Top flu expert warns of a swine flu-bird flu mix

[Tab]

Source: Associated Press

MEXICO CITY – Bird flu kills more than 60 percent of its human victims, but doesn't easily pass from person to person. Swine flu can be spread with a sneeze or handshake, but kills only a small fraction of the people it infects.

So what happens if they mix?

This is the scenario that has some scientists worried: The two viruses meet — possibly in Asia, where bird flu is endemic — and combine into a new bug that is both highly contagious and lethal and can spread around the world.

Scientists are unsure how likely this possibility is, but note that the new swine flu strain — a never-before-seen mixture of pig, human and bird viruses — has shown itself to be especially adept at snatching evolutionarily advantageous genetic material from other flu viruses.

"This particular virus seems to have this unique ability to pick up other genes," said leading virologist Dr. Robert Webster, whose team discovered an ancestor of the current flu virus at a North Carolina pig farm in 1998.

...
Malik Peiris, a flu expert at Hong Kong University, said the more immediate worry is that swine flu will mix with regular flu viruses, as flu season begins in the Southern Hemisphere. It is unclear what such a combination would produce.

But he said there are indications that scenario is possible. Peiris noted that the swine flu virus jumped from a farmworker in Canada and infected about 220 pigs. The worker and the pigs recovered, but the incident showed how easily the virus can leap to a different species.
...
"We don't have to put these things together," he added. "This is not chocolate and peanut butter running into each other in the dark hallway."

But there is in fact discussion of putting them together — in a high-security laboratory — to see what a combination would look like, according to Webster. Similar tests have been done at the CDC mixing bird flu and seasonal human flu, resulting in a weak product, he said.
...
Webster said underestimating the swine flu virus would be a huge mistake.

"This H1N1 hasn't been overblown. It's a puppy, it's an infant, and it's growing," he said. "This virus has got the whole human population in the world to breed in — it's just happened. What we have to do is to watch it, and it may become a wimp and disappear, or it may become nasty."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090508/ap_on_he_me/med_swi...

[MercutioATC]

1. There's little we as normal people can do about virus mutation...but we can be prepared.

(this is why others and I have tried to get a "Preparedness Forum" here at DU...with no success, unfortunately)

A lot of people seem to have only two approaches to a problem whose cause is beyond their control...they panic or they ignore it (and laugh at those who take it seriously). I'll propose that both approaches stem from a feeling of helplessness.

There is a third way to handle these situations...stay informed and stay prepared.

You don't have to build a bunker in your back yard or buy thousands of dollars of specialized equipment, but neither do you have to feel helpless. Preparedness isn't building an uncrossable moat, it's giving yourself multiple small layers of protection. As with a Kevlar vest, any one of those layers may fail...but it's the layering that provides the protection.

Something as simple as spending an extra $5 on canned goods to put in the pantry each time you go to the store provides a layer...and there are a multitude of other small things one can do to provide additional layers. The result is that you don't feel as helpless about situations like this because you know you've given yourself a fighting chance.

Statistically speaking, are we going to experience a major pandemic at some point? Yes.

Could the current flu virus mutate and bring on a nasty global pandemic? Yes.

Will it? Who knows? ...but being prepared allows one to follow the situation without fearing it.

[Tab]

3. I learned a similar lesson last winter

Technically it was even before the first day of winter, but here in New England we had an ice storm. Knocked out power here for 5 days. Some places were without power for weeks.

I've lived in New England all my life, though generally more in the snow belt, and we might lose power for a few hours, occasionally a day, but never more. I moved further south and am now in the "sleet and ice belt" and have had more outages here than in my previous 40+ years of living in New England.

I always had flashlights and candles available, and in known places (so you can find them in the pitch dark) but for once I was presented with other challenges.

We always had water coolers here (town water sucks) but now we keep extra 5-gallon jugs just for emergencies because you can't flush a toilet otherwise. One day, not a big deal. Five days or more - major health hazard. A collection of D-batteries (boy, those are hard to find in an emergency). Extra candles. Extra gas for the grill so we can cook. And so on.

I'm not preparing for a pandemic, but presumably the requirements would be similar. A well stocked pantry would hold me if we had to stay in. That's the only thing I don't have to worry about in an outage, but in a pandemic I would. We probably have about two weeks worth of food on hand - nothing I'd like to eat exclusively for two weeks, but we have it.

It doesn't take much to stock up on certain things, you just have to be thinking about it.

[MercutioATC]

4. Exactly my point.

Most preparation, whether for a pandemic or economic collapse or an ice storm, is redundant. I'm not talking about buying Geiger counters in case there's a nuclear war, I'm talking about little things...like a couple of months of food and refilled prescriptions and gas in your car and some basic medical supplies.

