Anybody worried about the Bird Flu creeping towards Ireland?

GuanYin

boardy wrote:

I repeatedly used links and references in my argument throughout this thread. How many did you use? Not one.
Just because you are a qualified epidemiologist, it does not imply that you do not have to supply corroborating evidence.

What would you like me to provide?


Have a read of this.

by Dr. Marc Siegel
People are concerned about the possibility of a coming pandemic. The way this information has been communicated in the media and via several of our public health officials carries the message that something major is in the offing. This makes a worst case seem like the only case. In fact, the government has a reason to consider worst-case scenarios as it attempts to protect us, but we need to consider that a massive pandemic may well not be in the offing. As I suggest here specific measures of personal preparation, I, too, must be careful about hidden messages. When I advise a certain kind of preparation, I must consider if I am inadvertently suggesting that something must be about to happen.

I do not think a massive bird flu pandemic that kills many millions of people worldwide is about to happen, for reasons that I will go into throughout this book. The major reason is that, as with mad cow disease, which has killed hundreds of thousands of cows but only a little over a hundred people, we are currently protected by a species barrier.

For bird flu to pass human to human, further changes in its structure have to occur. Influenza viruses change frequently, but this form of H5N1 appears to have been around since the 1950s, and in the eight years that it has infected millions of birds (1997–2005), documented human cases have been rare (less than 150 clinical infections with 70 deaths at the time of this writing). We don't know how many thousands have developed antibodies to this virus and not gotten sick from it, so it may not be as deadly as it seems to be to humans. If it mutates sufficiently to infect us routinely, it may do so in a way that causes it to be far less lethal.

Thats a pretty good summation in my opinion.

Even though I mentioned (on a number of occasions) that I was repeating what was in the public domain, you still directed words/phrases like “ignorant, haven’t a clue, haven’t a notion” towards me. In your latest post you say that I “just enjoy scaremongering”. Where is your proof of this?

The proof is that all your references use phrases like

"could"

"worst case scenario"

"may"

While you use phrases like the following:

boardy wrote:

but scientists believe it is just a matter of time before it learns how to transmit from human to human.

So you are saying that everyone that will get infected with this mutation (when it happens)

Scientists believe no such thing and "when it happens" implies it is a definite.

The whole ‘tone’ of your responses was confrontational and not at all conducive to an open debate where all of us could become more informed (which was the reason why I placed this thread in Humanities to begin with).

If you were open to debate you'd answer my SARS question, but you know the outcome of that so you're "too chicken" (Oh I crack me up) to answer.

My tone is only confrontational in your head. You have implied twice that this is anything more than a "worst case scenario" that is being hyped to sell news papers, just like SARS was, and that is an ignorance of the facts and reality.

IF it jumps to a human-human transmissible form AND shows the same virulence THEN start worrying, until then, a Yellowstone eruption and Meteor impact are actually more likely.

boardy

psi wrote:

Have a read of this.
Thats a pretty good summation in my opinion.

That is actually an interesting read.

psi wrote:

Scientists believe no such thing and "when it happens" implies it is a definite.

Dr. Klaus Stohr is a virologist and head of the World Health Organization's influenza team

"We have in Asia an H5N1 virus which is ready to cause a pandemic," Stohr said.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46653-2004Nov12.html)

psi wrote:

If you were open to debate you'd answer my SARS question, but you know the outcome of that so you're "too chicken" (Oh I crack me up) to answer.

That is actually funny.

GuanYin

boardy wrote:

That is actually an interesting read.

And notably, straight from the scientist.

Dr. Klaus Stohr is a virologist and head of the World Health Organization's influenza team

"We have in Asia an H5N1 virus which is ready to cause a pandemic," Stohr said.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46653-2004Nov12.html)

Unlike this. I'd like to see the full quote in context. Surely you know that journalists often change context by editing?

I'd like to see something from the scientist.

That is actually funny.

Not as funny as how you won't answer the question.

boardy

psi wrote:

And notably, straight from the scientist.



Unlike this. I'd like to see the full quote in context. Surely you know that journalists often change context by editing?

