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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kingfisher who wrote (21963)	11/18/2004 9:57:06 AM
From: kingfisher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110194

Part 2 When a pandemic will occur and what the agent might be is completely unknowable,” he says. “Nonetheless I think that all of us are definitely working under an increased sense of urgency because of all of the events that have gone on in Asia.... “We know that we're not adequately prepared. And to that extent we are pushing things pretty urgently.” Since the beginning of the year H5N1 has killed millions of chickens and forced the culling of tens of millions more in at least nine Southeast Asian countries. It has defied long-standing flu dogma by directly infecting and killing mammals previously thought to be immune to an avian virus, house cats, leopards and tigers among them. It's also killed 32 of the 42 people — mainly children and young adults — known to have caught it in Vietnam and Thailand. There is much suspicion in the flu world that other deaths elsewhere have gone unreported. Efforts to eradicate the virus from chicken stocks have so far failed. Some believe the virus has become endemic in a region where dense human populations live cheek by jowl with animals that can be a mixing bowl for virus reassortment. Factor in the inadequacy of the international vaccine system, which under current regulatory rules could only produce enough pandemic vaccine for a fraction of the world's people, add the lack of surge capacity in hospitals the world over and the picture looks bleak, says Dr. Osterholm, who is also director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “You keep adding all these things up and you see — we are talking about a perfect storm.” More worrisome still is the fact that H5N1 is currently behaving much like the dreaded Spanish flu, which had the astonishing capacity to swiftly kill people in the prime of life. Flu generally kills the old and the very young; it weakens their systems, making them prey to secondary infections like pneumonias which they can't fight. But the Spanish flu was different. It's believed that virus sparked what's called a cytokine storm — a cascading hyper-reaction of the immune system so severe that attacking the invader actually killed the host. “Everything that we're seeing in the virus-host interaction in Southeast Asia says cytokine storm,” Dr. Osterholm says. If H5N1 becomes a pandemic strain and retains that fearsome feature, in addition to the very young and the very old — flu's normal targets — young, healthy people with robust immune systems would be at great risk. Some influenza pandemics of the 20th century: Spanish Flu — Caused by an H1N1 virus. Emerged in the spring of 1918, subsided by 1920. Estimated to have killed 30,000 to 50,000 Canadians and at least 50 million people around the globe, though a lack of good figures from the developing world means the actual death toll might have been double that. Asian Flu — Hit in 1957-58. Caused by an H2N2 virus. Estimated to have killed one million to four million in the developed world. Hong Kong Flu — Caused by an H3N2 virus, it hit in 1968-69. Estimated to have killed from one million to four million people in the developed world. Glossary of terms related to influenza pandemics: Influenza — A disease of the respiratory tract caused by a large family of ever-evolving RNA viruses. Influenza viruses live in the guts of wild aquatic birds, causing no illness. But they create disease in a wide variety of mammals, including humans, seals, horses, pigs, and ferrets. Influenza epidemic — The outbreaks of illness seen regularly, mainly during winter months in the northern hemisphere. Influenza pandemic — A global influenza outbreak caused by a strain that hasn't circulated before in humans. Pandemics lead to widespread illness around the globe, high numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. Recombination — One of the two ways a pandemic strain can develop. A novel strain from nature mutates to the point where it can easily infect humans and spread among them. Reassortment — The second way a pandemic strain can arise. A strain from nature that can't easily infect humans encounters a strain that can, generally in a pig. The two viruses swap genetic material, giving the novel strain the ability to jump easily into humans. Hemagglutinin — The H in a flu virus's name, a surface protein that allows the virus to attach to and infect cells in the respiratory tract, where the virus multiplies. Hemagglutinin plays a key role in determining whether the strain is mild or severe. Neuraminidase — The N in a flu virus's name, a surface protein that breaks the new viruses out of an infected cell, allowing disease to spread.