Henry, I'm getting hopeful that humans are going to beat H5N1.
<Lubroth's view is that when administered correctly to all poultry, the avian influenza vaccine can be the best solution to preventing avian flu in chickens and may also lessen the risk of human infection by lowering levels of viral shedding.
"A partial match is good enough to protect animals from death," said Ruben O. Donis from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga., "but from an ecological and public health perspective, this kind of [vaccine mismatch] tends to accelerate the evolution of the virus."
WHO's Omi avoided remarks about animal vaccination on Wednesday. Instead he emphasized improved animal husbandry and the avoidance of traditional "wet markets" where live poultry are kept in cramped cages and in close proximity to different species of waterfowl and farmed animals.
"Together with our member states... we can set out the best practices for the production, distribution, and processing and marketing of animals for food," he said. >
There are vaccinations in the offing, albeit not all that good. There is stock management too, which is common in most countries, so the breeding zones for viruses are smaller than in the past when humans lived cheek by foul jowl with fowl giving a highly iterative environment for viral development.
Viruses have trouble getting underway in countries where stock is well-managed and if they do, we have vaccinations increasingly available.
The world is developing a global brain and when something happens, a bunch of humans act like clumps of neurons and swing into gear to figure out a solution. No longer is the world an ignorant mass of dislocated human hill billies scratching a subsistence living from a chicken run and pumpkin patch.
As you reiterate, the virus does not read media reports, or do much of anything else. It is one of the dummest living things on the planet. I'm sure that applied intelligence and genki dama can zap it with a little bit of power from all over the world, and boom, it's gone.
AIDS is still making inroads, so I'm not so optimistic as to think we are out of the woods, but it does seem to be amenable to vaccines and stock management techniques.
If Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos kill every bird they can find [and tigers too if necessary], then the propagation pathways and recombination, reassortment pool will be small and the rest of the world can supply them all the free chicken and duck they can eat, produced from well-managed, vaccinated stock.
Then those countries can develop their own modern bird farming techniques and hey presto, problem solved.
Another month or two and H5N1 will have missed its chance to cause human catastrophe this northern flu season. Another year of breathing space will be useful for humans to gather their collective wits and deal the death blow to any human version of H5N1.
Mqurice |
