Pandemic?

[Runt]

As I left the theatre after seeing the movie “War of the Worlds” this afternoon, H.G. Wells’ ironic description of how the alien invaders were “slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth” floated through my mind. With it came a second, disturbing thought. Will the eventual destruction of humanity also proceed in this manner? Rather than perishing in the flames of our nuclear weapons or some other deadly technology of the future, will we instead be defeated—like the aliens in “War of the Worlds”—by mere germs?

Intro

Scientists have long forecast the appearance of an influenza virus capable of killing unimaginable numbers of people—and avian flu has shown signs of becoming that disease.

The lethal virus, known as H5N1, first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 and since then has been responsible for the deaths of millions of chickens, ducks, and other fowl in Southeast Asia.

According to the 2005 National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine flu report, the “current ongoing epidemic of H5N1 avian influenza in Asia is unprecedented in its scale, in its spread, and in the economic losses it has caused.

Consider this sobering information: the most recent influenza pandemic, of 1968-69, emerged in China, when its population was 790 million; today it is 1.3 billion…. The number of poultry in China in 1968 was 12.3 million; today it is 13 billion. Changes in other Asian countries are similar. Given these developments, as well as the exponential growth in foreign travel over the past 50 years, an influenza pandemic could be more devastating than ever before.

The Threat

The danger now is that the virus may mutate to become easily transmittable among humans and then quickly spread. The death toll could be in the millions around the globe. Experts are alarmed because of the inadequacy of national and international plans to deal with such a pandemic.

If the relentlessly evolving virus becomes capable of human-to-human transmission, develops a power of contagion typical of human influenzas, and maintains its extraordinary virulence, humanity could well face a pandemic unlike any other witnessed.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in a normal flu season 200,000 Americans are hospitalized, 38,000 of whom die from the disease, with an overall mortality rate of .008 percent for those infected. Most of those deaths occur among people older than 65; on average, 98 of every 100,000 seniors with the flu die. Influenza costs the U.S. economy about $12 billion annually in direct medical costs an loss of productivity.

An H5N1 avian influenza that is transmittable from human to human could be even more devastating: assuming a mortality rate of 20 percent and 80 million illnesses, the United States could be looking at 16 million deaths and unimaginable economic costs.

Tracking the Virus

From 1998 to 2001 the virus went through multiple reassortments…and continued to evolve at high speed…

The virus spread to Vietnam and Thailand, where it evolved further, becoming resistant to one of the two classes of antiflu drugs, known as amantadines, or M2-inhabitiors.

The virus apparently now has the ability to survive in chicken feces and the meat of dead animals, despite the lack of blood flow and living cells.

By April 2005, the H5N1 virus had also moved to pigs.

Most strains of influenza are not lethal in lab mice, but z+ is lethal in 100 percent of them

As of May 1, about 109 people were known to have contracted it, and it killed 54 percent

H5N1 In Humans

If such a virus has not circulated in humans before, the entire population will be susceptible.

Scientists first began saving flu virus samples in the early twentieth century. Since that time, an H5N1 influenza has never spread among human beings. According to the World Health Organization (WHO): “No virus of the H5 subtype has probably ever circulated among humans, and certainly not within the lifetime of today’s world population.”

Recent clinical, epidemiological, and laboratory evidence suggests that the impact of a pandemic caused by the current H5N1 strain would be similar to that of the 1918-19 pandemic. More than half of the people killed in that pandemic were 18 to 40 years old.

The medical histories of those who have died from H5N1 influenza are disturbingly similar to accounts of sufferers of the Spanish flu in 1918-19. Otherwise healthy people are completely overcome by the virus, developing all the classic flu symptoms: coughing, headache, muscle pain, nausea, dizziness, diarrhea, high fever, depression, and loss of appetite. But these are just some of the effects. Victims also suffer from pneumonia, encephalitis, meningitis, acute respiratory distress, and internal bleeding and hemorrhaging.

Responding To The Threat

According to test-tube studies, Z+ ought to be vulnerable to the antiflu drug oseltamivir, which the Roche pharmaceuticals company markets in the United States under the brand name Tamiflu. Yet Tamiflu was given to many of those who ultimately succumbed to the virus; it is believed that medical complications induced by the virus, including acute respiratory distress syndrome, may have prevented the drug from helping. It is also difficult to tell whether the drug contributed to the survival of those who took it and lived.

Lacking any better options, the WHO recommended that countries stockpile Tamiflu to the best of their ability. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is doing so, but supplies of the drug are limited and it is hard to manufacture.

What about developing a Z+ vaccine? Unfortunately…the total number of companies willing to produce influenza vaccines has plummeted in recent years, from more than two dozen in 1980 to just a handful in 2004…The slow pace of production means that in the event of an H5N1 flu pandemic millions of people would likely be infected well before vaccines could be distributed.

Even if pharmaceutical companies managed to produce enough effective vaccine in time to save some privileged lives in Europe, North America, Japan, and a few other wealthy nations, more than six billion people in developing countries would go unvaccinated.

On April 1, 2005, President George W. Bush issued an executive order authorizing the use of quarantines inside the United States and permitting the isolation of international visitors suspected of carrying influenza. If one country implements such orders, others will follow suit, bringing legal international travel to a standstill.