I'd like to see something from the scientist.

Click on the link. It was a direct quote from the scientist at a meeting at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Switzerland. The Washington Post and other news organisations reported it. I am sure the link is sufficient to most readers.

Hopefully, this will direct your focus away from me and towards the source of my information.

GuanYin

boardy wrote:

Click on the link. It was a direct quote from the scientist at a meeting at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Switzerland. The Washington Post and other news organisations reported it. I am sure the link is sufficient to most readers.

Hopefully, this will direct your focus away from me and towards the source of my information.

The link gave that one isolated phrase, I would like to see the context of how he said it. Does taking it from the whole interview/statement change the emphasis?

Why are you avoiding the SARS question?

boardy

SARS is so yesterday.

I am only interested in the Avian Bird Flu (not nematode bird flu).

GuanYin

Actually, just on Klaus Stohr, he has been suggesting the next pandemic is just around the corner since 2004.

Flu pandemics typically have occured every 40 years and w'ere well overdue one, that is to be sure, however, alot has changed in the last 50 years of medicine, especially in terms of health and hygene.

Thats not to say we won't be affected or there won't be a flu pandemic. I'm just saying that H5N1 is unlikely to be it.
Justthe same way as SARS was supposed to be the pandemic and wasn't.

I find it very curious you're unwilling to discuss SARS, I think its pretty much the same scenario in terms of "worry".

boardy

In all honesty, I hope that I do not have to resurrect this thread in a few months time just to say “I told you so”, when the first case of human to human transmission of bird flu is confirmed in Africa or Asia. And if it does mutate, I hope that it will not be a lethal strain.

GuanYin

boardy wrote:

In all honesty, I hope that I do not have to resurrect this thread in a few months time just to say “I told you so”, when the first case of human to human transmission of bird flu is confirmed in Africa or Asia. And if it does mutate, I hope that it will not be a lethal strain.

Me too, but all I'd ask is that you consider the difference between a scenario and a likelihood. H5N1 is a scenario, nothing more.

Its being hyped now, as many diseases have been. I remember when the last ebola case occured in sky news had "the wall of doom" and a ton of experts talking about how devistating it would be in london etc etc. Irish hospitals received calls from people concerned they had it (one womans period was heavier than normal and turned up in an emergency room panicing).

This sort of stuff helps noone and it is irresponsible reporting by the media. At the moment the only worry we have regarding bird flu is from an agricultural point of view. That particular issue, may well be a serious problem for us.

bonkey

boardy wrote:

In all honesty, I hope that I do not have to resurrect this thread in a few months time just to say “I told you so”,

I hope so too, but I doubt you will. I hoped the same with all the people who said the same about all the previous "end of the world as we know it" new threats such as SARS and so forth.

I forget who it was attributed to, but a great comment I heard recently was that economists have successfully predicted 11 of the last 3 recessions.

With killer-disease threats, we're batting a somewhat more outrageous figure, where we've predicted god-knows-how-many-at-this-point of the last 0.

I haven't seen anyone put anything like a percentage chance on this happening that they can defend with credibility. Statisticians can tell me what the odds are of dying from a meteor-strike, from lightning, and/or virtually everything else are.....but can't tell me what the chances of this flu mutating, being lethal, and killing me are. Not even as a ballpark figure, unless they put the probability "somewhere between 0 and 1". They can tell me that if it mutates, and if the mutation is the right one, then the odds are X, but...well...that means nothing given that it still contains two unquantified probabilities.

Worried? Nope.

I still hope you don't get to say "See...I was right", but I rank that kinda alongside hoping that I don't get hit by lightning, don't get killed in an avalanche, that the people telling me the End of the World is Nigh don't get to tell me that they told me so, and so on.

esskay

I have travelled through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand in the last three months and in the rural parts there are chickens everywhere, running around loose everywhere we went. Even in some restaurants & shops there were chickens running around. The ONLY people who looked remotely worried were the westerners. Like I said in an earlier post, there are 83 million people in vietnam and 40-50 people died, so the odds of someone catching the flu are remote unless you work with poultry. imho it is just another scaremongering story from the media world meant to put people on edge to make them more receptive of all the marketing junk we are subject to everyday.

