# Avian Flu



## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

This will be a big deal if it continues to spread and mutate and jump to humans it will make the Sunami look like a toe being stubbed.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/outbreaks/asia.htm

Something like this wiped out pheasant populations in Wisconsin in the early seventies.

It has the potetial to kill millions of humans and will be the biggest news story in about a year I'll bet.

Do a search and read about it. Its interesting how small the world is nowadays.


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## DJRooster (Nov 4, 2002)

Yikes, but don't worry...Bob, there aren't too many diseases that don't have the potential to kill millions but we also have a very good medical research crew that are working to see that it doesn't happen. Again, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. I'm sure the world will be saved!!


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

Our first line of defense is our cold weather up here. Alot of virus's need constant warm temps to survive, we do not have that. Sure gotta hope this anyway!!!


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## jamartinmg2 (Oct 7, 2004)

Here is some more info on this...... Scary stuff.

*Avian flu may portend a 1918-like pandemic, says Osterholm*
Robert Roos News Editor

Nov 15, 2004 (CIDRAP News) - The nature of the widespread avian influenza outbreaks in Asia points to the threat of a human flu pandemic that could rival the disastrous pandemic of 1918-1920, infectious disease expert Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, warned in a public forum in Minneapolis last week.

There are disquieting signs that the H5N1 virus circulating in Asian poultry flocks could do as much damage to humanity as the "Spanish flu" virus of 1918, said Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota Center for infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), publisher of this Web site.

The H5N1 virus has already killed 32 people in Asia, and disease experts say it could trigger a pandemic if it acquired the ability to spread easily from person to person. If that happened, said Osterholm, it's unlikely that an effective vaccine could be made available quickly.

"At minimum, assume we will not have a vaccine in the first 6 to 8 months of a pandemic," he told healthcare professionals at a clinical infectious disease conference Nov 12 at the Radisson Hotel Metrodome.

Osterholm spoke the same day the World Health Organziation (WHO) concluded a 2-day international conference on pandemic flu that drew about 50 vaccine company executives and government officials to WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. WHO officials at the meeting urged governments to invest in vaccine development to help head off a pandemic.

Osterholm said the 1918 pandemic caused "at least 40 million deaths, but probably closer to 100 million, if you talk to the historians." A disproportionate number of victims were healthy young adults, he added.

Given the lack of good defenses, Osterholm estimated that a 1918-like virus arising today could cause more than 1.7 million deaths in the United States and as many as 177 million worldwide. (Editor's note: The estimate of 264 million deaths that was originally published here was later recalculated to adjust for age.) The US death toll in 1918 was about 500,000.

In 1918, he said, flu victims suffered severe lung damage that led to acute respiratory distress syndrome and often died within 48 hours, he said. Further, it was the virus itself, rather than a secondary bacterial infection, that led to death in many cases.

Osterholm cited signs that the H5N1 virus could cause the same kind of severe disease as the 1918 H1N1 virus if it triggered a pandemic. He said researchers recently have largely recreated the 1918 virus by sequencing its genome from preserved tissue samples from victims of the pandemic.

In lab experiments, researchers have spliced key genes from the 1918 virus into present-day flu viruses and then exposed mice to the genetically engineered viruses, Osterholm said. Viruses that normally wouldn't harm the mice have been rendered lethal by this procedure. "It's not only killing the animals, but the pathology is identical to what we saw in 1918" and in human cases of H5N1, he said.

Further, Osterholm said studies of the H5N1 virus isolated from recent human patients point to a gene that causes a "cytokine storm"-a flood of molecular messengers triggering inflammation-similar to what was seen in the 1918 victims. In effect, the body's immune system response to the infection, rather than the infection itself, is what makes the situation so dangerous. It also explains why healthy young adults, with their robust immune system, may be at particular risk.

Multiple obstacles would make it next to impossible to produce an effective vaccine and make it rapidly and widely available if a pandemic began now, according to Osterholm.

The world's total production capacity is about 300 million doses, with manufacturers concentrated in just nine countries. With current technology, it takes 6 months or more to grow flu vaccines in chicken eggs, and the yield from a given number of eggs is no more predictable than a corn crop.

"Production capacity will not increase significantly in the next several years," Osterholm predicted. He said vaccine makers want to develop a cell-culture method of producing flu vaccine and are unlikely to spend money to increase production with the traditional egg-based technology.

The National Institutes of Health is developing a vaccine for the H5N1 virus, with Aventis Pasteur under contract to make 2 million doses. But Osterholm said the immunogenicity (ability to trigger an immune response in laboratory tests) of the candidate vaccine "has been poor."

"The earlier versions of this [vaccine] are not protective against the current strains," he said.

In the early stages of a pandemic, he concluded, "I don't believe we'll have a pandemic influenza vaccine of any substantial nature."

He added that while antiviral drugs such as oseltamivir could be helpful in fighting a pandemic virus, they would be in short supply.


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## DJRooster (Nov 4, 2002)

Hmmm... I will just keep wearing my seatbelt and not worry about it.


