Braced for Impact

Flu Pandemic not a problem -- HHS Secretary

Link: US sends mixed message on bird flu threat - Yahoo! News.

The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said an influenza pandemic that could kill millions is certain and may be imminent.

However U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, while urging preparations for a possible outbreak, said the risk was relatively low and a pandemic probably would not happen.

"The probability that we'll have a pandemic flu is unknown," Leavitt said at a Washington health technology conference. "I will tell you from all I hear from scientists and physicians it is relatively low, but it is not zero."

His last gig wasn't generating reports on WMD in Iraq was it?

Helen Branswell (primo flu reporter) on Resurrecting the 1918 bug

Link: Health | canada.com.

Everyone seems to be reading the NY Times, but Branswell is the reporter to read on this issue. It ain't good news...

Like H5N1 (the current avian flu), the 1918 virus appears to be of entirely avian origin, and appears to have acquired the ability to infect people by undergoing a series of small mutations to all eight of its genes, a process called recombination.

Should we be worried?

The 1918 virus killed upwards of 50 million people - more than the First World War - between 1918 and 1919 and reserved its harshest blow for previously healthy young adults.

The good news is, the Prez has an idea about quarantines enforced by the military.

Effect Measure: Tularemia on the Mall: Heck of a job, Chertie

Link: Effect Measure: Tularemia on the Mall: Heck of a job, Chertie.

More flu-related news . . . Effect Measure notes the Boston Globe report on the biosecurity snafu at the antiwar protests in DC a couple weekends ago.

More than a half-dozen sensors showed the presence of tularemia bacteria the morning after thousands of people gathered on the Mall for a book festival and antiwar rally. The CDC was not contacted for at least 72 hours.

(Note: The lack of coordination between the book festival and the protests was also regrettable . . . )

But it was okay, I guess, since those alarms were false positives anyway. This makes me feel a whole lot better about the efficacy of those sensors gathering dust in Metro stations.

Flu Train's A-comin'

Link: Health | canada.com.

As anyone with kids in preschool or school knows, children are the primary vectors for whatever exotic bug is going around. A recent study seems to show that... (no, really?)

Preschoolers may signal the arrival of flu season. Thirty days after hacking three- and four-year-olds start showing up in doctors' offices and emergency rooms, flu-ridden adults follow.

Since most flu-related deaths are in the elderly, that's where the vacinnation programs have focused. Since we keep many of our elderly conveniently housed where we can't see them, but where flu can quickly spread through a whole institution, it makes sense to continue to put lots of vaccine resources there. Maybe we can add some kid-intervention too.

As any parent knows, the best place for your kid (and eventually, you) to pick up some really nasty infection in the a pediatrician's waiting room. The next best place (for me at least) seems to be standing in a crowded, overheated, Metro train with somebody sneezing on the back of my neck.

All this, of course, with an eye toward the apparently universally-accepted notion that the avian flu pandemic is imminent.

Avian flu update: 'World as we know it' may be at stake

Link: CANOE -- CNEWS - Canada: 'World as we know it' may be at stake: UN pandemic czar.

A flu pandemic could fundamentally alter the world as we know it, warns the public health veteran charged with co-ordinating UN planning for and response to the threat.

That pretty much sums it up... and that's the guy in charge.

Did Gattaca Disturb You?

Philosophy Now

I more or less gave up philosophy (or, more correctly, philosophizing) after having kids. Philosophy Now has an essay on why maybe pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which has been available in some form for several years, ain't as bad as Ethan, Jude, and Uma made it look.

Like so many products of the reproductive revolution, PGD is strange, alien, and, for many, frightening. It involves humans assuming control of an area of life which previously lay beyond our hands, and we are right to ask searching questions about how that control will be exercised. It is vital, though, that these questions be addressed in an informed and level-headed manner.

West Nile is here . . .

This can't be good news. In the way-back section of the Sunday Post, we find the report that local (Northern Virginia) mosquitoes are definitely carrying West Nile virus. In addition to the few human cases in the state, it turns out that seventy-seven horses have tested positive for West Nile virus in Virginia this year.

West Nile seems to be a multi-species opportunist, because the same blurb reports that a flock of emus died (the one tested had the virus) down in Stafford County. I already knew about the crows and chickens, but horses and emus??

I guess we would do well to recall that Washington has a long history of being a fever-plagued swamp.