The media is not a service but a group of corporations selling your attention to people with products to sell. The news is watched by what are considered more informed people and is a valuable market to be targerted, which is why imo it has ceased to be news and is now infotainment.

The more you watch, the less you know!

boardy

esskay wrote:

The media is not a service but a group of corporations selling your attention to people with products to sell. The news is watched by what are considered more informed people and is a valuable market to be targerted, which is why imo it has ceased to be news and is now infotainment.

The more you watch, the less you know!

Very true. But it is not helped when you hear scientists like Dr. Klaus Stohr coming out with the doomsday scenario. What makes it worse is that he is the head of the World Health Organization's influenza team, so as a layperson you are inclined to at least ‘listen’ to what he has to say and try no to think of ulterior motives for his comments.

And even if we have “two unquantified probabilities” in the mutation equation, wouldn’t it be dereliction for us not to prepare for an eventuality? Of course this preparedness would be preferred without the hype.

GuanYin

bonkey wrote:

I haven't seen anyone put anything like a percentage chance on this happening that they can defend with credibility. Statisticians can tell me what the odds are of dying from a meteor-strike, from lightning, and/or virtually everything else are.....but can't tell me what the chances of this flu mutating, being lethal, and killing me are. Not even as a ballpark figure, unless they put the probability "somewhere between 0 and 1". They can tell me that if it mutates, and if the mutation is the right one, then the odds are X, but...well...that means nothing given that it still contains two unquantified probabilities.

In fairness to them, its a lot more difficult a thing to predict. There are far far far far far far far more variables when it comes to predicting an outbreak than there are predicting almost any other natural disaster.

Everything from the genetics of the index patient to the route they take to work that day. On top of that you have the biology of the pathogen itself, the actual mutation that happens and the list is endless.

It really is "chaos theory" at it finest and maybe most complex. When you think, such refined personal things like "maybe the kids stayed home from work or they didn't" with the first few cases can pretty much determine whether the infection rate is hundreds or millions....

Thats a blood tough thing to try and predict.

Which is why they give "worst case scenarios" which unfortunately are such a good tool for selling newspapers that they are often reported as gospel.

esskay

boardy wrote:

Very true. But it is not helped when you hear scientists like Dr. Klaus Stohr coming out with the doomsday scenario. What makes it worse is that he is the head of the World Health Organization's influenza team, so as a layperson you are inclined to at least ‘listen’ to what he has to say and try no to think of ulterior motives for his comments.

And even if we have “two unquantified probabilities” in the mutation equation, wouldn’t it be dereliction for us not to prepare for an eventuality? Of course this preparedness would be preferred without the hype.

What did Dr Stohr say? What was he asked to prompt the quote used? And in the end if the worst comes to the worst, what can we do to be prepared for an infulenza pandemic? If you were determined not to get normal flu how would you go about avoiding it? Stay inside all the time? Where in ireland do they sell bio-suits

esskay

Correct me if I am wrong, but afaik viruses can swap DNA with each other and this is how mutations occurr. So for a human-human mutation to occurr the Bird Flu virus would have to "meet" another virus in a human host and swap the relevant DNA to enable human-human transmission. And like psi said

psi wrote:

It really is "chaos theory" at it finest and maybe most complex.

The odds are slim

GuanYin

boardy wrote:

Very true. But it is not helped when you hear scientists like Dr. Klaus Stohr coming out with the doomsday scenario. What makes it worse is that he is the head of the World Health Organization's influenza team, so as a layperson you are inclined to at least ‘listen’ to what he has to say and try no to think of ulterior motives for his comments.

There are maybe a couple of things behind that. Klaus Stohr is a biologist and patron of his field, many scientists fall into the trap of over-emphesising the importance of their work, often because they feel it is an area that is underfunded/under resourced.

I'mnot saying he is lying to get money, truth be told I think all such areas need far more money and funding, but sometimes there are other motives.

