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Biotech / Medical : SARS and Avian Flu -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2700)	10/15/2005 2:10:34 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4232

The NIH has a computer model which calculates the number of deaths and hospitalizations which will result each flu season based on estimates from other countries which are hit first. At one of the first press conferences, Tony Fauci said one reason they are concerned is it looks like the mortality rate for bird flu is roughly one third. One of the press asked Tony if they had run the computerized flu model with H5N1 (I'm sure they have daily). Tony said, "No, we don't want to panic people." As the 1918 flu spread, it continued to mutate. Initially people would get a fever, cough, and a headache and some of the elderly and very young would die. A few months later, people would die within a day or two and mortality was over 50%. Then the flu became less virulent for a while, then more deadly once again. One variant or another, of the 1918 flu, infected one half of the global population and global mortality was more than 2.5% and perhaps as much as 5%. Today, with the world population at 6.5 billion, a similar presentation would result in 3.5 billion infected over a couple of years, or likely faster today - and between 162 million and 325 million deaths. The really virulent plagues in the Middle Ages would have a mortality rate of 40% or so. In today's specialized economies, would result in the complete loss of many specialties - say all people who know how to repair elevators, or run a refinery. The late Carlo Cipolla's calculations indicated that a 40% mortality rate would result in sharply reduced per capita income, which would not recover to pre-plague levels for roughly 120 years. Dr Cipolla was a economics professor at the University of Pavia Italy and U.C. Berkeley and also Director of Plague Control for WHO. .