On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 12:52:04 GMT, Shortwave Sportfishing
wrote:

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:20:25 -0400, Harry Krause
wrote:


October 8, 2005
Bush Plan Shows U.S. Is Not Ready for Deadly Flu
By GARDINER HARRIS
NY Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal
with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States
is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the
nation's history.

A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is
expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that
began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to
reach the United States within "a few months or even weeks."

If such an outbreak occurred, hospitals would become overwhelmed, riots
would engulf vaccination clinics, and even power and food would be in
short supply, according to the plan, which was obtained by The New York
Times.

The 381-page plan calls for quarantine and travel restrictions but
concedes that such measures "are unlikely to delay introduction of
pandemic disease into the U.S. by more than a month or two."
- - -

Yes, we're really moving forward with this dirtbag in the White House.
Maybe he'll fly over some city in the US where everyone has died in
order to show his concern.

Harry, you really shouldn't snip and paste to protect your viewpoint.

Unless of course you are into some kind of Orwellian "newspeak" in
which only those parts that directly your view of the President are
important.

I'm very disappointed in you - I thought you were for truth and
honesty - in particular being a journalist and having worked for a
newspaper at one time.

Here's the whole article.

October 7, 2005

After Delay, U.S. Faces Line for Flu Drug

By GARDINER HARRIS

As concern about a flu pandemic sweeps official Washington, Congress
and the Bush administration are considering spending billions to buy
the influenza drug Tamiflu. But after months of delay, the United
States will now have to wait in line to get the pills.

Had the administration placed a large order just a few months ago,
Roche, Tamiflu's maker, could have delivered much of the supply by
next year, according to sources close to the negotiations in both
government and industry.

As the months passed, however, other countries placed orders that
largely exhausted Roche's production capacity this year and next.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are complaining that the delay has put
Americans in jeopardy. "The administration has just drug its feet
through this whole process," said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of
Iowa, who has pressed for legislation to buy more courses of Tamiflu.
A course includes enough pills for a full treatment.

Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, said in an interview that
Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, told
senators in a closed-door briefing last week that the administration
would soon place an order to raise the government's Tamiflu stockpile
to 81 million courses - up from 12 million to 13 million courses
expected by the end of 2006. Mr. Obama has long been urging the
government to buy more Tamiflu.

"Secretary Leavitt admitted that they are currently in negotiations
with Roche to try to rapidly build up those stockpiles," Mr. Obama
said. "But we're behind countries like Great Britain, France and
Japan, and it's probably going to cost us a lot more money than it
would have to catch up."

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Leavitt said that the government would
buy more Tamiflu although he did not specify how much.

"But it's not a surrogate for preparation," he said. "It's like saying
that if we could get everyone in America to wear seat belts, we would
solve auto accidents. It's part of a comprehensive solution."

Christina Pearson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Leavitt, said she could not
confirm whether the Bush administration had a new goal of buying the
81 million courses.

Mr. Leavitt said the Bush administration planned to prepare for a
possible influenza pandemic by strengthening both international and
domestic disease surveillance programs, buying drugs like Tamiflu and
investing in research to develop alternative methods of making flu
vaccines.

Preparing the vaccines usually takes nine months and involves the eggs
of thousands of chickens. Because chickens themselves could be wiped
out in a pandemic, the present system of manufacturing vaccines is
highly vulnerable.

Introduced in 1999, Tamiflu for years had disappointing sales and
received little attention. But just as Bayer's antibiotic Cipro became
wildly popular in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Tamiflu has
become the drug of choice for those worried about pandemic flu because
it is one of the only medicines proven to reduce the duration and
severity of the potentially deadly disease if taken within 48 hours of
infection.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster
Preparedness at Columbia University, is among those who have been
insisting for months that the government buy more Tamiflu. But he said
the Bush administration largely ignored his and others' warnings.

"And now that they're finally worked up about it, the store is
closed," Dr. Redlener said, referring to Roche's supply problems. "The
U.S. is now in line behind much of the rest of the world."

