| (PeteCresswell) 2005-11-11, 6:47 pm |
| Per Bob:
>But, to address your first question, the bird flu is a special concern
>now because we know that a particularly virulent strain is out there
>now. We know it is highly virulent to humans, too.
In the accounts I've read so far, one concept keeps surfacing: "Residual
Immunity".
Something about people being partially immune to a new strain by virtue of
having been infected with or immunized against different strains that have
certain things in common with the new strain.
What I keep reading about avian flu is that there is zero residual immunity in
the human population and that this will increase both the mortality rate and the
speed with which the coming human-transmissible version spreads.
In accounts of the 1918 pandemic, I've read that 25% of the Samoan population
perished as did over half of the Inuit population of one city - along with
entire Inuit villages.
Maybe it's too big of a jump - especially by somebody who doesn't know anything
- but I've got to wonder if there wasn't a residual immunity factor involved
there. i.e. I can readily imagine that, because of isolation, the population
of Samoans and Inuits had not been exposed to as many prior flu strains as the
rest of the world's population.
Also, I notice that the death rate of the 100-or-so documented cases of avian
flu is something over 50% (57?) - in spite of those people presumably having the
same or better residual immunity to type A strains and getting at least some -
and in some cases I'd imagine a lot - of 21st century medical care. This,
compared to a worldwide rate of about 2% (one in 45 - 40 mil out of a population
of 1.8 bil) from the 1918 pandemic.
Seems to me that the medical care aspect of the coming pandemic will be
comparable to 1918 due to lack of availability. Hospital facilities will be
overloaded and workers will be fearful, if not decimated. Even last year, in
Chester County PA, somebody I used to work with couldn't get his wife admitted
because of a hospital bed shortage due to a "flu-like" infection that ran
through the area for a month or so.
Nobody knows what the genetic makeup of the human pandemic version will be, but
it inherits all or most of the bird version's lethality I would think that the
death rate estimates by WHO and the US government are way low.
Maybe I need to cut back on thinking about this stuff....
--
PeteCresswell
|