That said, his "quote" was given out of context. They took one line of what he said and gave none of the lead up or aftermath to it.

If I scrolled back through this thread and decided to take one or two of your comments totally out of context, I could make it look like you were trying to say anything about this topic.

boardy wrote:

And even if we have “two unquantified probabilities” in the mutation equation, wouldn’t it be dereliction for us not to prepare for an eventuality? Of course this preparedness would be preferred without the hype.

Ultimately we are responsible for our own actions, the people who go panicing without looking for facts are every bit to blame.

I like the irony of your last paragraph, given your stance throughout the thread. You have contributes to the "hype" directly and defended it throughout.

Of course we should prepare for the liklihood of a disease, but not atthe expense fo more pressing and present matters.

boardy

psi wrote:

I like the irony of your last paragraph, given your stance throughout the thread. You have contributes to the "hype" directly and defended it throughout.

I said that preparing for a mutation would be "preferred" without the hype. My stance involved reiterating statements that were issued by WHO and the CDC.

amp

boardy wrote:

I repeatedly used links and references in my argument throughout this thread. How many did you use? Not one.
Just because you are a qualified epidemiologist, it does not imply that you do not have to supply corroborating evidence.

Even though I mentioned (on a number of occasions) that I was repeating what was in the public domain, you still directed words/phrases like “ignorant, haven’t a clue, haven’t a notion” towards me. In your latest post you say that I “just enjoy scaremongering”. Where is your proof of this?

The whole ‘tone’ of your responses was confrontational and not at all conducive to an open debate where all of us could become more informed (which was the reason why I placed this thread in Humanities to begin with).

Banned from Humanities for a week for not complying with a back on topic order.

p.pete

Personally I'm very worried about Bird Flu creeping towards Ireland. I was listening to the news on BBC 5 earlier and they were discussing it and said they don't even have a vacine yet for when this evolves into a human to human form :eek:

GuanYin

p.pete wrote:

Personally I'm very worried about Bird Flu creeping towards Ireland. I was listening to the news on BBC 5 earlier and they were discussing it and said they don't even have a vacine yet for when this evolves into a human to human form :eek:

Ya know, when you told me on MSN you were gonna troll the thread, I thought you'd be more creative.

They could attempt a vaccine from a related strain but they'd have no idea of how effective it would be until after the event.

I'm not saying there is no need, I think the research should be done, I'd disagree with a panic reaction into pumping money and resources into developing a vaccine that may or may not work, when the money could be used elsewhere to better effect.

p.pete

psi wrote:

Ya know, when you told me on MSN you were gonna troll the thread, I thought you'd be more creative.

When I agreed to your request to troll the thread? Shame on you, and you a mod... Nah seriously, psi requested I review the thread impartially because he feared he was a bit harsh on boardy. All seems to be much ado about nothing though

psi wrote:

They could attempt a vaccine from a related strain but they'd have no idea of how effective it would be until after the event.

Yeah, they did mention also that they couldn't actually make the vaccine until after the evolution took place and they could see what form it took. Worrying all the same.

GuanYin

p.pete wrote:

Yeah, they did mention also that they couldn't actually make the vaccine until after the evolution took place and they could see what form it took. Worrying all the same.

Almost every single viral disease known to man has jumped from an animal.

There are more dangerous and deadly ones out there that actually do kill humans and could make it into the population.

I wouldn't see a hypothetical disease as more worrying than those.

p.pete

psi wrote:

Almost every single viral disease known to man has jumped from an animal.

What are examples of exceptions?

psi wrote:

There are more dangerous and deadly ones out there that actually do kill humans and could make it into the population.

I wouldn't see a hypothetical disease as more worrying than those.

You made me read all this to give you an opinion and NOW you tell me it's hypothetical? :mad:

GuanYin

p.pete wrote:

What are examples of exceptions?

Well some viruses have crossed or evolved with other viruses and are significantly different from their ancestors.

