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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe S Pack who wrote (31638)	4/16/2003 11:25:38 AM
From: jim black	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

As a horse breeder and a physcian I can assure you Wet Nile is not "dead". Just starting another round of vaccinations on the herd as the mosquito season approaches. The virus has followed an amazingly predictable pattern of the major river systems as it has moved west. My veterinarian has a niftly wall map in barn office charting the West Nile last year. This year it is expected to go all up and down the West Coast. The mosquito is the vector for West Nile. There is to be blunt nothing sexy about any disease in fashion. Michael Creighton very aptly captured the horror and danger in the real and most terrible nature of a human to human virus like SARS in his book, "Andromeda Strain" where he describes a most feared event in any rapidly spreading virus, i.e., spontaneous mutation. SARS is beginning to alarm me more week by week but so far it has not touched these shores. I also suggest it is hubris of the highest order to even mention Ebola in the same breath as SARS. You do not even want to go there. If Ebola, the vector of which remains unknown despite intensive research, were to mutate into airborne capacity the human race would be in very deep shit in a flash, like can we think of a 3 mile asteroid and its risk to civilizaton. Antigenic drift is what occurs in influenza ever year and our labs have a hard time keeping up in a single season. The devastaing thing about SARS is the psychological impact so far as few people die. OTOH Ebola mortality rate is 95%+. West Nile in horses considering breed ranges from 25-40% and it is nowhere near that dangerous in humans. SARS is one of those reminders of chaos and uncertainty, a virus that jumped from animals to humans. When I read of the roach/ fecal-oral connection I let down some of my guard of concern but that is rapidly disappearing. Let's just hope it does not get here and that we find an anti-viral that is really effective. And let us consider not further mentioning Ebola in light conversation. That virus equals all of our worst nightmares especially if it manifests enough genetic variation to become airborne. I noted with some shiver up my spine this am that it is being successfully transmitted to monkeys. I hope that is bieng carefully monitored as such tampering done carelessly can lead to unintended consequences, like can we say, suddenly much more lethal Humbly yours Jim Black