BIRD FLU PANDEMIC INFLUENZA 2

PART 2

PANDEMICS OF HISTORY

While the word ‘Epidemic’ is probably familiar to most everyone, the word ‘Pandemic’ most likely is not. It’s one of those words that rarely comes up in normal conversation. But all that is about to change. An “Epidemic” in short means: “spreading rapidly and extensively by infection: affecting or tending to affect an atypically large number of individuals within a population, community, or region at the same time.” Whereas a “Pandemic” in short means: “an epidemic over a wide geographical area: existing everywhere: occurring throughout a region or even the entire world.”

Listed here are some recorded pandemics and pandemic scares where although many became sick, the death toll was negligible. The list is not complete because experts believe we encounter on average three to four pandemics each century; In 412 BC, Hippocrates, the father of medicine who gave us the Hippocratic Oath, described a disease very similar to influenza in Northern Greece that decimated the Athenian Army. In the year 855 AD, an epidemic that began in Asia spread out across Persia ‘killing many souls.’ In 1485 Hundreds of thousands in Britain became sick with flu like symptoms that some called the “Sweating Sickness.” And in 1510 a large scale outbreak of some unknown kind raged across Europe. 1580, a Pandemic swept across Asia, Europe, Africa, and America where over 80 percent of the people became infected and in some cities of Spain the ailment is said to have killed almost everyone. During 1688, 1693, and 1699, outbreaks stretched out from Europe to North America.

In 1729, 1732, 1781 (the 1781 Pandemic reached across Europe, Asia, and America), 1789 saw epidemics in Europe and America, 1830, 1836, 1847, 1889 (1889 Chinese origin - Russian Flu 1 million deaths). 1900, 1918 (1918 Spanish Flu – 20 to 40 million or more deaths). 1957 (1957 Asian Flu – 2 million deaths). 1968 (1968 Hong Kong Flu – 1 million deaths). 1976 (1976 Swine Flu – proved to be a false alarm). 1977 (1977 Russian Flu), 1997, 1999, 2003 Swine flu. 2003 Avian Flu, 2003, 2004, and the more recent one of 2005 which has not yet reached pandemic proportions, except among the bird populations, has left more than one hundred humans dead thus far from the avian flu.

So what causes a pandemic you might wonder? Unlike an influenza epidemic in which a typical flu virus confines its spread to a school, neighborhood or even across a city, a pandemic, which as mentioned above covers a wide geographical area, usually occurs when a brand new influenza ‘A’ virus emerges during a process called an ‘antigenic shift.’ This is caused by new protein combinations forming on the viruses surface, creating new ‘A’ virus sub-types. Of course if a strain doesn’t spread easily from person to person it will not become a pandemic, yet it can establish itself in human cells and circulate for years during future flu seasons. To become a pandemic the new virus will need to spread rapidly and easily from person to person. Because of our ease of traveling from here to there, it could easily become not just a localized problem but a global one.

In human beings there have been primarily two flu viruses that were easily transmitted from person to person, the H1N1 virus and the H3N2 virus. The H1 and H3 proteins recognize the human cell receptors and this makes it easy for them to enter the healthy cells. The latest concern however is centered around the H5N1 A type virus strain which has shown signs that it’s adapting to where it too might spread easily from human to human.

There are three types of Influenza.

1.) The Influenza “A” virus; This type mutates rapidly and is responsible for epidemic and pandemic outbreaks. It’s also the one that infects animals such as horses, chickens, pigs, ducks, and birds in the wild.
2.) The Influenza “B” virus; This type causes brief outbreaks in small communities and gathering places like schools or offices.
3.) The Influenza “C” virus; Although this virus type is very common, it seldom ever produces any disease symptoms.

As a guideline for countries to follow, the World Health Organization, or ‘WHO,’ has outlined the stages of a Pandemic in six phases.

* Inter-pandemic period *
Phase 1: No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans, but an influenza virus subtype that has caused human infection may be present in animals. If present in animals, the risk of human infection or disease is considered low.
Phase 2: No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans. However, a circulating animal influenza virus subtype poses a substantial risk of human disease.

* Pandemic alert period *
Phase 3: Human infection with a new subtype, but no human-to-human spread, or at most, rare instances of spread to a close contact.
Phase 4: Small cluster or clusters, with limited human-to-human transmission but the spread is highly localized, suggesting that the virus has not adapted well to humans.
Phase 5: Larger cluster or clusters, but human-to-human spread is still localized suggesting that the virus is becoming increasingly better adapted to humans but may not yet be fully transmissible (substantial pandemic risk).

* Pandemic period *
Phase 6: Pandemic: increased and sustained transmission from human to human within the general population.