You made me read all this to give you an opinion and NOW you tell me it's hypothetical? :mad:

I've always said it is hypothetical, in so far as the virus doesn't currently exist in a human spreading pathogenic form.

p.pete

psi wrote:

Well some viruses have crossed or evolved with other viruses and are significantly different from their ancestors.

Is that an example of a method or an actual example? I only asked out of interest, the obscure could potentially be interesting...

psi wrote:

I've always said it is hypothetical, in so far as the virus doesn't currently exist in a human spreading pathogenic form.

So you're not saying the threat is hypothetical?

GuanYin

p.pete wrote:

So you're not saying the threat is hypothetical?

Well if the virus is only hypothetical, it follows that the threat must be. You can't be threathened directly by something that doesn't exist.

p.pete

Thanks, you've eased my fears

bonkey

psi wrote:

Well if the virus is only hypothetical, it follows that the threat must be. You can't be threathened directly by something that doesn't exist.

I thought threats were the possibility of an undesireable event occurring.

Therefore, surely, a threat is is probability of a hypothetical becoming non-hypothetical becoming reality? If it occurs, the threat is realised.

I would see it more of a situation that we are unable to quantify the true seriousness of the threat, because we have absolutely no way of evaluating the probabilities involved.

jc

Zaph0d

bonkey wrote:

I would see it more of a situation that we are unable to quantify the true seriousness of the threat, because we have absolutely no way of evaluating the probabilities involved.

You could take the annual frequency of pandemic flu occurring (WHO says 3-4 times/century). This would give 3%-4% chance of a pandemic flu in any given year. Does the information we have about H5N1 mean that we are more or less likely to have a pandemic this year than any other year? H5N1 has been around since 1997 so maybe it's not going to mutate to a h2h transmissible form.

The probability of a pandemic is one factor in a risk assessment, others include the mortality rate and the susceptible age groups. Again you could average the mortality rate from previous flu strains.

GuanYin

bonkey wrote:

I thought threats were the possibility of an undesireable event occurring.

Therefore, surely, a threat is is probability of a hypothetical becoming non-hypothetical becoming reality? If it occurs, the threat is realised.

Broadly yes, but can you apply this logic to a specific event.

For instance (analogy time), if the IRA acquired a nuclear device, it would be seen as a nuclear threat. There is the chance of the IRA (or one of the remaining IRA groups) acquiring a nuclear weapon. Its slim/unlikely, but there is a remote chance. But the IRA would never be classed anywhere as a nuclear threat.

Likewise, you can't class bird flu as a threat to humans, because it doesn't currently have the capability to cause a pandemic. *IF* (and its a big big if) it did jump species it would be a threat, but it hasn't and due to the specific nature required for such an event to occur, its far more likely it won't happen than will happen. So can you really call it a threat?

I would see it more of a situation that we are unable to quantify the true seriousness of the threat, because we have absolutely no way of evaluating the probabilities involved.

jc

Well look. There are plenty of animal diseases that could jump species and wreck havoc with humans, they just don't have as much PR. Worst case scenarios are being plotted and really, thats all it is. A scenario.

You could take the annual frequency of pandemic flu occurring (WHO says 3-4 times/century). This would give 3%-4% chance of a pandemic flu in any given year. Does the information we have about H5N1 mean that we are more or less likely to have a pandemic this year than any other year? H5N1 has been around since 1997 so maybe it's not going to mutate to a h2h transmissible form.

The probability of a pandemic is one factor in a risk assessment, others include the mortality rate and the susceptible age groups. Again you could average the mortality rate from previous flu strains.

We're actually long overdue a pandemic if you listen to some "experts" but what all this forgets to take into account is the MASSIVE advances in medicine, medical response and disease control world wide since we lats had a flu pandemic.

By comparison they were cave men back then. For example, mankind successfully wiped out one of the most contagious and devistating viruses it has ever known. No other creature has the ability to do such a thing.

Now, I'm not suggesting we get cocky or not take the threat of disease seriously, but I don't think we should be devoting time and resources to worrying about the next great disease that *might* come along, when there are plenty of terrible diseases doing damage here already.