ampage Tube Amps / Music Electronics	For current discussions, please visit Music Electronics Forum.

ampage archive

Vintage threads from the first ten years

Global Flu Epidemics ?

10/14/2005 4:49 PM
jaysg	Global Flu Epidemics ? Anyone been following all this concern with avian flu's in Asia? I started noticing discussions on pandemic flu's about 4 years ago. Out of nowhere, there were stories about the 1918 flu - about every three months or so, on NPR. Somewhere along the line, someone found a frosty corpse with nice frosty germs. Other stories were about the stored up variations at universities and the CDC. Last year, there was a pretty good episode of Numb3rs on the subject, so it' hip. Now I can't get through a day without hearing about how dangerous this avian flu is. They keep saying that it hasn't converted to get humans...but it will. On Talk of the Nation/Science Friday, today, some guy was basically promising that its going to hit hard and kill millions of us in short order. So back to my question - is anyone here better informed than what I keep hearing on NPR? I smell a rat, and I mean universities and corporations looking for all new big budgets. I'd prefer to be an paranoid conspiracy theorist than dead soon...

10/14/2005 4:49 PM

jaysg

Global Flu Epidemics ?

Anyone been following all this concern with avian flu's in Asia?

I started noticing discussions on pandemic flu's about 4 years ago. Out of nowhere, there were stories about the 1918 flu - about every three months or so, on NPR. Somewhere along the line, someone found a frosty corpse with nice frosty germs. Other stories were about the stored up variations at universities and the CDC. Last year, there was a pretty good episode of Numb3rs on the subject, so it' hip.

Now I can't get through a day without hearing about how dangerous this avian flu is. They keep saying that it hasn't converted to get humans...but it will. On Talk of the Nation/Science Friday, today, some guy was basically promising that its going to hit hard and kill millions of us in short order.

So back to my question - is anyone here better informed than what I keep hearing on NPR? I smell a rat, and I mean universities and corporations looking for all new big budgets. I'd prefer to be an paranoid conspiracy theorist than dead soon...

10/15/2005 12:26 AM
Enzo	It is a real concern. If you want a good overview, go to the news stand and pick up the October 2005 issue of National Geographic. It is the cover story. Flu kills many people every year. The flu viruses come in numerous flavors, and tehy constantly change, so there is a new flu vaccine every year to help fight it. But the normal flu we fight all the time is transmittd person to person, adn while that makes it spread easily, it is also something our bodies are relatively familiar with and so it is relatively easy to fight. Most flu viruses came from other creatures, notably birds. Flu mutates readily. We usually don't catch it from birds. The people in Thailand or wherever that have come down with itare all people who live with and work with birds - poultry farmers or duck farmers. So far no person to person transmission. What happens is that the birds can pass the virus to an intermediate host - pigs are a common one - where it can mutate into something that CAN be passed on to humans. What is a problem is when something comes into the human sphere from the outside like this as opposed to just mutating a previous human flu variety. When it comes in from the outside, we have no head start, so this can spread like wildfire and be tough to control. As humans do get infected, it will inevitably mutate into something that WILL transmit person to person, and then watch out. They have killed millions and millions of birds to try to eradicate this threat. No drug company makes money killing 10 million birds in Thailand. The 1918 flu was like that, it killed more people that World War 1. They are trying to recover infected tissue samples of infected flu victims of 1918 to try to learn what about the virus made it so particularly virulent. This to help find ways to prevent the potential catastrophe of the current bird flu when it goes to humans. In 1918 it came home with the troops and was spread throughout the world. These days international travel is done in far greater numbers, so an infection can spread many times faster than 80 years ago. We may be better at fighting it now, but it is no less deadly. And while we here might have adequate medical care to fight it, there are many parts of the world where it would run rampant.

10/15/2005 12:26 AM

Enzo

It is a real concern. If you want a good overview, go to the news stand and pick up the October 2005 issue of National Geographic. It is the cover story.

Flu kills many people every year. The flu viruses come in numerous flavors, and tehy constantly change, so there is a new flu vaccine every year to help fight it. But the normal flu we fight all the time is transmittd person to person, adn while that makes it spread easily, it is also something our bodies are relatively familiar with and so it is relatively easy to fight.

Most flu viruses came from other creatures, notably birds. Flu mutates readily. We usually don't catch it from birds. The people in Thailand or wherever that have come down with itare all people who live with and work with birds - poultry farmers or duck farmers. So far no person to person transmission.

What happens is that the birds can pass the virus to an intermediate host - pigs are a common one - where it can mutate into something that CAN be passed on to humans.

What is a problem is when something comes into the human sphere from the outside like this as opposed to just mutating a previous human flu variety. When it comes in from the outside, we have no head start, so this can spread like wildfire and be tough to control. As humans do get infected, it will inevitably mutate into something that WILL transmit person to person, and then watch out.

