Bird flu documentary
- Thread starter Grooveski
- Start date
Grooveski said:
Quite chilling stuff. The commentators featured on the programme are not armchair pundits, but senior scientists working for major international health organisations. They didn't mince their words, did they? The H5N1 virus is highly pathogenic. If it mutates to a form that is readily transmissible between humans (and retains its pathogenic potency), then we will be in serious trouble. According to the scientists, it's a question of 'when', not 'if'. And when it happens, it will have wrought its havoc before medical science and international bodies and individual government agencies can react to do anything about it.
The 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million (I've seen estimates as high as 100 million). Even at the lowest estimate, that's more than the military and civilian casualties of WW1, WW2 and the Korean and Vietnam wars combined. That pandemic occurred long before the era of global air travel and when the world's human population had not reached 2 billion.
Burnt Ash
Shambling Shaman
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
"An inconvenience truth" + "Bird flu" = Practise you bush craft and get redy to run to the hills. 
Its all very disturbing and more so as its true.
Its all very disturbing and more so as its true.
I have great faith in scientists but they do seem to love their doomsday scenarios.
However they are right, pandemics `do` happen and theres not a lot you can do about it.
I asked my Fathers wife about this, she works doing blood tests for the local hospital, so she knows a fair bit about dieseases.
She doesnt take it seriosly though.
(having said that she has bad asthma, and so if a flu epedemic hit like as not there would be no real point in worrying.)
However they are right, pandemics `do` happen and theres not a lot you can do about it.
I asked my Fathers wife about this, she works doing blood tests for the local hospital, so she knows a fair bit about dieseases.
She doesnt take it seriosly though.
(having said that she has bad asthma, and so if a flu epedemic hit like as not there would be no real point in worrying.)
Shambling Shaman said:"An inconvenience truth" + "Bird flu" = Practise you bush craft and get redy to run to the hills.
Its all very disturbing and more so as its true.
If the worst does happen and H5N1 mutates into a human form and retains it's virility, I dont think the hills would offer much in the way of protection. The whole concept of survival through isolation from the rest of humanity is unworkable. You would need to isolate yourself completely from all human contact for the rest of your life ...or as long as the disease is abroad, whichever is the shorter.
I think the only chance of long term survival would be if you got infected and were lucky enough to live through it, leaving you with immunity. Or, that enough microbiologists survive long enough to develop a specific vaccine, and there is a factory that could produce 60 million doses quick enough to vaccinate the population - all a bit unlikely.
Best chance of survival? Realistically? Catch it and get lucky!
The other figures that were being bandied about were mortality rates of 1 or 2 percent. Tragic yes, but not bad odds of survival.
With greenhouse gasses to warm us up and the Yellowstone caldera to send us into the next ice age we just have to hope we dodge all those asteroids out there long enough to survive the flu.....
We all check out eventually. Life is fatal. You can't spend every heartbeat wondering if it's your last.
With greenhouse gasses to warm us up and the Yellowstone caldera to send us into the next ice age we just have to hope we dodge all those asteroids out there long enough to survive the flu.....
We all check out eventually. Life is fatal. You can't spend every heartbeat wondering if it's your last.
I must add that i work in the health and care industry and we all had meetings with Dept of Helath, Big presentations!!!! from the infection control teams and we have for the last six month been producing contingency plans and identifiying specialist to help in the crisis. things may get sticky i.e. you probably wont be able to go into hospital and the emergency service as we know will not function the same. But as for dooms day i doubt it.. It will probably come in two waves and each wave may last over a month, the thing that will be hit more are industry, with employees off due to illness and their parental needs, schools will probably close and people will fear contamination so may not come to work. This will hit every thing from fire services to your local butcher.
John Dixon said:
...they wont function at all!
Two reasons for that.
First issue is the service will be overloaded immediately. Priority will go to thos already in a bed and to the most severe. Many patients who would normally need a bed, including accident victims etc, simply will have no where to go. Ambulances will be taking them to nursing homes, the sally army, churches, the YMCA or just about any institution that will offer them room. Forget things like operations, x-rays or doctors. They wont be available. A lot of people will die who could normally be saved.simply from not having the resources to treat them.
The second issue, just makes the first issue far, far worse. In the east when SARS broke out, a lot of the people who died were front line worker, doctors and nurses. In our hospital, we have no contingency outside of the government protoicols and we dont have stockpiles of tamiflu. The hospital occupational health dept. is clueless and doesnt know anything about any protocols. Every nurse I've spoken too, has said categorically, that 25 grand a year is not enough for them to play roulette with their own lives or the lives of their wives/husbands/parents/children (would you?). Unless there is adequate cover with tamiflu or alternative antivirals and a vaccine available in short order, dont expect nurses to go in to work. Hospitals will be empty oif staff, just like factories and schools. Ditch the romantic idea of these selfless souls sacrificing themselves for the good of humanity - it's outdated and unrealistic. If satff start dying, shortly after, there will be no healthcare available of any kind for anything. Even with tamiflu cover, many staff will still stay away, because it's not enough to cover your own backside if you are then going to take the virus home and kill your children with it. Many staff will stay away untill they can assess the health implications themselves, or untill an effective vaccine is made available to them and their immediate family.
