Bird flu.
As far as my concentration goes I guess things are almost back to how they were before I began having problems some weeks ago. Happily back to browsing New Scientist again after a few weeks of just stacking it up in a growing pile of things that I was just too tired to read.
Bird flu was the subject of one of the main topics in the magazine. Remember going through this before I deleted my last blog. Things are still much the same. There is a vaccine in trial that is related to the new deadly strain of this flu which while not protecting against the new strain might still be able to save lives by muting the response of the immune system and cutting down on some of the more serious problems the illness causes. Together with a drug to help with lung infections the two could stop a lot of damage if the present bird flu combines with another flu virus in the human population and becomes easily transmissable as an airbourne illnesss between people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4586534.stm
Producing a vaccine that would protect against catching a strain of flu that has combined with the new strain of bird flu and become transmissable as ordinary flu would only start once the strain of flu was recognisable and the vaccine would take some time to produce.
It was stated in the article that the response to the danger posed by bird flu has been slow and this is right. You can only hope that they are thinking of setting up multiple means of production for any medication that might be useful in combating a pandemic resulting from the combination of bird flu and a human flu virus, or if the bird flu mutated into a form easily spread between people.
Possibly the problems inTurkey might provoke more discussion as the danger is being illustrated more vividly than before as more cases of the flu are apparently coming to light. At the moment it's thought that all the cases are bird to human transmissions. As a result there is a call for culling all avian livestock in the country. To start with quite a few people refused to believe that the flu was a reality and were refusing to cull or have their birds culled but apparently there is a growing sense of alarm in the country about the reality of the situation.
I expect more countries will be expecting to see the illness now that Turkey is having multiple outbreaks. The reality had probably seemed distant to a lot of people before. Maybe Turkey's problems will be the catalyst for countries to have a more alert approach as more people become aware of the dangers of the bird to human form of the disease spreading into the West. It probably seemed rather remote before.
Incidentally the New Scientist article is very informative.
Bird flu was the subject of one of the main topics in the magazine. Remember going through this before I deleted my last blog. Things are still much the same. There is a vaccine in trial that is related to the new deadly strain of this flu which while not protecting against the new strain might still be able to save lives by muting the response of the immune system and cutting down on some of the more serious problems the illness causes. Together with a drug to help with lung infections the two could stop a lot of damage if the present bird flu combines with another flu virus in the human population and becomes easily transmissable as an airbourne illnesss between people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4586534.stm
Producing a vaccine that would protect against catching a strain of flu that has combined with the new strain of bird flu and become transmissable as ordinary flu would only start once the strain of flu was recognisable and the vaccine would take some time to produce.
It was stated in the article that the response to the danger posed by bird flu has been slow and this is right. You can only hope that they are thinking of setting up multiple means of production for any medication that might be useful in combating a pandemic resulting from the combination of bird flu and a human flu virus, or if the bird flu mutated into a form easily spread between people.
Possibly the problems inTurkey might provoke more discussion as the danger is being illustrated more vividly than before as more cases of the flu are apparently coming to light. At the moment it's thought that all the cases are bird to human transmissions. As a result there is a call for culling all avian livestock in the country. To start with quite a few people refused to believe that the flu was a reality and were refusing to cull or have their birds culled but apparently there is a growing sense of alarm in the country about the reality of the situation.
I expect more countries will be expecting to see the illness now that Turkey is having multiple outbreaks. The reality had probably seemed distant to a lot of people before. Maybe Turkey's problems will be the catalyst for countries to have a more alert approach as more people become aware of the dangers of the bird to human form of the disease spreading into the West. It probably seemed rather remote before.
Incidentally the New Scientist article is very informative.
posted by Zeb at 5:17 AM
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