They have killed millions and millions of birds to try to eradicate this threat. No drug company makes money killing 10 million birds in Thailand.

The 1918 flu was like that, it killed more people that World War 1. They are trying to recover infected tissue samples of infected flu victims of 1918 to try to learn what about the virus made it so particularly virulent. This to help find ways to prevent the potential catastrophe of the current bird flu when it goes to humans.

In 1918 it came home with the troops and was spread throughout the world. These days international travel is done in far greater numbers, so an infection can spread many times faster than 80 years ago. We may be better at fighting it now, but it is no less deadly. And while we here might have adequate medical care to fight it, there are many parts of the world where it would run rampant.

10/15/2005 8:32 AM
F__KingIdiot2	According to the local news reports (TV and radio) the bird-infecting version must go through 5 mutations to become dangerous to humans. It has gone through 2 or 3 so far. Vaccine will eventually help, but vaccine is mutation-specific. That is, the vaccine must be made for the specific variation of this flu that finally shows up here. That means that someone has to get sick before they can start making the vaccine. Once the CDC knows what they are dealing with, it is reported that it will take 6 months to generate enough vaccine for US needs. An alternate plan of action that some are taking is to get their doctor to give them a prescription for Tamiflu, which costs $100 for a 10-day supply. And no one is certain that it will do any good at all. I have also heard that the 1918-flu victim found frozen in the ice has antibodies that (we hope) may help.

10/15/2005 8:32 AM

F__KingIdiot2

According to the local news reports (TV and radio) the bird-infecting version must go through 5 mutations to become dangerous to humans. It has gone through 2 or 3 so far. Vaccine will eventually help, but vaccine is mutation-specific. That is, the vaccine must be made for the specific variation of this flu that finally shows up here. That means that someone has to get sick before they can start making the vaccine. Once the CDC knows what they are dealing with, it is reported that it will take 6 months to generate enough vaccine for US needs.

An alternate plan of action that some are taking is to get their doctor to give them a prescription for Tamiflu, which costs $100 for a 10-day supply. And no one is certain that it will do any good at all.

I have also heard that the 1918-flu victim found frozen in the ice has antibodies that (we hope) may help.

10/15/2005 5:37 PM

Mark Lavelle

quote:
"According to the local news reports (TV and radio) the bird-infecting version must go through 5 mutations to become dangerous to humans. It has gone through 2 or 3 so far..."

Don't be ridiculous! That would be EVOLUTION, and we all know that's wrong...

10/16/2005 3:31 AM
Kursad	[QUOTE]That would be EVOLUTION, and we all know that's wrong... [/QUOTE] ...and that it supposedly takes millions of years even if it's correct and chances of having a mutation that is not deadly is lower than winning the great prize in the lottery and for some strange reason these viruses keep winning the big prize on a daily basis.

10/17/2005 6:11 AM
anonymous	Well, a virus, by definition, is not a living organism. The very way they propogate is almost a mutation in itself, so it is no surprize that they change often. The life cycle of bacteria is orders of magnitude faster than large organisms (humans, dogs, etc....dog spelled backwards is god), so mutations (like resistance to drugs) happen fast on our slow time scale.

10/17/2005 12:32 PM
Kursad	I recall that once I've read the following in a book: "Words are just tools, we have invented them to be able to utilize tools in our thinking and they do not necessarily have any meaning beyond that." (the exact phrase wasn't this but the claim was exactly that.), and the subject of the paragraph was the distinction between living and nonliving things. If you sort various organisms from the simplest ones towards more complex ones, and call the simplest ones "nonliving" as you have done and the complex ones "living", where is the line between living/nonliving distiction drawn and with which principle? It follows that everyones definition of living/nonliving is not the same and cannot be the same. p.s. I've no objection against the claim that short living organisms can vary their genetic code faster with mutation and mutation may be less deadly for simpler organisms.

10/17/2005 12:32 PM

Kursad

I recall that once I've read the following in a book: "Words are just tools, we have invented them to be able to utilize tools in our thinking and they do not necessarily have any meaning beyond that." (the exact phrase wasn't this but the claim was exactly that.), and the subject of the paragraph was the distinction between living and nonliving things. If you sort various organisms from the simplest ones towards more complex ones, and call the simplest ones "nonliving" as you have done and the complex ones "living", where is the line between living/nonliving distiction drawn and with which principle? It follows that everyones definition of living/nonliving is not the same and cannot be the same.

p.s. I've no objection against the claim that short living organisms can vary their genetic code faster with mutation and mutation may be less deadly for simpler organisms.

Page 1 of 5

Next>

Last Page>>