US Lab accidently sends dangerous flu virus with a test kit to several countries

Sponge Bob · 13-04-2005 12:56PM #1

The US Government has recalled a number of Biological Warfare Kits containing a deadly virus that were sent out by the College of American Pathologists .

The following countries received them :

Bermuda, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and the US.

The Kit contains sample of the Asian Flu variant that died out in 1968 so :

Because the virus has not been in circulation since 1968, people born after that do not have antibodies against it - and current vaccines do not guard against it.

And now the good news

It is hoped the laboratories will have destroyed the vials by the end of the week.

Story

Now if The College of Iranian Pathologists had been equally public spirited their country would be in ruins by now

13-04-2005 02:00PM

Your thread title is extremely misleading-I've changed it for you.
This kit is for research into flu vaccines .
If you were born before 1968, you probably have antibodies for it.

Moriarty · 14-04-2005 01:35AM

.. all just as the CDC gets around to reevaluating it's threat level. Nice timing

We're overdue a global pandemic anyway. I've read that the WHO expect one to emerge from asia within two years, once the asian bird flu virus finds a suitably human-contagious strain. The infection/survivability figures for that are pretty insane - WHO figures are estimating 1 in 4 in the UK (as an example) could become infected, with between 60% and 80% of those infected dying.

11 million people dying in the UK and 600,000-800,000 here in Ireland, replicated on a global scale, is just a whole bunch of fun waiting to happen. Pop goes society as we know it.

bonkey · 14-04-2005 08:06AM

I know I'm wandering ever so slightly off-topic, but...

...can anyone explain to me how we had SARS capture the world attention, Avian Flu cropping up in the news every so often as being potentially something that could species-jump and be the next SARS. Now we have Asian flu...which no-one since 68 is immune to (I wasn't aware you could be immune to something as rapidly mutating as flu, but anyway)...which isn't in the wild but could get there....

...and all the while the Ebola-like Marburg virus has offed somewhere around 200 people in Africa, is apparently highly contagious, neighbouring countries have been put on alert to try and halt the spread.....and if it hadn't cropped up on google-news once or twice, I'd never have heard of it.

I mean...seriously...

- Ebola-like, contagious, and active "in the wild"....not worth worrying the world about.

- Flu-strain, equally contagious, and not active in the wild but capable of being so....headline news.

Is it just me, or is something fscked up there?

jc

Sponge Bob · 14-04-2005 08:20AM

Marburg/Ebola is considered a threat in tropical climates but has never been observed in the wild in temperate ones. They are nasty diseases with high mortality rates but somewhat limited as a threat.

Flu will get everywhere when the 'overdue' pandemic begins ........sometime . Flu is more virulent in other words.

Sars was interesting for a while until they found a way to manage the threat through isolation and hygiene in DEVELOPED countries, had it broken out in Angola/Congo then maybe not. Flu will not be as easily contained or suppressed.

Moriarty · 14-04-2005 02:39PM

What our spongey friend said ^.

Flu is far more easily spread through the population - afaik all strains of ebola/marburg so far require physical contact with somone already infected. Somone with the flu could walk down grafton street and pass it on to another 200 people when they're still largely asymptomatic. People with a bad case of flu are less likely to set off alarms in GP surgerys/hospitals, so it'll take longer for people to realise the seriousness of the problem. It's hard to miss the symptoms of marburg/ebola.

Marburg/ebola is nasty, but it's a fairly primitive virus in the grand scheme of things. An outbreak could probably be identified fairly quickly and contained. Flu on the other hand is far more likely to actually be the cause of a global pandemic, and the strains we're talking about have mortality rates similar to marburg/ebola anyway.

Sparks · 14-04-2005 02:59PM

Of course, the totally-insensitive-to-human-suffering answer is that ebola type haemmoragic diseases are too efficient to spread very far. They kill their host off so fast that he or she rarely gets to pass it on, compared to say, influenza. So they're not as much of a threat to the species as flu would be.

Victor · 16-04-2005 08:54PM

Sparks wrote:

Of course, the totally-insensitive-to-human-suffering answer is that ebola type haemmoragic diseases are too efficient to spread very far. They kill their host off so fast that he or she rarely gets to pass it on, compared to say, influenza. So they're not as much of a threat to the species as flu would be.

Until ..... oneday .....

US Lab accidently sends dangerous flu virus with a test kit to several countries

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