it...that is the point.
Efficient transmissibility is not the biggest hurdle.
Poor little boy.
Having thrown in your lot with the alarmists, you find you are now alarmed by health officials saying the risk of an avian flu pandemic was always overblown. Even David Nabarro is being quoted in articles with titles like: "UN: Avian Flu Not as Serious as First Feared."
Meanwhile, there's that sticky little point about the decline in worldwide cases. Your hero Robert Webster, the grand old man of the alarmists, in November 2006 said the annual increases since 2002 were a portent of doom. Yet last year they plummeted 24 percent from 2006 and even fell below 2005 levels. So far this year there's been a grand total of one identified infection, even though January is usually one of the worst months. If it's doom when cases go up, what does it mean when they decline?
It means your pomposity is in direct inverse relation to your IQ. If you had a good reputation, it would soon be ruined. Fortunately, you have no such worries.
Mikey: You have nothing better to do than read this blog? Wow. I guess you are still in the pay of the corporations, not that you'd disclose it. You didn't last time. That's why they canned you as a columnist, as I recall. Anyway, check in tomorrow morning for my take the science of it, although that never interested you very much. But since they're paying you, you can probably swallow hard, grit your teeth and read it.
Michael Fumento is dead right. When it comes to actual facts, the alarmists are the most selective group I've ever seen. Anything that refutes their position is either completely ignored or viciously attacked.
Great job Mike and keep up the good work!
Mr. Fumento, I don't know of a single epidemiologist who gets to choose the titles placed in the papers regarding his interviews; your use of newspaper titles in this arena is meaningless. And I don't see a single epidemiologist who is saying, "Aw, shucks, folks, false alarm. Shut this down and go home." Look instead at the reality of what is happening in India, as an example: millions of birds destined to be killed, and apparently dozens of poultry-handling people coming down with symptoms which could very likely be AI.
Re your comment abour "the decline of worldwide cases". No epidemiologist--human or veterinary-- worth his salt would sit back in the middle of a poultry epidemic like the one going through India and say, "Don't sweat it--we have fewer cases", especially in view of the horrific CFR rates in both people and chickens. Stand back and look at the bigger picture--this disease is still showing us what it can do. Part of appropriate risk assessment is to stand back and look at the overall view and the numbers--not daily changes, but overall trends over extended periods-- and not at newspaper titles written by well-meaning, but non-scientific, reporters.
Frankly, my bigger concern with the media is that they have picked up on titles like the one mentioned, and have used them as a reason to tell the public that the danger is passed. I don't think we'll see a headline like that anywhere in Asia right now.AnnieRN