...but it's amazing how one's perspective changes when even small preparations have been made. There's no need to panic, and there's no need to laugh it off in the hope that it never happens.

[Mojorabbit]

5. Getting hit with 3 hurricanes in 6 weeks

opened my eyes. I thought I was fairly well prepared but I wasn't. We were without power for a long time in sweltering heat.
I am well stocked now and consider it my responsibility to my family to be so.

[phantom power]

9. I wish local govts and/or the MSM would sponsor "preparedness" reminders...

during the "good times." It would probably go a long way toward avoiding panic buying and gouging during actual emergencies.

[Mojorabbit]

10. Bresser mentioned it during the cdc briefing

yesterday but the media didn't pick up on it,.
"And then, the importance of planning. And planning for now, but also planning for the future. Because as we've been saying, we don't know what the fall will bring. What's been seen with some previous outbreaks is that the virus goes away, because flu season ends during the winter, these viruses transmit much better than other parts of the year.

The virus could go away and come back.

There are all kinds of information sources on what you can do to plan. I would refer you to a website called pandemicflu.gov, that has great information for individual, it has information for businesses, community group, things that you need to be thinking about because as we as a government are thinking about the fall, as we've talked about vaccines and whether that's something that's going to be done, the response to a potential pandemic is not just about vaccines, it's been all of the things we've been talking about over the past two weeks.

During this period of time, between now and at fall is critically important to individual preparedness , the community preparedness and how the impact of this could be on our communities should this virus come back in a severe form. We'll be following it very closely in the southern hemisphere that will give us clues to what we might see in the fall and efforts people take now are empowering, they can give people some control in the event this does come back and can ensure that should this come back in a severe form, we've done all that we could to reduce the impact on the health of our population and people around the world."
http://www.cdc.gov/media/transcripts/2009/t090507.htm

[MercutioATC]

12. They try...and people joke about "duct tape and trash bags"

To be honest, they don't do a very good job of selling preparedness...but they try.

[bertman]

2. Just because a bird flu, does that mean the swine can too?

[katanalori]

6. yes, when pigs fly! n/t

[truedelphi]

15. Gawd you two

That was great. Hope there's a DUZY mention for ya.

[Deja Q]

7. I've heard of "the birds and the bees", but "the birds and the pigs"?!

[MurrayDelph]

8. Where do you think

ham and eggs come from?

[nichomachus]

11. Sounds like every high school dance I ever went to n/t

[FiveGoodMen]

13. No one will ever convince me that those who make these announcements aren't just praying it will

happen.

There's no way to prepare if every germ in the world conspires with every other germ in the world to kill off the human race.

There's no public service in these speculations (even if they turned out to be true).

These guys are so disappointed that SARS and the Bird Flu and West Nile didn't pan out but they keep hoping...

In other words: Fuck this shit! Everyone dies, but we really ought to live first.

[Mojorabbit]

14. I think people who work in public health

want to make a difference and as for Dr Webster...
Here is his bio from wikipedia.
Robert G. Webster holds the Rose Marie Thomas Chair in Virology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He is also director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds, the world's only laboratory designed to study influenza at the animal-human interface. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society of New Zealand, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. In December 2002, he was presented with the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Infectious Diseases Research. <3>

Webster has been awarded membership of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and the honour of fellow of both the Royal Societies of New Zealand and London. Other memberships he enjoys are of the American Society for Microbiology, American Society for Virology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as being a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He also heads the World Health Organisation (WHO) collaborating laboratory on animal influenza.

Work on general influenza

Webster's major discoveries relating to influenza include the likelihood that avians were most likely the culprit in other flu outbreaks. His work is also responsible for the method of human influenza vaccination that is commonly used. Before Webster and his colleagues separated the influenza virus into different particles, the entire influenza virus was injected into a patient as a vaccine - now, only certain parts of the virus are necessary to create the same response, lessening side effects of the vaccine. <2>

****************
There are a lot of things one can do to mitigate a pandemic from the personal level to the top of the heap. You can't stop one from happening but you can help keep it from being worse than it needs to be.

[Papa Boule]

16. Swine flu bird flu monkey pox west nile sars legionnaires anthrax ebola pellagra rickets scurvy!!1!

Enough already. Why don't they give it a rest.

Actually, I think people are latching onto this stuff because of free floating anxiety about the economy and the future and the behavior of their trusted leaders. They need some target to express and vent their fears and emotions. So it doesn't take much to touch off a frenzy the media can then stoke and exploit for high ratings.

To many of us, though, it's really annoying.

[sarcasmo]

17. Super TERRA, TERRA, swine bird flu mix. TAMIFLU, TAMIFLU, run out and buy

your TAMIFLU.