Here is an excerpt from a discussion on a Forum I moderate, see
http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/72,2.html?f=29887&w=37532257&a=37571024&wv.x=2
for the whole thread, which contains one or two bits of hopefully palatable
writing on the matter. I thought it might interest some people in this group
who are welcome to comment either here, there or both:
> Your analysis of the situation is interesting David. Although comparing it
> to
> Belarus is taking it far.
> I can't say I am worried about bird-flu.
> I think it's all about the pharmecuticals to be honest. After all, there
> hasn't
>
> been an epidemic or thousands dying from bird flu, apart from those few
> cases
> in Asia.
> The UK is most probably on high alert after what they had to put up with
> during 'foot and mouth'.
>
It was the alertness and openness of our Government which kept the F&M under
containment. Back then, it looked like an overreaction. When it all died
down people moaned about the cost in burned cattle. The same with Creuzfeld
Jakobs Disease or Mad Cow Disease. But now we still have a beef industry,
and who knows what would have happened if we had not taken serious action.
The worst enemy is complacency.
We know that the most serious illnesses ever to affect the human race are
owing to micro-organisms which first affected animals and then crossed over
to human beings. There are probably very few infectious diseases, as opposed
to congenital ones, which evolved only in humans with no other animals
affected.
Whether you talk about polio, malaria, ebola, AIDS, Spanish Flu, filariasis,
Bubonic Plague, or a bunch of other major bummers from Mankind's
epidemiological casebook, the common denominator is that some animal is
involved in it somewhere along the line.
Some people smugly say, ah, don't worry about it. But these people are those
who have taken some bizarre Pascal's wager in reverse - they know that if
there is no major plague now, they will be lauded for having told everyone
not to lose sleep over it and will preen themselves for their lack of
over-reaction, whereas if there is a major plague and many people end up
dead, then people will have more things on their mind than remembering who
told them not to panic ahead of time. And the laissez-faire commentators are
just gonna be happy to be alive anyway, if 20 million fall, as with Spanish
flu.
That's why the commentators are prone to be laid-back, and not because it is
necessarily the appropriate reaction.
You talk about pharmaceuticals, but in fact there were no stockpiles of
Tamiflu to need to shift. Roche is working overtime to produce them. The
Chinese have a better inoculation than anyone else has, since they were
isolating the virus earlier than others and they also have more excess
production capacity than others, but it takes months to produce a flu
vaccine, even after the strain is isolated, and H5N1 is mutating all the
time. It undergoes a fresh mutation on a world wide scale probably several
times a day, just that most of those mutations are evolutionary dead ends.
It is only a question of time before it succeeds in becoming a virus that
can as easily be passed from mammal to mammal as it is from bird to bird.
The downside risk of overreacting is that we spend money on propping up the
pharma industry. OK, if it turns out to have done nothing more than swell
their profits this time, at least there is a healthy pharma sector with a
bit more experience in rapid reaction than there was before, and I dare say
the human race will benefit one way or the other. The profits they make will
trickle back into the general economy anyway, even if it is via Switzerland.
The downside risk of underreacting is that millions of lives may be lost -
even millions of lives within this country. That includes people we know,
even some people who are writing to these fora, although the fact that
internet-minded people don't get out much could be a secret weapon for them
in the fight against infectious disease.
Uncle Davey
www.usenetposts.com/forum
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