ABCNEWS: 50% CHANCE BIRD FLU WILL GO H2H

I believe the death rate in 1918 was 2.5%  of the world population, not of those who caught flu.  Then hardly anyone lived in cities.  Now hugely more of us do. Infection rates in 1918 in cities were nearer 60%.  In institutions like army camps boarding schools prisons etc it was 90%.  How about public transport now?

We had an old lady on British TV Monday night who survived it but both her parents and her little brother died of it within days.  She said it was "dreaded".  My mother, who was 9/10 at  the time told me about it and used exactly the same word, "dreaded".  She told me how their neighbours died.  In Britain it followed the routes of the railway lines.

THis doctor definitely gets my vote. But the really scary part of all this is that he is baseing his theory on what is currently known to us. We got no freaking Idea what is going on in Indo, Azerbaj, china and africa( the pot is just getting bigger). My fear is its has jumped. Where all on this site, we see the confirmed stories and the unconfirmed.  No one really stands much to gain with an unconfirmed story and there are just too many.

Sorry I'm frustrated   

Can't wait till tommorrow when the Who shows some of there cards. 

From an article in Aetiology, Tuesday, October 4, 2005 

http://tinyurl.com/mvfd7

Robert Webster is currently in his mid-seventies, and much of that life has been spent battling and studying influenza. With all he’s seen, it’s significant that he’s made the following comments regarding H5N1:

This is the worst flu virus I have ever seen or worked with or read about. We have to prepare as if we were going to war—and the public needs to understand that clearly. This virus is playing its role as a natural bioterrorist. The politicians are going to say Chicken Little is at it again. And, if I’m wrong, then thank God. But if it does happen, and I fully expect that it will, there will be no place for any of us to hide. Not in the United States or in Europe or in a bunker somewhere. The virus is a very promiscuous and efficient killer.

 Dr Webster has said this before 50% death rate. I believe B/F will not get weaker , as some have predicted. What is the death rate  now? I give this man credit, he has researched flu and  B/F for many long years at St.Jude's. He seems to me, a honest and caring doctor, who is telling  it like it is.

The news is starting to hit mainstream.  I know on the ABC  show the good Dr. said he had 3 mos. worth of food stocked away.  At least some in the audience might have heard that and a little alarm bell went off.  The groundswell of public response should gather steam over the next couple of weeks.  Then like a big 'everyone is welcome to the new food scramble' things will morph into panic mode.  The show 'Survivor' may be missing a few in the audience as they are getting ready for their own 'survivor reality show'.

Warning!  Not a cheerful post! One of my more negative views....

Oh yes, 50% of the world  population dying is very easy.  Just the loss of chickens to eat or sell ALREADY has people dying, I am sure.  Huge death rates will occur quickly in poor areas of the world (most of the world!), from all the disruptions.  Who is going to send wheat and basic foods to the areas where millions would die RIGHT NOW if they didn't get this asistance, if the donor country/organization has a pandemic?  How many aids patients, TB, anyone with another illness, the old and infirm, babies survive without their family, some of whom will get sick, to take care of them? 

In industrialized countries, imagine all the accidents and illnesses that become fatal without hospitals, medicine, doctors.  Heart attacks, kidney dialysis, cancer, asthma, basic childhood diseases, car accidents, any accident, a simpe cut without antibiotics, a huge number of regular flu cases ("226,054 primary and 294,128 any listed respiratory and circulatory hospitalizations associated with influenza virus infections on average each season in the USA") - how many of these 500,000 patients become,with no medicine, good food or care, fatal?  Total hospitalizations related to heart failure is 3 million per year. How many deaths when their are NO beds, NO ICU's available? How many infants die in birth with NO doctors or hospitals with beds available? How many midwives are left?

How about the violence associated with the shortages, terror of infection, general breakdowns of law enforcement, husbands/wives cooped up together each sick with sick children for months?  Infrastructure failures like power loss in the winter or summer?  Water systems failing?  Who keeps it all up with no money and short supplies  (gasoline, spare parts from foreign lands and I'll tell you, most of our technology is foreign).   How about wars, major incursions of one desperate or avaricious country against it's neighbor.  Response to the normal natural disasters that will occur will be non-existent - Katrina with no gas or anywhere to go!.  Too much to mention anymore.... Sorry to be a bummer, but deaths from other things other than flu may be more than the flu...

"It won't be the Apocalypse, but it may feel like it!"  Fiddlerdave

Haven't many experts said that as influenza strains mutate into efficient human-to-human viruses, they typically become less lethal, on a % basis, than when they're less efficiently transmissible, though?

I may very well be wrong, but I thought that was a quasi-stable tenet of virology.

Thomas Angel wrote: ExaminedLife wrote: Haven't many experts said that as influenza strains mutate into efficient human-to-human viruses, they typically become less lethal, on a % basis, than when they're less efficiently transmissible, though? I may very well be wrong, but I thought that was a quasi-stable tenet of virology. Well my arguement here with that is that if it would already be 95 or 100 percent fatal without the benefit of medical care, and then add all the collateral damage, if it lost half of it's lethal power along the road of mutation to H2H there will only be one wave and it will be terrible.

Has anyone put out a model showing it would be that lethal in human pandemic form in areas lacking comprehensive medical care, though?

I thought that the mortality rate in developing nations is around 55%, even absent medical intervention.

I agree that the absolute mortality numbers will be awful from a human pandemic, even in the industrialized world, but I'm speaking terms of percentages.

Even a 5% mortality rate, assuming a 20% infection rate, would be awful:

5 billion people * .2 = 1 billion infected

1 billion infected * .05 = 50 million dead

Those number could go off the charts if we assume a 30% infection rate, and a 20% mortality rate:

5 billion people * .3 = 1.5 billion infected

1.5 billion infected * .2 = 300 million dead

And again, the numbers rise dramatically if it stays as lethal as it is in present form (50%), for whatever reasons (lack of medical care, overwhelmed hospitals, etc.):

1.5 billion infected * .5 = 750 million dead (more than twice the population of the United States)