If you want any kind of health service available during an outbreak, nag your government to bits to make sure hospital staff are covered, or they simply wont go in to work, just like everyone else.
I think it's perhaps a mistake to focus on one particular strain of flu. Whether H5N1 goes pandemic in the human population or not, it is inevitable that some variety of flu will. That's just simple population dynamics.
We also shouldn't overlook the fact that regular, ordinary flu kills a fair number of people each year anyway.
We also shouldn't overlook the fact that regular, ordinary flu kills a fair number of people each year anyway.
gregorach said:
Nail on the head. Nobody really knows what will happen. Best case scenario is just a 4 or 5 fold increase in the annual deaths, worst case (predicted by WHO is around 150 million deaths globally). Even if we get just a 3 fold increse in normal cases, the impact for the health service will be staggering. Most hospitals are already running at or just under capacity. In any normal year, every hospital has a "winter bed crisis". If you simply double the usual number of patiens, who's gonna treat them? Who is gonna give them something to eat or drink? Where are they gonna sleep?
Lots of sense from both Martyn and Wayland.
Our local hospital has already decided that immediate family of staff would need prophylaxis/immunisation to keep the staff at the front.
The system will not be able to cope at all.
Don't give it a second thought.There is sod all you can do about it and anyway you could be dead from any number of other causes long before any pandemic arrives.
Our local hospital has already decided that immediate family of staff would need prophylaxis/immunisation to keep the staff at the front.
The system will not be able to cope at all.
Don't give it a second thought.There is sod all you can do about it and anyway you could be dead from any number of other causes long before any pandemic arrives.
When was the last time Horizon actually did a decent episode? I haven't watched it for years, because what used to be intelligent, rational discussions of interesting science just turned into sensationalist claptrap. Nanobots taking over the world and eating humans for their energy, the end of the world when computers become intelligent, the end of the world when the asteroids hit us etc etc. Absolute rubbish.
Maybe last night's episode was actually good - as I said I've given up even trying to watch it. But if it's anything like it's recent standards, it too will just have interviewed whichever scientists and statisticians give the most sound bites and most sensationalist story.
I'm willing to be proven wrong, though.
Maybe last night's episode was actually good - as I said I've given up even trying to watch it. But if it's anything like it's recent standards, it too will just have interviewed whichever scientists and statisticians give the most sound bites and most sensationalist story.
I'm willing to be proven wrong, though.
Yep, stopped watching it when I ended up yelling at the telly because they were picking up stories out of new scientist and doing their best to make them sensational.
And it went too much down the equinox route re-voicing foreign documentaries which were high on wow and low on fact.
Bring back Lord Reith and get the telly sorted out. He wouldn't stand for it. :bluThinki
David (the original grumpy old man)
And it went too much down the equinox route re-voicing foreign documentaries which were high on wow and low on fact.
Bring back Lord Reith and get the telly sorted out. He wouldn't stand for it. :bluThinki
David (the original grumpy old man)
Wayland said:
I think the figures are rather more alarming than that. Of the ca. 250 laboratory confirmed human H5N1 infections, ca. 150 have died. That is not to say, of course, that all human H5N1 infections have necessarily been laboratory confirmed, nor that all actual human deaths from the virus properly ascribed. But even if you doubled the lab confirmations and halved the number of deaths, that would still be a dreadful rate of mortality.
The figures that stick in my mind for the 1918 Spanish Flu are that ca. 25% of the US population was infected, with ca. 2.5% mortality.
This is not my particular field, but I have read Gina Kolata's book Flu, published in 1999.
There is also a US government website on pandemic flu that has some interesting information.
Burnt Ash
BorderReiver said:Lots of sense from both Martyn and Wayland.
Our local hospital has already decided that immediate family of staff would need prophylaxis/immunisation to keep the staff at the front.
The system will not be able to cope at all.
Don't give it a second thought.There is sod all you can do about it and anyway you could be dead from any number of other causes long before any pandemic arrives.
Well said mate.
If you went into a panic about every scare that come along you would end up in the nut house .
Some people are always looking for a stick to beat themselves with !!!
Huntersforge
I think the best way to survive a bird flu pandemic is to get as fit and healthy as you can before it happens. A healthy body heals itself allot quicker and the immune system is stronger.
If everyone thought like this panic would be a good thing
(says me with a beer and a cigarette )
If everyone thought like this panic would be a good thing
(says me with a beer and a cigarette
)
Bisamratte said:I think the best way to survive a bird flu pandemic is to get as fit and healthy as you can before it happens. A healthy body heals itself allot quicker and the immune system is stronger.
If everyone thought like this panic would be a good thing
(says me with a beer and a cigarette
true but did you know that one of the Flu pandemics only hit young healthy adults.
i had Chicken flu one xmas "from Hong kong" and it took nearly a year to get over it and did alot of damage to my kidney's in fact a freind court it from me and had total Kidney failure and ultimatly died from it....
I was at the time the fittest i have ever been.