So what do you think?

 

[Sunstone]

Historically, disease has probably killed more people than wars.

 

[Druidus]

Probably? It's a fact. The Spanish Flu killed more people than WWI and WWII combined.
No flu will kill us all if society remains as it is. There are too many isolated pockets, like my town, for instance, or several others up here. What about the Amerindians of South America?

Society as most know it could be wiped out, but not all of humanity.

By the way, the ending of that movie (and book) was very unrealistic. How do viruses mutate to invade the bodies of beings not of this world; beings nothing like anything they've seen before, likely with a differing means of genetic coding? Especially in less than a week!

EMPs never last as long as they did in that movie. The required power source would be monumentous!

The aliens themselves were unrealistic as well. Their body type suits that of an arboreal animal type; a tree climber. Yet, there are no trees on Mars!

I know, I know, it's just a movie, but I like it when movies make sense, scientifically.

 

[Quoth The Raven]

Dru, the aliens in the movie are of unknown origin...they're not supposed to be from Mars according to Speilberg, because we've been there now and we know there's no-one there.

As to the topic of the thread, there's always something killing people at a rate of knots. Back in the day, Bubonic Plague had an 80% fatalilty rate. Spanish Flu killed between 40 and 50 million people (though there are upward estimates as high as 100 million)...even people in isolated communities weren't spared as it spread along the rail routes and via the trusty postal service. There were reports of up to 90% of the population of some isolated towns dying, and 60% of the total Eskimo population bought the farm.
Smallpox caused an estimated 300-500 million deaths in the 20th century. In 1967 alone there were 15 million cases and 2 million deaths.
Whooping Cough causes an estimated 300,000 deaths per year.
Tiny things we can't see will kill us all .The tinfoil hats can't save us now.
If you'll excuse me, I'm going now to put on my biohazard suit and sterilise my house.

 

[michel]

Had it not been for the Great fire of London, in 1666, (shame it wasn't a thousand years earlier - wee would have known who to blame for it then!) - the bubonic plague might well have killed off every man woman & child.


The Asian 'flu is a threat - but so is Ebola, Aids, MRSA(infectious disease not virus)........many more

I know that anti-biotics don't work on viruses, but MRSA is rapidly mutating; kere, in England, there is now only one known anti-biotic that this infection has not yet 'mastered'; The reason ? because antibiotics were given by the bucket-load in the fifties and early sixties - also because they have also been introduced into amimal foodstuff.......

 

[jewscout]

the only answer to this problem...

we need to put our brains in robot bodies...

and i will be a beautiful adrian barboughbot

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The black plague nearly wiped out the entire european population. It single handedly is the main reason fudalism was done away with. Heart disease is a big killer today. Its often the little things that remain unseen that are the deadliest.

 

[Fluffy]

If you put anti-biotics into a petri dish full of bacteria, most will die but occasionally some will mutate and develop a resistance, resulting in "super bacteria". Why could the same not happen with humans if a horrible disease suddenly emerged into the population?

Barring that, I thought the solution used in "28 days later" was pretty effective, if ruthless. Just quarantine off the sector (in this case it was the UK, typically, so it was fairly easy).

 

[Runt]

The Spanish Flu killed more people than WWI and WWII combined.

Back in the day, Bubonic Plague had an 80% fatalilty rate

Whooping Cough causes an estimated 300,000 deaths per year.

Ebola, Aids, MRSA(infectious disease not virus)........

Heart disease is a big killer today

Spanish Flu (1918-1919): 10-20 million deaths per year
Heart Disease: 17 million deaths per year
Bubonic Plague (1347-1352): 5 million deaths per year
AIDS: 3.1 million deaths per year
Whooping Cough: 300,000 deaths per year
Ebola (1976-2003): 44 deaths per year
MRSA: ?

(The above statistics were derived from a variety of sources. I screwed up and forgot to make a list of the sites I was visiting, and so you get no citation. However, if you really must see where I got them from, I'll force myself to backtrack. "Ctrl + H" is a wonderful thing.)

Avian Flu could potentially be far more serious than any of these. The “Foreign Affairs” journal stated that in the United States alone 80 millionpeople could be sickened. That is about 27% of our population.

However, China is far more likely to experience a pandemic than the United States, because it is in China that the virus originated, and it is in China that millions of poultry have been carrying the disease. If we assume that in the case of a pandemic the total Chinese population will experience the same percentage of illnesses as the American population, we are looking at 351 million cases of the avian flu in China alone. And it would probably be more than that.

However, in today’s world people move about from country to country far more than in times past. In the event of a pandemic, the likelihood of the virus sweeping across the globe is pretty high. As Druidus suggested, truly isolated populations would probably be able to avoid infection… but how many populations are truly isolated today?

In the worse case scenario, 27% of the world population might be sickened. That is 1.7 billion people, although that number could vary because of the potential higher rate of infection in China, the potential lower rate of infection in more isolated areas, the potential availability of vaccinations, and the potential quarantine of the United States and other nations.

Recall now that thus far, the virus has proved to have a mortality rate of about 50%, but the “Foreign Affairs” journal suggested that the mortality rate might be as low as 20% in the case of a pandemic. That means that should a pandemic occur, between and 348 and 850 million people around the world could die.