Although epidemics and Pandemics have occurred many times throughout recorded history, not all of them were influenza related. Bubonic Plague, Small Pox, Measles, Yellow Fever, Polio, Diphtheria, Typhoid, and Cholera, are some of the better known ailments that have killed large numbers of people. And then there are maladies that few of us have ever heard of such as Goal Fever, The Sweat, Bilious Disorder, and many other unidentified fevers. But again, to keep it short we’ll concentrate on the one the experts are claiming may soon be on the way, as well as a comparative example of the influenza pandemic of 1918 – the worst of them all.

Pandemics as we’ve seen are not something new to us. In fact it’s estimated that we encounter a pandemic of some sort 3 to 4 times on average during every century, and the experts agree that we’re overdue for one. What is new however is that the earth’s population has increased substantially, and subsequently the death toll from a serious pandemic could be unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed before in all of history. Some estimates say that the number of dead could be of biblical proportions, perhaps reaching into the hundreds of millions.

But not everybody sees this as necessarily a bad thing. In the spring of 2006 a college professor in Texas stated (in essence), that the earth would be better off if 9 out of 10 human beings died during a pandemic. His thought is that with fewer people, the Earth’s natural resources would be plentiful enough to sustain human life and wildlife habitats would even fair better if we were pared down. Several other professors applauded him for his boldness.

They are the kind of people I like to refer too as ‘educated idiots.’ By their intellect they think themselves wise, while often if you listen to them talk long enough, they will expose themselves as being fools. If they actually believed their blathering about too many humans on this planet, I would expect them to have enough conviction to pass around a ‘Jim Jones’ cocktail at their next faculty meeting. In any case, arguments about the Earth being overpopulated could become moot if and when neighborhoods, cities, states, countries, and entire continents saw their census numbers decline by millions in a matter of months.

Another issue likely to be brought to the forefront would be ‘abortion on demand.’ Countries like Spain for example that legalized abortions in the mid 1980’s, has seen the numbers of abortions in their country increase by more than 70 percent over just the past decade. And also India where the abortion issue is becoming a real concern because they’re currently facing a shortage of eligible women for their young men to marry due to an estimated 500,000 female babies aborted every year.

So just as with arguments about overpopulation, soon all of the arguments in favor of abortion may likewise fall by the wayside. In fact, in the aftermath of a major pandemic, we may even see the practice of abortion become illegal in countries that now condone it. And just as animal rights groups such as PETA are keeping quiet while hundreds of millions of birds are being slaughtered around the world, we may likewise see the day when the pro-abortion groups have to bite their collective tongues.

I’ll even go one step further. There may come a day when some countries will encourage their people to have children in an effort to rebuild their populations, their tax rolls and their military might. Imagine the balance of power suddenly shifting on borders where one side saw a substantial number of their soldiers die from influenza. Or the devastation that world economies will take should 100,000,000 or more people suddenly die. Farmers, Plumbers, Bankers, Welders, Mothers and Fathers, Ministers, Doctors and Nurses… no doubt every country will lose people from all walks of life and each of them plays an essential role in a healthy economy of any country.

No doubt there are some conspiracy theorists out there who will propose that if a deadly pandemic arrives it’s likely a biological weapon created in a laboratory somewhere that’s accidentally gotten loose. In fact this has begun. In March of 2006, Russian Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov actually blamed the United States for the spread of the Avian Influenza. “It’s strange that not a single duck has yet died in America – they are all dying in Russia and European countries. This makes one seriously wonder why.” When asked if he believed it was a deliberate attack by America, “I not only suggest this, I know very well how this can be arranged…”

Some believe that the recent disease known as SARS could have been an example of a laboratory experiment gone awry. When SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, first appeared, the scientific community feared at first that it was a pandemic influenza virus returning as it acted in much the same fashion. To illustrate the seriousness of the SARS fear, on a flight from Hong Kong to Beijing in 2003, 22 people caught SARS from another passenger aboard the plane due to the planes air re-circulation. Before it was finally brought under control through stringent quarantine measures, 7000 people became infected with SARS and more than 600 of them died.

During a recent two hour plane trip I thought of this and then recalled that most airplanes don’t have filtration systems that feature HEPA style filters, and therefore the passenger cabin air is simply re-circulated approximately every four minutes. With that in mind I was curious to see how many times somebody would sneeze or cough in my cabin since this very thing could prove deadly in a pandemic environment. I counted more than 60 coughs and nearly 20 sneezes. Now imagine that your life depended on not being around sick people. Every one of those outbursts would mean that they expelled the virus into the closed cabin to be re-circulated for everyone to breathe.

