OK, something serious to think about vis-a-vis how the world-at-large will
deal with a pandemic and how this just might play out in socialized settings
of which we speak.
The following article/opinion piece is from the UK Telegraph. I can't speak
to the Telegraph's journalistic veraacity, but they're not very far off the
mark on projections of influenza infection and mortality.
So, let's say best case scenario we have a 30% CFR. That's a little low
from the modelling I've seen, but it's a start. Now with this particular
round of the flu, you'll have not one, but three surges of infection with
about a 60% infection rate. Let's have a round number of 100 people in a
given population. Over the 9 months of active pandemia, 60 people will
become infected, some 20 will die.
Now, let's multiply our scale and add 4 zeros to our population, giving us
1,000,000. Of those, 600,000 will contract active infections, 200,000 will
perish--without intervention. So what do we have for intervention? Ah,
yes, we have the golden bullet oseltamivir (Tamiflu). Our collective
governments pat us on the head and tell us no worries because we'll have
prophylaxis for all! Oops... what they forgot to tell us is that news from
Vietnam is indicating that viral suppression is incomplete in that nation's
clinic (the most comprehensive H5N1 treatment facility in the world, oddly
enough). That means...resistance. Kind of like antibiotic resistant
bacteria--same idea. Tamiflu is quickly becoming old news on the flu front
and that's not good because the World Health Organization has invested a lot
of capital (human and otherwise) in advising nations to stockpile Tamiflu.
The golden bullet turns out to be brass after all.
Here's the catch: NO ONE has immunity (yet) to this virus. And it's not
whacking the old and the babies this time around. It's a repeat of the 1918
scenario where the population with the highest morbidity and mortality is in
the 20-40 year-old range. Why? Well epidemiologists think it will be due
to something called "cytokine storms" (look it up, it's windy).
Ok, lets lowball and say we have a few 10K infections in our 1M population.
The majority of these folks will be really sick, but "stay home from work"
sick, not deathly sick. There will, however, be a fairly large cohort of
young adults who will get very, very ill. They will require intensive
supportive care as they transition into full-blown pneumonia. Let's say out
of our 1M populatiion, 1,000 are critically ill (these figures are wa-a-a-y
below expectations) and need ventilation. Our city of 1M has 50 vents, max
(I'm dreamin' here), so that means 950 people are going to die without
intervention--which is not available. Who is going to triage those 1000
patients who have an equal chance of living or dying with treatment? The
government? What makes the local Health Department or the CDC the authority
on who lives or who dies? Because they "are". The government appoints
itself the authority, and once it has the authority it ain't coming back.
That's the plan and that's Socialism.
Read the following. I think it's foretelling.
Kyle
------------------------------
*From:* [log in to unmask] on behalf of Tim
*Sent:* Mon 11/3/2008 9:41 AM
*To:* [log in to unmask]
*Subject:* How would Britain cope with a pandemic?
How would Britain cope with a pandemic?
Via *The Telegraph*, : Flu epidemic anniversary: How would modern Britain
cope with an influenza
pandemic?<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/health/3330052/Flu-epidemic-anniversary-How-would-modern-Britain-cope-with-an-influenza-pandemic.html>Excerpt:
"So many were ill that only the worst could be visited," recalled a GP's son
from Lancashire. "People collapsed in their homes, in the streets and at
work... All treatment was futile."
The symptoms of the 'Spanish' influenza – so-called because Spain, as
opposed to countries involved in the conflict, did not censor reports of the
spreading plague - included a hacking cough, projectile nose bleeds, and a
condition known as heliotrope cyanosis, a dark-blue discoloration caused by
shortage of oxygen to the lungs.
Unlike most strains, it did not just strike the very young and old but also
the 20-40-year-old age group. Around 228,000 Britons perished, and
worldwide, it killed at least 50 million – ten times as many as had died in
the war.
Now, as the world faces the prospect of a new pandemic - mostly likely
triggered by the bird flu virus H5N1 - the question has to be asked: how
would Britain cope with a similar outbreak today?
In the event of a repeat of 1918, the Department of Health calculates that a
quarter of the UK population could fall sick over a fifteen-week period and
375,000 people could die. But the Armageddon scenario is that a new avian
virus could have an even worse impact - resulting in more than 450,000
deaths.
One of the last Britons still living who remembers the'Spanish Lady,' is Ada
Darwin, a 98-year-old who lives in Chester. She was seven when influenza
killed her younger brother and both her parents.
"There were black horses with plumes made from ostrich feathers, then the
gun carriage with my dad's coffin covered with the union flag," she recalls.
"My mother's coffin was in a big glass hearse with Noel's coffin under the
driver's seat. My grandma told us my mother had gone to Jesus, but I said,
'Jesus has got plenty of people, I want my mummy.'"
Britain's Monty Python, of course, long ago taught us always to look on the
bright side of life. But we really have no reason to suppose the case
fatality ratio in the next pandemic will fall into the 2% range experienced
by most industrial nations. (The CFR seems to have been much higher in
countries like India, and approached 100% in small Native communities in
Alaska and northern Canada.)
We've had a welcome respite from human cases for several months, but the
case fatality ratio remains around 60% worldwide and 80% in Indonesia. We're
often told that when H5N1 becomes easily transmitted between humans, it will
lose much of its virulence.
Well, maybe. If someone can cite evidence for this assertion, please send it
to me. But we should at least consider the possibility of H2H avian flu with
its present CFR. As Dr. Samuel Johnson, another wise Briton, famously
observed, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a
fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
November 02, 2008 at 04:51 PM |
Permalink<http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2008/11/how-would-brita.html>
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