What Ever Happened To Bird Flu

Earlier to to day I read Do We Have a 100years left? blog from the daily cheese blog and in this blog it talks about how close we as a species could be to extinction and as things often do it got me thinking and I was thinking whatever happened to bird flu and I found that not only did it not go away after the media stopped covering it.

A few years ago the news was asking about our impending doom with bird flu on the rampage but thankfully the 2003 outbreak was contained and the number of cases per year seem to have stabilized for the time being but this does not mean we should stop being vigilant especially after the 2009 Pandemic.

I found on the World Health Organization website that this year so far there have been 30 cases reported and 19 deaths globally which means that the virus is still out there and still infecting people and killing more than half of those infected, The numbers do seem to have stabilized but I must stress that most people with this virus probably never go to the doctor or receive treatment.

Currently in Indonesia there is a H5N1 outbreak and  according to the WHO:

To date, the total number of human influenza A(H5N1) cases in Indonesia is 191 with 159 fatalities, 8 (all fatal) of which occurred in 2012 and this is despite the fact that H5N1 cannot be contracted human to human.

When it all went wrong

In 2009 we saw our first major pandemic for decades when H1N1 or more commonly swine flu swept across the world infecting hundreds of thousands and killing a total 14,286 people worldwide and this is the number we know of not to mention all of the poor people who would not have had the money to receive treatment.

The panic was successfully spread across the globe and people were running for the hills thinking this was it this was the end times but largely thanks to modern medicine and quick response this deadly disease was stopped from going viral. But then it all went wrong when people stopped panicking and instead went into super ignorance mode. The medical teams not only stopped the outbreak but also convinced the world that we are safe.

1918 the Spanish menace

Many of you will know of the the 1918 flu pandemic that was spread all over the globe killing 50-130 million and infecting millions more leaving many with afflictions that would last the rest of their lives. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was the worst pandemic to have the earth in modern times infecting an estimated 3% of the world population (1.86 Billion at the time) and lasted a staggering 2 years.

Spanish flu was able to reach every continent and even many of the remote pacific islands to infect 27% of the total global population in a time when it still took weeks to travel around the globe. The main reason this was able to happen was a mixture of poor malnourished men being drafted into the army to fight World War 1 and a lack of experience dealing with infectious diseases on a global scale.

A Hundred Years Later

Its been a hundred years and all is well the world is technologically advanced and the human race is plowing ahead to a bright future and then in a remote village in Thailand a man falls sick with flu, coughing and sneezing he infects his wife and 2 daughters. The following day the girls go to school and infect 6 of their class mates and wife goes to the market and infects 3 market vendors and 10 passers by all of this before she is even showing symptoms. One of the market vendors infects a truck driver who then transports the virus to the next town and the cycle repeats.

Three days later the man dies followed by his wife and one daughter within days many in the village follow the same pattern by the time the health officials from the city arrive a week later half of the village is dead and the other half sick, reports are coming in that outbreaks have been detected in a major city with an airport within 2 weeks the virus is spotted in other Asian countries and is gathering pace.

This very simple map of infections shows that in modern society viruses can spread very easily if they are infectious enough and unlike in 1918 when people stayed in one town or state for days before moving on today one truck driver could visit ten villages and a major city carrying more than just fruit and veg in the same amount of time.

With modern medicine the mortality rate could be vastly reduced but only if we are able to treat the problem before it becomes a full blown pandemic, a conservative estimate in a H5N1 pandemic varies from 300 to 700 million deaths globally this does not include permanent problems related to the virus infections.

Whats the Alternative

Although in this article I have picked on the Flu strain as the possible doomsday virus to wipe us out there are countless virus’s that exist which could do the same but thankfully many of not infectious but we should always be wary of new deadly strains arriving in the population one for which we have no immunity.

The sad fact about this kind of threat due to our life styles of living in such close proximity and traveling daily for miles for work is that we would be unlikely to stop a major outbreak of any virulent disease because although we have plenty of experience of the Flu their are just some strains the human body cannot handle.

But despite all of the worries about new virus and superbugs we are still at biggest threat from bird flu so when asked what ever happened to bird flu make sure you think long and hard about it because when it comes it plague and pandemics ignorance is not going to save you.

As we move further into the next century we need to start looking at a gradual move to lessening the world population and stopping the depletion of the world soils to keep nutrients in our food and look to reduce the stress on people so that illness doesn’t spread so easily through a populace. Here in the west with our mass transport and low nutrient high alcohol diets mixed in with high stress lifestyles we are ripe for a pandemic and it a miracle really that we have not seen one yet on the scale of the 1918 outbreak. I think that swine flu was a warning shot across our bows and we would do well to heed the warning.