Also, each time a sick passenger adjusted their seat belt, turned the fresh air knob above them, used the lavatory or touched the seat backs as they entered or exited the plane, they might spread the virus to those surfaces. It’s safe to assume that they’ll also spend a certain amount of time in two or more airports - miles away from each other, talking to ticket takers, cashiers and restaurant workers, as well as touching a variety of surfaces before they go about their merry way. It’s a scary possibility but it’s what we may face someday soon.

THE BIRD FLU
They refer to the latest concern as the Bird Flu because that’s where it originates, within the bird species. The particular strain of the Bird Flu virus causing all the alarm is known formally as H5N1. It normally appears in waterfowl yet seldom will they display any symptoms of it or be affected by it, though when it passes on to poultry it is lethal to them.

The H5N1 virus strain was first identified in 1961 in South African wild Terns, and it spread uneventfully and naturally through wild bird populations throughout the world. But then something happened that caused concern in the medical and economic communities. After 40 years the virus suddenly shifted its focus to the domestic bird populations in Asia. One of the first red flags that went up over the ferocity of this virus was when waterfowl, which as mentioned are normally immune to dying from the H5N1 virus, began dying rapidly from this latest strain.

In Pennsylvania in 1983 through 1984, a strain of bird flu swept through chicken farms causing authorities there to kill more than 17,000,000 chickens. And in 2003 after an outbreak of the H7N7 bird flu in the Netherlands, they were forced to destroy 30,000,000 birds. Under normal circumstances the avian influenza, or ‘bird flu’ virus, usually stays within the bird species, though it can be transmitted to pigs and other animal hosts.

In fact, they believe that a relative of the 1918 strain of influenza is still carried around in pigs. At Fort Dix New Jersey in 1976, several soldiers became ill with influenza and one of them died. After they ran tests on the dead soldier, it was revealed that he died from a strain of swine type influenza A virus. Pigs make the perfect breeding ground for deadly strains of influenza because of their unique ability to host different viruses.

Many reading this may even remember that the American Medical community and even the White House feared that we were on the brink of another pandemic similar to 1918. They worried that perhaps a variant of the 1918 virus had re-emerged. The U.S. government then began a massive campaign to inoculate the entire population against what they called the “Swine Flu.” The problem was that the Swine Flu vaccine itself was starting to kill and hospitalize otherwise healthy people. Although slightly more than 200 people were diagnosed with Swine Flu at Fort Dix, reports of anyone dying from it were not to be found (aside from the soldier who initially died from it).

The so called ‘cure’ however, killed 23 people and caused an illness similar to Multiple Sclerosis known as Guillain-Barré Syndrome in more than 500 previously healthy people. This caused the government to suspend the inoculation plan with 40,000,000 of our 220,000,000 citizens having been vaccinated. This action adversely created a severe distrust in government sponsored mass inoculations and flu vaccinations that still exists with many people to this very day.

As mentioned above, the concern over a pig, or swine, variant of the virus mixing with bird influenza is very real because pigs can also carry human influenza viruses. If they have the bird flu virus inside them, and a human flu virus, the two viruses could blend or merge, creating a new more lethal strain of flu virus within the pig as the viruses mutate and adapt. The new more virulent strain could then be passed on to humans. Such a thing could prove catastrophic to the human race should the new strain prove too easily pass from human to human. Other animals also carry influenza viruses such as dogs, cats, horses, and mice to name a few.

In September 2005 the state of Florida warned resident dog owners of a contagious strain of canine influenza sweeping across the state that was affecting dogs in kennels, clinics, and boarding facilities. No need to worry though, apparently we can’t catch the canine virus. And in February of 2006, fear gripped the country of Germany when it was discovered that a cat died from the H5N1 strain of the bird flu – the very same strain they fear could leap to humans. An order was quickly issued, requiring that all cats be kept indoors and all dogs would have to be on leashes within certain areas of five states.

Around the same time scientists with the World Health Organization called for studies on infections in cats, or more specifically, on how cats shed the virus in their environment. This was after it was discovered that three cats at an animal sanctuary in the city of Graz in Austria tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus yet showed no symptoms of the disease. They believe the animals caught the disease from some infected birds that the shelter had taken in.

Incidents of Felines coming down with a bird flu is not new to scientists. As recently as 2004 domesticated cats and wild cats in Asia, including more than a dozen tigers, died from the bird flu. While it’s unclear whether or not there could be a species leap from cats to humans, I think the concern is rightly there. Besides the fact that cat lovers cuddle closely with their pets, there are a host of other animals who also feed on birds, and these animals will not be particular about whether the bird is sick or not. Care must be given if you have any pets that spend any amount of time in the outdoors. They could come into contact with a diseased bird (or even their fecal matter), and bring the virus into your home where you or family members may be at risk.

Continued on Part 3