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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 12/08/2007 : 00:56:50
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22153242/
Possible case of human-human transmission of H5N1 Influenza.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2007 : 07:42:54 [Permalink]
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Scary. My layman's impression is that it looks at though it's beginning to become weakly transmissible, human-to-human. Sooner or later, it'll be a pandemic like the "Spanish flu" of 1918-1919.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 19:18:24 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
Scary. My layman's impression is that it looks at though it's beginning to become weakly transmissible, human-to-human. Sooner or later, it'll be a pandemic like the "Spanish flu" of 1918-1919.
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Yup. Ole H1N1 itself.
Quick! Quick! how did we cure that one?
Yup, we didn't. It just burned itself out. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 19:30:56 [Permalink]
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World population was just under 2 billion, and the 1918 flu killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people.
If a strain of influenza that virulent and with similair mortality rates (2.5%) appears sometime soon, the toll will probably be proportionate. Dense urban living conditions could even make it worse.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 22:26:12 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
World population was just under 2 billion, and the 1918 flu killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people.
If a strain of influenza that virulent and with similair mortality rates (2.5%) appears sometime soon, the toll will probably be proportionate. Dense urban living conditions could even make it worse.
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My own paternal grandfather, whom I might otherwise have had the chance to know, died, still a young man, of the Spanish flu, leaving my father and his family without support.
What's coming really scares me, but more for what it will do to young adults like my daughter than to myself (children and the old tend to survive better, flu mainly takes adults of breeding age).
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 22:33:29 [Permalink]
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half said:
| flu mainly takes adults of breeding age |
Actually, influenza kills mainly the very young and old. Those in their prime, with uncompromised immune systems, are typically the least effected by infectious diseases.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Halcyon Dayz
New Member
Netherlands
27 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 00:35:56 [Permalink]
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1918 was different.
People had just gone through 4 gruelling years of global war.
Many people were fatigued and undernourished.
Medical services weren't so great either. |
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it. -- Don Marquis
"The universe is a strange, practically incomprehensible place. But that is how things are, and no amount of wishing that things are really the way we perceive them will change that." - The Black Cat |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 00:47:56 [Permalink]
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Actually the 1918 flu tended to kill the young - older people had some immunity to past exposure to a similar, but less deadly flu - a sort of accidental vaccination.
Since a major cause of death was an immune overaction, I wonder if a good immune system was a liability in this case? |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 01:45:58 [Permalink]
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ghost said:
Actually the 1918 flu tended to kill the young - older people had some immunity to past exposure to a similar, but less deadly flu - a sort of accidental vaccination.
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Yeah, it was an oddity. In general though the highest mortality from influenza is in the elderly and very young.
| Since a major cause of death was an immune overaction, I wonder if a good immune system was a liability in this case? |
From what I have read about the 1918 flu, it probably was.
Lets just hope H5N1 doesn't pack the same punch when/if it becomes truly infectious human->human.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 06:06:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
half said:
| flu mainly takes adults of breeding age |
Actually, influenza kills mainly the very young and old. Those in their prime, with uncompromised immune systems, are typically the least effected by infectious diseases.
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That was not, in my understanding, the case during the Spanish Flu, however. It took proportionally larger numbers of young adults.
Wiki says, | The unusually severe disease killed between 2 and 20% of those infected, as opposed to the more usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%. Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. This is unusual since influenza is normally most deadly to the very young (under age 2) and the very old (over age 70). |
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 11:09:17 [Permalink]
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yeah yeah yeah..... it didn't follow the pattern that most other infectious diseases, including every other outbreak of influenza, follow.
But let me repost my original comment, to save everyone the trouble of scrolling up and actually reading it 4 posts up:
Actually, influenza kills mainly the very young and old. Those in their prime, with uncompromised immune systems, are typically the least effected by infectious diseases.
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While H5N1 infection in humans has had a very high mortality rate(much higher than the 1918 flu), there are also low pathogenic (LPAI H5N1 as compared to the high pathogenic HPAI H5N1) strains out there that result in limited or no disease symptoms at all in avians.
So the worst case scenario, which is all that gets media play, would indeed result in a lot of human deaths.
But I have found no data indicating that H5N1 would effect a certain age group of people outside of what would normally be expected from influenza, only that it could have a much higher mortality rate overall.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/27/2007 : 17:05:18 [Permalink]
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22410007/
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on Thursday a single case of human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus in a family in Pakistan but said there was no apparent risk of it spreading wider.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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H5N1