Terence Hurley, a Roche spokesman, said that 40 countries had ordered
Tamiflu to fill medical stockpiles in case of a pandemic. Many
countries in Europe - including France, Britain, Finland, Norway and
Switzerland - have ordered enough to treat 20 percent to 40 percent of
their populations. The American stockpile would treat less than 2
percent of the population.

Mr. Hurley said that Roche would be able to deliver all the courses
that the United States government has currently ordered, including at
least two million courses ordered this year.

Asked how soon the company could produce 68 million more courses if
the United States placed such an order, Mr. Hurley refused to say.
"We're just going to have to see what their demands are," Mr. Hurley
said. The suggested 81 million courses would cover more than a quarter
of the population.

The government and industry officials, however, said that Roche had
committed to delivering seven million courses to the United States
next year and would not be able to deliver substantially more until
2007.

Since 1997, avian flu strains have killed millions of birds in nearly
a dozen countries. But so far, nearly all of the people infected -
more than 100 so far, including some 60 who died - got the sickness
directly from birds. Until the virus passes easily among humans, it is
unlikely to cause a pandemic that could kill millions.

An outbreak, therefore, may still be years away or may never occur.
But news this week that the 1918 flu virus, which killed at least 50
million worldwide, was also a form of avian flu raised concerns
further.

On Thursday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, and
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, introduced a bill that
would bolster defenses against the flu.

And here's today's article from the New York Times

October 9, 2005

Danger of Flu Pandemic Is Clear, if Not Present

By DENISE GRADY

Fear of the bird flu sweeping across Asia has played a major role in
the government's flurry of preparations for a worldwide epidemic.

That concern prompted President Bush to meet with vaccine makers on
Friday to try to persuade them to increase production, and it led
Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt to depart
yesterday for a 10-day trip to at least four Asian nations to discuss
planning for a pandemic flu.

But scientists say that although the threat from the current avian
virus is real, it is probably not immediate.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, said a bird flu pandemic was unlikely this
year.

"How unlikely, I can't quantitate it," Dr. Fauci said. But, he added,
"You must prepare for the worst-case scenario. To do anything less
would be irresponsible."

Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, chief of the molecular pathology department
at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, said, "I would not say
it's imminent or inevitable." Dr. Taubenberger said he believes that
there will eventually be a pandemic, but that whether it will be bird
flu or another type, no one can say.

The Bush administration is in the final stages of preparing a plan to
deal with pandemic flu. A draft shows that the country is woefully
unprepared, and it warns that a severe pandemic will kill millions,
overwhelm hospitals and disrupt much of the nation.

What worries scientists about the current strain of bird flu, known as
H5N1, is that it has shown some ominous traits. Though it does not
often infect humans, it can, and when it does, it seems to be
uncommonly lethal. It has killed 60 people of the 116 known to have
been infected.

Alarm heightened on Thursday when a scientific team led by Dr.
Taubenberger reported that the 1918 flu virus, which killed 50 million
people worldwide, was also a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.

There is a crucial difference, however; the 1918 flu was highly
contagious, while today's bird flu has so far shown little ability to
spread from person to person. But a mutation making the virus more
transmissible could set the stage for a pandemic.

Another concern is that H5N1 has become widespread, killing millions
of birds in 11 countries and dispersing further as migratory birds
carry it even greater distances. This month, it was reported in
Romania.

Meanwhile, the flu is spreading widely among birds in Asia. And it has
unusual staying power, persisting in different parts of the world
since it emerged in 1997.

"Most bird flus emerge briefly and are relatively localized," said Dr.
Andrew T. Pavia, chief of the division of pediatric infectious
diseases at the University of Utah and chairman of the pandemic
influenza task force of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The most worrisome thing about H5N1, Dr. Pavia said, is that it has
not gone away.

Some scientists suspect that if H5N1 has not caused a pandemic by now,
then it will not, because it must be incapable of making the needed
changes. But others say there is no way to tell what the virus will do
as time goes on. And they point out that no one knows how long it took
for the 1918 virus to develop the properties that led to a pandemic.

