Well, here we are 2 years after starting to write about the pandemic flu threat and nearly 10 years since H5N1 emerged (and 3 years since it re-emerged) as a potential pandemic candidate. The media hype has come and gone, but the virus remains a threat.
H5N1, as we are learning, has seasonal patterns. And as the chart shows, Indonesia has been a major focus over the last year. Given the Jan-March peaks, it is not surprising that H5N1 in birds has reemerged in Nigeria and Vietnam over the last week, with a recent outbreak, again in birds, in South Korea. And where birds are, people cases follow.
And planning for potential pandemics continues. A new story in the Lancet drives the point home that modern medicine is not necessarily the answer - at least not yet, not without a vaccine.
"A flu virus as deadly as the one that caused the 1918 Spanish flu could kill as many as 81 million worldwide if it struck today, a new study estimates.
By applying historical death rates to modern population data, the researchers calculated a death toll of 51 million to 81 million, with a median estimate of 62 million.
That’s surprisingly high, said lead researcher Chris Murray of Harvard University. He did the analysis, in part, because he thought prior claims of 50 million deaths were wildly inflated.
Like a cat 5 hurricane, when and where remain impossible to predict. Maybe it'll be H5N1, maybe some other flu virus, but sooner or later, the next pandemic will come. In fact, these days the only people pooh-pooing it are right wing writers railing about government intervention (see Michael Fumento in the Weekly Standard).
Because of that, the feds are starting to get serious about planning. But there are really a limited number of tools in the preparedness toolbox. The power tools, vaccine and antivirals, will take time to develop and stockpile. The hand tools are called NPI for non-pharmaceutical intervention, and include closing schools at the start of pandemic, cancelling large (>100 people) public gatherings, and keeping the kids away from the mall. The CDC is discussing these measures with the public and with many of the stakeholders in state and local government.
Okay, so it's Science Friday, but what's that got to do with politics? Well, if your local school board has to consider the ramifications of closing the schools for 8-12 weeks, shouldn't you be involved in the process? I'd think as a parent or as an employer you'd want to be.
Expect a policy announcement in January from the Feds on the topic of NPIs and community mitigation. Stay educated so you're in a position to be part of the process at the local level, where it counts. And recognoze that this isn't just an issue for specialty sites like Flu Wiki. This is an issue for all of us