Wanna see something really scary?

Here is all the evidence you need that H5N1 ought to get your respect.  Check out a Canadian firm's report: An Investor's Guide to Avian Flu . Yes, that's right. Businesses elsewhere in the world are hedging their bets just in case.  The flu virus is moving along nicely through Russia. The World Health Organization has an internal plan  stressing the need to stockpile vaccine for its  staff.  US health experts are all scrambling to say "We're not prepared and it's not our fault."

Have you heard ANYTHING from our government? Oh, yeah, reports of ordering a vaccine. The one that doesn't really work.

The report, although somewhat callous about how the rich will be just fine, is actually quite a good primer on influenza in general and H5N1 in particular. It offers some pretty scary consequences of a pandemic. I know this all sounds Chicken Little and very dramatic (who me?!) but it's worth a read. Forewarned is forearmed. And I like some of you guys.

Comments

[benbrazil]

Holy shit! This is the first time I've bothered to read anything on this, and it is quite scary. A flu currently killing nearly half the people it infects? Highest mortality among people 20-40?

Ouch.

Also, it's frightening that we're not MORE worried on the whole. It just seems like massive plagues are something humans, as a species, are past.

Apparently not.

But really, what do you do? Start stockpiling Tamiflu?

[Daniel]

Well, I wrote a newspaper peice on that question, and yes, stocking up on enough Tamiflu is one of the options. You need a prescription, but if you've got a sympathetic doctor and a few hundred bucks, you can lay in enough to protect yourself and a few others. A dose is about $7 or $8, and a treatment runs 10 days, so roundhouse figure at least $80 per treatment, per person.

But there are problems. First, there isn't enough Tamiflu to go around, so you have to at least consider the ethics involved. Second, osiltamivir (I think that's the name -- i'm working from memory) is effective as a preventative only while you're taking it, so if you start your 10-treatment and 20 days later the outbreak is still going on, oh well. Third, despite lab tests that say Tamiflu should work against H5N1, it hasn't. That may be because it wasn't used early enough in the Southeast Asian cases, but still.

Remember: In most pandemic projections, the U.S. infection rate is only around 30 percent, so figure two out of three people won't get the disease... They won't not-get-it because of Tamiflu, but because of basic behaviors and precautions.