If Tamiflu actually is effective [and they obviously haven't done any trials using it in humans other than belatedly on a few second-hand infections after family members were identified with it], then it'll need to be taken soon after the infection starts to avoid death. Waiting a day or two will NOT be much use.
Fortunately, if H5N1 derivatives are rampant, anyone who gets a sniffle will start scoffing Tamiful without waiting to see if it's a common cold, flu, or the big one. So Tamiflu should be a lot more effective than has been the case in avoiding death so far.
Now that years have gone by, preventive medicine stockpiles and planning are hopefully more evolved than a few years ago.
Given that a billion people could die in an uncontrolled pandemic, the risk warrants a LOT more planning and preventive efforts than have been done so far. A few Islamic Jihad head-hackers put the frighteners on people so they take their shoes off to go on an an airliner, but the actual cost of said head-hackers is totally insignificant compared with what a flock if chickens and a human vector can do to a billion people.
There are obviously many microbes who want to have a go at the world championship - AIDS, ebola, H5N1, sars, have all had a go. But the world champion is still the Black Plague of hundreds of years ago which killed a third of people in Europe, give or take a few.
H5N1 with a 2/3 mortality rate has a chance still of humanizing before it fizzles out in both people and birds. If it can hop to humans next winter, it might take off. It just needs to hit the jackpot with one person infected with the right influenza to double up and achieve lift-off to glory.
Mqurice |