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## jamartinmg2 (Oct 7, 2004)

DJRooster said:


> Hmmm... I will just keep wearing my seatbelt and not worry about it.


What can you do? No sense losing sleep over it, but it is pretty scary to think about it if it did come to pass.


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## DJRooster (Nov 4, 2002)

Crystal ball... What do I see in the future...There is a lot more about China that scares me than the Avian flu.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

> Yikes, but don't worry...Bob, there aren't too many diseases that don't have the potential to kill millions but we also have a very good medical research crew that are working to see that it doesn't happen


We *may* have the medical establishment to protect us but the countries that it will affect don't, the many oriental mothers that lose children and the many orphans that suffer the loss of their parents in third world countries won't be making light of this.

72% (7 out of 10) of people that contract this type of flu die according to the CDC that silly organization on the internet I happen to believe. And the article that Jmartinmg2 posted estimates 1.7 million deaths in America. Even if it doesn't happen, and I hope it doesn't, I still think its an interesting story and something worth following.
I found the Sunami death toll to be horrific, this has the potential to be much worse.


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## HUNTNFISHND (Mar 16, 2004)

Anybody up for KFC? :lol:

Seriously, this is scary stuff.


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## duck991 (Feb 17, 2005)

Hey if everyone had even a small clue of how many dieases their are that could potentaly destroy man kind, there would be total panic.My suggestion is live hard, love harder, and don't get caught up in every damn headline............. :eyeroll:


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## zettler (Sep 7, 2002)

Here is a news story from today on DUCKS and Avian Flu: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&u=/nm/20050223/hl_nm/birdflu_ducks_dc_1&printer=1


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

Hey Duck...How about duckind???


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## duck991 (Feb 17, 2005)

Here is to all duckkind!!!!!!!!! :beer: lol


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

:toofunny: :rollin: :jammin:


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## Militant_Tiger (Feb 23, 2004)

Makes you wonder how people lived before medicine. Odds are some will die, the ones that live will be resistant to it and will carry on. From them we can extract their blood, make a vaccine from it, and immunize the rest of the people. We will get over it, even if it does hit us.


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

If you ever hunt Ashely-Weishek-Linton, take a break and walk through the graveyards there. 1918-1918-1918-1918......Sobering sight. You'll see three or four from the same family that died the same week.


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## zettler (Sep 7, 2002)

Here is a story about how it was in 1918:

http://www.disasterrelief.org/Disasters/990219Flu/


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

Ya know something guys, we are all decendents of people who survived every plague, famine, war and natural disaster that has happened since man kind started. It's quite enlightening to know every human on this planet is from a long line of smart, healthy, hard working, lucky people just like us and everyone deserves a tremendous amout of respect just for that reason alone. 8)


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## duck991 (Feb 17, 2005)

buckseye is right, although it's a terrible disease and people are getting sick are you going to lock your doors, close all the widows, and hide under the bed NO. Also if you walk through any graveyard you will find people who died thats were they put them. :fiddle:


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Hey Dick, you took the words right out of my mouth - - err--keyboard. If you ever take a walk around some of these rural cemetaries and look at the date of deaths on the gravestones, you can tell when the various flu, measles, and other epidemics went through, often wiping out entire families, kids especially. Granted, there are advances in medicine that they didn't have back then, but treatment of viral diseases hasn't really advanced very far. Immunizations CAN make a tremendous difference, providing vaccine can be developed, produced, distributed, and given to enough people to reduce the number of sick or suseptible population at risk. A lot more difficult than people realize! 
On a more positive note: In the meantime, the most important thing to do is keep as healthy as you can - eat properly, excercise, do up your seatbelt, don't smoke, and above all, spend as much time outdoors as possible hunting and fishing! Ha! And shoot as many of those white potential avian flu carriers as you can come spring goose season! See, you can tell your wives you are not just out to get cheap meat for the family, but are working to save the world, too!


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## DJRooster (Nov 4, 2002)

Ho Humm..Like I said it is more important to wear your seatbelt than to worry about every little thing you read in the paper or the National Enquirer. Let the medical experts worry about the rest. Just makes for another press release. Sometimes we are better off if we don't hear about every little "what if."


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

Not losing sleep over it. Pandemics are a fact of nature. Anytime living organisisms are crowded too much, be it people in cities, factorty farms, muskrats in a slough, nature will balance it out. Pred-prey relationship.

A few years back there were some good books published on virus hunters, I think one was the "Hot Zone". Can't remember for sure. Marlburgh-sp-, ebola,....interesting stuff. The army lab at DC had an outbreak in a shipment of Philipine monkeys. The virus escaped quarentine and gave the scientists some rough times til they tracked everybody down that had been exposed.

Stephen Hawking is the Albert Einstien of todays scientific community. He said it won't be nukes or comet impacts or mass starvation that will crimp civilization. It will be a virus that jumps species.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050925/hl ... 0925233419

this thing is going to happen


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## Niles Short (Mar 18, 2004)

Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso


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