Meanwhile, H5N1 seems to be finding its way into more and more
species. Once known to infect chickens, ducks and the occasional
person, the virus is now found in a wide range of birds and has
infected cats.

"It killed tigers at the Bangkok zoo, which is quite remarkable
because flu is not traditionally a big problem for cats," Dr. Pavia
said.

It has also infected pigs, which in the past have been a vehicle to
carry viruses from birds to humans.

"We should be worried but not panicked," Dr. Pavia said.

The timing of the bird flu's emergence also makes scientists nervous,
because many believe that based on history, the world is overdue for a
pandemic. Pandemics occur when a flu virus changes so markedly from
previous strains that people have no immunity and vast numbers fall
ill.

"In the 20th century there were three pandemics, which means an
average of one every 30 years," Dr. Fauci said. "The last one was in
1968, so it's 37 years. Just on the basis of evolution, of how things
go, we're overdue."

Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office,
said: "You get this sense of compounding risks. First, it's in some
birds. Then more. Then more area, then more mammals and then to
humans, albeit inefficiently."

In just a few instances, Dr. Gellin noted, the virus does appear to
have spread from person to person.

"The only thing it hasn't done is to become an efficient transmitter
among humans," he said. "It's done all the other things that are steps
toward becoming a pandemic virus."

But not everyone is equally worried about the bird flu.

The fear "is very much overdone, in my opinion," said Dr. Edwin
Kilbourne, an emeritus professor of immunology at New York Medical
College, who has treated flu patients since the 1957 pandemic and has
studied the 1918 flu.

The bird flu, he said, is distantly related to earlier flus, and
humans have already been exposed to them, providing some resistance.

Scientists also say that the death rate may not be as high as it
appears, because some milder cases may not have been reported.

Dr. Kilbourne and other experts also noted that when viruses become
more transmissible, they almost always become less lethal. Viruses
that let their hosts stay alive and pass the disease on to others, he
explained, have a better chance of spreading than do strains that kill
off their hosts quickly.

Moreover, he said, while much has been made of comparisons between the
current avian flu and the 1918 strain, the factors that helped
increase the flu's virulence in 1918 - the crowding together of
millions of World War I troops in ships, barracks, trenches and
hospitals - generally do not exist today for humans.

But an essential difference is that people carrying the flu today can
board international flights and carry the disease around the world in
a matter of hours.

Dr. Kilbourne emphasized that medical care had improved greatly since
1918. Although some flu victims then turned blue overnight and drowned
from blood, with fluid leaking into their lungs, many more died of
what are now believed to be bacterial infections, which can be treated
with antibiotics.

Although the death toll from that flu was high, the actual death rate
was less than 5 percent.

In addition, more people now live in cities, where they have probably
caught more flus, giving them immunity to later ones. "In 1918, you
had a lot of farm boys getting their first contact with city folks
who'd had these things," Dr. Kilbourne said.

What researchers wish they could do now is look at a flu virus like
H5N1 and predict whether it is heading down the genetic road to
becoming a pandemic strain.

"I hope in the future we will be able to do that, work out which
mutations are critical," Dr. Taubenberger said. "We know the 1918
strain had everything it needed."

Andrew Pollack and Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting for this
article.

----------------------------

It would appear that we should have been doing more about this ten
years ago - which would make that who's administration?

Interesting how the viewpoint changes when you have the whole picture
doesn't it?


Besides which, the article was presented yesterday!


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/08/po...html?th&emc=th

The US is not ready for a bird-flu pandemic. It's the fault of GWB. Apparently,
not one thing was known about pandemics before GWB took office.

More scrupulously unbiased reporting.

The best line? ""It will require school districts to have a plan on how they
will deal with school opening and closing," he said. "It will require the mayor
to have a plan on whether or not they're going to ask the theaters not to have a
movie."

God help New Orleans if the mayor has to get involved!



--
John H

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so."

Ronald Reagan