Some recent estimates are even higher, with new genetic evidence to support the hypothesis. See the book 1491 for a lay summary.
Virulence may be considered as the lethality of a pathogen, or the mortality rate.
For non-lethal pathogens it may be considered as the degree to which it causes illness. This would be the morbidity rate.
If you have a population of 100 individuals who have been exposed to the pathogen, and 10 die, then the mortality rate is 10/100 or 10%.
In that same population, if none die but 37 develop “clinical signs and symptoms”, then the morbidity rate is 37/100 or 37%.
The chance that a “superbug” will emerge is 100%.
Right now folks are thinking that it will be in the influenza family. That may or may not be true. Influenza on it’s own is pretty bad.
SARS scared us all pretty badly. Does anyone remember SARS?
We’ve known about this strain of bird flu since at least the late '90s. I remember reading an article about how they had to kill all the chickens in Hong Kong. So far the only thing we know for sure about bird flu H5N1 that a lot of birds have died.
Oh - and don’t say I told you, but we were all supposed to die this winter. Seriously. It was going to be bird-flu-o-rama, and CDC’s plan was that every State and local health department should have a plan. That was the plan. And the State and local health departments said whu-huh?? Us? With what money? And support, and personnel, and how about a bit of a blueprint here or something!
And some more birds died, and we didn’t. Maybe next year.
There will absolutely, positively be a nasty superbug. It might get contained or be self-limiting, like Ebola and the other hemorrhagic fevers. Might not. I might vote for Ebola being it - I would sure as HExx not want to be anywhere near a Country that had Ebola in it. That scares the wee-wee out of me.
The real question is when.
I’ve had CDC-sponsored training about the avian influenza the past two years, being part of a national incident response team. What sticks out most in my mind is the expected death curve, if and when it hits. It’s not a typical Bell Curve with the very young and very old most in danger of becoming ill and dying. It’s a W-curve. Small children and Baby Boomers are at the bottom and have the greatest chance of survival.
When we asked why we were told small children have emerging and very strong immune systems. And Baby Boomers survived several flu pandemics, the last major ones being in the 1950s and 1960s.
So when bird flu hits, expect the Baby Boomers to be taking care of of their grandchildren while the Generation Xs and Ys drop like flies.
My immune system is pretty weak already (I get sick significantly more often than others my age), so that’s quite reassuring there. Living in China is just the icing on the cake…
It’s a funny expectation, because Gen X and Y are the ‘healthy young adult’ population that is generally expected to survive flu epidemics quite well. If you look at the actual mortality vs. age curves for most flu outbreaks, you see what you expect: the frail die. The healthy young adults don’t.
(This is one of the reasons that AIDS is such a problem where it is endemic - it kills off those who would be the healthy adult workers…)
I expect they are predicting the curve you saw because they think it will hit like the 1918 flu - or that is the worst case scenario. In that one, it was often their own healthy immune systems that wound up killing the healthier folks. Long story very short: flu settled in lungs, other organs. Cytokines (part of immune system) rushed in to attack flu, wound up in “cytokine storm” overreaction. Cytokines may have punctured alveoli, drowning people in own lungs, and may have caused multi-system organ failure.
Now, Boomers have been exposed to enough flu viruses that they may, might have some immunity to this one.
So far: mostly dead birds.
Otherwise: not a good idea to raise ducks and chickens with you in a very small living area. Some people don’t have a choice. For them we need to keep working on this, if for no one else.