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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Aug-05
Bird flu spreads throughout Asia, heads for Europe

Web Log - August, 2005

Bird flu spreads throughout Asia, heads for Europe

A new vaccine is announced, but its effectiveness is questioned.

The bird flu which, just two years ago, was restricted just to Vietnam, has been mutating and has now spread to some ten nations throughout all of Asia, far to the west and north.

Bird flu - infected breeding grounds of migratory birds <font size=-2>(Source: WSJ)</font>

Bird flu - infected breeding grounds of migratory birds (Source: WSJ)

As I wrote in an article a month ago, Chinese scientists confirmed that bird flu had spread to migratory waterfowl in one of the world's major breeding grounds, Qinghai Lake, and that it was poised to continue spreading.

Since then, the bird flu has spread to Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Previously, it had already spread from Vietnam to Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. It's expected to continue spreading, and should reach Europe within a couple of months, especially inasmuch as millions of birds will begin migrating at the end of August.

Although several dozen people have died of bird flu in the last two years, all human bird flu cases have been caught by close contacts with birds, as far as is known. No human-to-human contamination has yet manifested itself, although experts are saying that conditions are now exactly right for such a mutation to occur. Once a mutation allowing human to human transmission occurs, possibly this fall or winter, a worldwide bird flu pandemic is expected, killing hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

A new bird flu vaccine has been developed and tested with promising results, according to an announcement by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Conflict risk level for next 6-12 months as of: 30-May-2005

W. Europe 1 Arab Israeli 2

Russia Caucasus 2 Kashmir 1

China 2 North Korea 3

Financial 3 Bird flu 3

Key: 1=green 1=Low risk 2=yellow 2=Med 3=red 3=High 4=black 4=Active

Because of the urgency of the situation, America plans to purchase millions of doses of the new vaccine, according to Fauci, though the exact number was not announced.

However, the new vaccine is not a "silver bullet," according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

From the point of view of WHO, the most obvious reason is that a vaccine might protect the Americans who get it, but will do nothing for the vast majority of the people in the world.

But in fact the new vaccine may not ever be very helpful to anyone, according to a commentary on the vaccine announcement in Recombinomics, which points out the following:

Two or three large doses of the vaccine will be needed to immunize someone effectively. This is 12-18 times as much vaccine as is needed against an ordinary human virus, and so will increase the severity of manufacturing problems. Furthermore, the multiple shots will take a long time to administer under pandemic conditions, making success far less likely.

The vaccine is based on the original Vietnam bird flu virus. But the version currently spreading throughout Asia is a mutated version, and the new vaccine may offer little or no protection from this mutation.

Now, here's an ironic problem. The way that a vaccine is manufactured involves injecting the virus into an egg containing a living chicken embryo. The embryo manufactures the vaccine as it grows inside the egg. However, in this case, the virus tends to kill the chicken embryo. It is, after all, the bird flu.

(8-Aug-05) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Aug-05 Bird flu spreads throughout Asia, heads for Europe

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Aug-05
Bird flu spreads throughout Asia, heads for Europe