Comments | liberalrage: bird flu update

thisficklemob in liberalrage

bird flu update

May 24, 2006 01:07

WHO: Indonesian bird flu cluster may be human-to-human-to-human spread.

The large cluster of human cases of H5N1 avian flu being investigated in Indonesia may represent the first time the virus has been seen to ignite two successive waves of human-to-human spread, the World Health Organization said Tuesday ( Read more... )

avian flu, pandemic flu, asia

Comments 4

txvoodoo May 24 2006, 06:19:23 UTC

I was just reading this and came back here for links to fluwiki. Liberalrage=my flu resource

thisficklemob May 24 2006, 16:48:57 UTC

Thanks! I only post occasionally on bird flu, because not everyone cares about the play-by-play, but I am keeping an eye on it.

luna_k May 25 2006, 00:44:49 UTC

I saw this latest development on CNN & the evening news shows, and I have to say I'm now officially FREAKED THE HELL OUT.

::shudders::

We are so not prepared for this.

thisficklemob May 25 2006, 02:01:33 UTC

Very true. Thing is, if it becomes efficiently transmitted, and the case fatality rate (the percent of people who become ill who die, aka CFR) doesn't drop, and I mean precipitously? There is no "prepared". The CFR for Indonesia in 2006 is somewhere in the seventies. Now, it may need to drop precipitously in order to go pandemic, they're not sure, but even the Spanish flu of 1918, which had "only" ~2.5-5% mortality rate, killed 10-50 million people.

No matter what, though, the healthcare system would be overwhelmed within 24 hours in a pandemic. And forget about buying groceries - think pre-hurricane shelf-clearing, times a thousand. So, yeah. Time to think about buying rice, beans, and water purification stuff.

And hey, maybe we won't have a pandemic for years, vaccine technology will be light years better by then, and it'll be mild anyway. ::crosses fingers::