Just to flesh out cost considerations. Each year the regular flu cost the US economy some $37 billion. If just a small portion of that alone is shaved off by the development of a more efficient and effective vaccine infrastructure, then the preparedness for avian flu more than pays for itself.
I don’t understand all the controversy. This kind of situation is exactly what we have science and governments for!
Does anybody else see the irony in Bush accepting the assertions of science as to how dangerous bird flu could be, but denying the assertions of science as to evolution and global warming, just to take two examples?
I’ll give you evolution, but I think that there is far from an absolute consensus about global warming…there is certainly enough of a fig leaf for Bush to reasonably hide behind on it at least. Evolution though…yeah, I can see the irony there. (I have to say though that I don’t actually know what Bush’s position on Evolution is…I ASSUME he’s either ID or bible literalist, but I’ve never seen a direct statement from him one way or the other)
-XT
I don’t know about irony - inconsistency maybe. Bird flu’s a more imminent and clearcut threat, however.
There is also political expediency. ID plays to his base. Denying global warming serves corporate interests. But he hopes that being big on bird flu helps offset the impression of incompentent disaster preparedness left after the Katrina/FEMA debacle.
Science and his opion of it has little to do with it. Like many of the religious right, they want to share in all the fruits of science (they aren’t Amish), while disputing any aspect that they percieve threatens any aspect of “revealed truth”. They just fail to percieve any connection between their disputations and decreasing future harvests from the tree of scientific accomplishments.
Hate to doublepost, but xtisme in scientific terms the situation with global warming and bird flu are nearly the same. Actually there is more consensus in the scientific community that continued carbon emissions will have significant climatic and hence economic effects than there is that this particular avian flu will definitively reassort into a pandemic capable strain. The differences are more political. For global warming you have corporate forces engaged in distorting the actual debate* in the public eye, and as you point out, an effect that is safely off this administrations watch. Bird flu has none of those factors. There is no political force that feels the need to magnifiy the voice or two that is not too worried. (Some have said that if this virus could reassort, then it already would have, those statements could be distorted to imply that there is no signficant danger, whereas most of those scientists understand that there will be a likely other pandemic capable strain soon enough in any case.) And the bad outcome, if it occurred, might be on this administation’s watch.
*How much of extant climate change has been anthropogenic? Exactly how bad is future climate change going to be? Just bad, or horrific? How likely is devasting? What would be the best ways to obviate it?
That’s interesting. Is it a reasonable idea?
Unfortunately probably not. This from Science May '04
[quote]
How do we quantify the possible risks of a pandemic strain’s emerging, and how can we rapidly but reliably detect the emergence of such a strain? Simple mathematical analysis can provide some insights. At any time point, the risk of a reassortment event is proportional to the number of people coinfected with human and avian strains. Making the reasonable assumptions that 10% of the population are infected with human influenza over the 12 weeks of a typical influenza season (8), and that there is a 1-day window in early infection where coinfection with an avian strain is possible, then 0.12% of the population are susceptible to coinfection with an avian strain at any one time. Hence, even if reassortment is certain following coinfection, the probability of a reassortment event having occurred after n cases of avian influenza in humans is 1 - (1 - 0.0012)n; so 600 human infections would be required for a 50% chance of reassortment, and around 45 for a 5% chance. If reassortment is a rare outcome of coinfection or other processes reduce the chance of coinfection (9), then the number of infections required for reassortment to become likely increases substantially. The risk of a pandemic is therefore currently small but not negligible. As the risk increases directly with the number of human H5N1 infections, it is critical that the avian epidemic is contained as rapidly as possible and that the risk of human-avian contact is minimized in affected areas.
[quote]
The real risk, if reasssortment is possible with this bug, comes as the avian flu has a wider distrubution (like it has been developing, and we have a seasonal flu season leading to co-infections in larger numbers … at least 600 co-infections would be needed to get up to a 50% chance of reassortment. We are not anywhere near there yet. And the bottom line is that there is near unamity that a pandemic capable strain will emerge from somewhere even if not from this particular bug. This is just the current most likely contender and the most imminent threat.
Argh! Mod please fix coding. Thank you.
I think one thing the government could do, that would be fairly inexpensive, and logistically very useful, is to establish a level of public availability for certain key drugs. Then, provide tax benefits to underwrite a system where pharmacy licenses were made contingent on maintaining and using increased on hand stocks of those drugs in each and every pharmacy in the United States. This is not a contingency supply to meet any emergency, but an increased regular supply to facilitate immediate availability.
So, the local Drug Store Pharmacy usually maintains about thirty thousand capsules of Tamiflu, and fifty thousand capsules of Cipro. (off the wall numbers, for example only.) The new program underwrites the original capital outlay for the Pharmacist to order a standing supply of sixty thousand Tamiflu, and a hundred thousand Cipro. The Pharmacy operates as it always has, replacing and rotating it stock of these, and other drugs at normal rates. The corporate owners are out the amount of the increase, but gain a tax benefit proportional to the cost of stocking the drugs. The Wholesale pharmacies do likewise, and maintain their inventories at a large enough level to cover the small increase in actual use and waste, and are likewise tax benefited to offset the cost.
The availability of emergency supplies is now supplemented by a doubled stock that is already deployed before the need occurs. This means days of additional time for emergency supplies to be moved. It also allows for better planning of resources, and actually costs very little in the long run, since the stocks on hand are regularly rotated, and will always be reasonably fresh. The size of the current market in each location will determine the size of the “strategic” stockpile, and it inherently puts the drug in the places that reach people in that proportion, without being analyzed and adjusted.
Since pharmacies are all regulated by license, enforcement is already available. The companies will benefit in the long run by having available doses and refusing fewer prescriptions because of unavailability.
Tris
Great cite, thanks. In part I’m also asking - how reasonable is it to say that maybe this strain *can’t * reassort? Why shouldn’t any strain be able to in principle?
Also, your cite brings up one thing I realize I’m not clear on - why couldn’t birds be the mixing vessel themselves, since birds can get just about any strain of influenza afaik?
We have no way of knowing that any influenzas are incapable of reassortment other than by the trial by nature. Not at this time anyway. Maybe someday they’ll understand what combinations just can’t exist together, but not yet. Birds do not get the human to human transmisssible bugs themselves (to the best of my knowledge).