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

To: tejek who wrote (2866)	10/20/2005 2:07:10 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 4232

<Then why does the CDC insist it can not be spread by the person infected in a possible human to human transmission?> I haven't seen them insist that it's not possible. The point they and everyone is making is that H5N1 is not transmissible from human to human in an expanding manner. The vectors of transmission in humans are simply far far too weak to propagate the disease in humans. Humans require a reservoir of H5N1 in birds or something to keep it going. It's like a nuclear bomb. One has to have enough mass for the chain reaction to go critical. Until one person can set off two others, instead of just fizzling out either dead or cured, then the disease won't get moving. To get moving, it needs the humanizing mutation, probably by combining DNA with an existing human influenza. Then one person will be able to infect 100 people with a good sneeze over a cold food buffet, or in a crowded room, movie theatre or aircraft. Until then, infections remain a low probability event, needing a person to have a close relationship with a hen. Also, the 'experts' get things wrong. Such as in the sars epidemic when they were saying the mortality rate was as low as 3% when I could see that the mortality rate was going to be 7% and possibly 10%, which it turned out to be. The simple error they made was to count deaths, and infections and give a %age. Their logic error was to ignore the fact that people get sick before they die, so they had included LOTS of people in the "infected" category, but hadn't counted them in the "dead" category, because they hadn't actually died. A similar mistake is being made now in that people are saying the death rate from H5N1 is only 30% now [or 50% depending on who quotes]. But that's with Tamiflu treatment. It's commonly acknowledged that there isn't enough Tamiflu and other treatment for a global epidemic in which case the mortality rate will go to "untreated" levels, which seems to be around 70%. Unless we are lucky and get attenuation of the lethality of the bug when it is humanized, which might or might not happen. There's no law of nature which says it has to become more mild. It's just a probabilistic tendency. That is, luck, or, albeit less likely, bad luck. People confuse the long term need for the bug to not kill everyone if it's going to remain a viable human bug with the short term actual outcomes. There's no evolutionary reason why a humanized bug shouldn't kill every last human it touches. It won't be a successful bug, in the long run, because it will kill off its host. But nature is full of unsuccessful species. Nearly all species and certainly all individuals [which are essentially very short-lived nano-species] are extinct. There's no reason why humanized H5N1 shouldn't kill everyone it touches, say 70% of the population, then go extinct. Humans are not immune to bad luck, we have no natural guarantees, we are notably stupid [being unable to even calculate the mortality rate of sars] and obtuse, refusing to read the writing on the wall until our backs are against it. We look like a good candidate for a spot of evolutionary 'survival of the fittest' culling. As the Darwin awards, and cemeteries around the world can attest, that process is continuing at a good speed. We might be about to get some assistance in our evolutionary process from H5N1. It's half-witted brains [humans] versus dumb luck [H5N1]. Which will win? Mqurice