[Buzz]

When you have a PhD in microbiology and make some serious discoveries you can call his contributions to humanity "Drivel". But that's never going to happen.

[jimeez]

I was doing some reading over on Mr. Webster's (well, St. Jude's) site, and this caught my eye.

Quote

And the United States does not have the infrastructure to produce vaccine. “Whether it’s your tea cups or motor cars or dresses, so many things we have in this country are now made off shore,” Webster says. “We are dependent on foreign countries for our goods. That includes vaccine. We used to have eight manufacturing companies in the U.S. making vaccine; now we have only two. This is a severe problem.

You'd think the govt. would hop on this one ASAP.

The same article goes onto say that the H5N1 virus has been building up a resistance to the antiviral drug amantadine because those bastards in China have been giving it to their chickens. It's buiulding up resistance to Tamiflu as well.

They also have a nice sensible hand washing guide.

[Biker]

Buzz, on 31 August 2010 - 03:53 AM, said:

When you have a PhD in microbiology and make some serious discoveries you can call his contributions to humanity "Drivel". But that's never going to happen.

PhD - Piled Higher and Deeper. Just because someone managed to recite the mantra required to make it through many years of University study, does not automatically make them the expert on all things.

[jimeez]

Biker, on 31 August 2010 - 10:23 AM, said:

PhD - Piled Higher and Deeper. Just because someone managed to recite the mantra required to make it through many years of University study, does not automatically make them the expert on all things.

Are you serious, Tom? Have you read this guy's qualifications? Have you read about the past 40 years of global travel and intensive research focusing solely on the influenza virus? I don't know how credible is a degree from the Australian National University, but the guy's experience alone makes him a more reliable source than anyone here.

[Buzz]

Biker, on 31 August 2010 - 10:23 AM, said:

PhD - Piled Higher and Deeper. Just because someone managed to recite the mantra required to make it through many years of University study, does not automatically make them the expert on all things.

only this thing in this case - he is the leading expert in the world.

so i go by what he says.

[Buzz]

jimeez, on 31 August 2010 - 11:37 AM, said:

Are you serious, Tom? Have you read this guy's qualifications? Have you read about the past 40 years of global travel and intensive research focusing solely on the influenza virus? I don't know how credible is a degree from the Australian National University, but the guy's experience alone makes him a more reliable source than anyone here.

Australians are a nation of 21 million and we win 20% of the olympic medals.

The ANU is one of the finest unis in the world and he is now in the USA - they snapped him up because he is the best in the world.

[Buzz]

Robert Gordon (Rob) Webster (born May 7, 1932), in Balclutha, New Zealand, leading avian influenza expert, is the virologist who in 1957 was the first to announce a link between human flu and bird flu[citation needed]. He correctly posited that pandemic strains of flu arise from genes in flu virus strains in nonhumans; for example, via a reassortment of genetic segments (antigenic shift) between viruses in humans and nonhumans (especially birds) rather than by mutations (antigenic drift) in annual human flu strains.[1]

Accomplishments

Robert G. Webster holds the Rose Marie Thomas Chair in Virology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He is also director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds, the world's only laboratory designed to study influenza at the animal-human interface. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society of New Zealand, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. In December 2002, he was presented with the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Infectious Diseases Research.[3]

Webster has been awarded membership of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and the honour of fellow of both the Royal Societies of New Zealand and London. Other memberships he enjoys are of the American Society for Microbiology, American Society for Virology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as being a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He also heads the World Health Organisation (WHO) collaborating laboratory on animal influenza.

http://en.wikipedia....28virologist%29

[Buzz]

Stay Vigilant, Bird Flu Could Spark Next Global Outbreak, Urges Expert

Robert Webster, an influenza expert, says health authorities worldwide need to remain watchful for possible influenza outbreaks, despite swine flu being much less deadly than people had originally feared. Webster, chairman of the virology and molecular biology department at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, says that bird flu remains a possible threat and could be the cause of the next global outbreak.

Last month, WHO (World Health Organization) declared the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic over, after 18,600 reported deaths worldwide - WHO warnings and recommendations had led many to believe we were in for an epidemic which would cost millions of lives. Some prestigious medical journals, as well as leading experts expressed concern that billions of dollars of public money was wasted, with not much achieved except for the pharmaceutical industry's profits. At an influenza conference in Hong Kong (Options for the Control of Influenza VII) a WHO official defended the accusations against it.

According to Robert Webster:

We may think we can relax and influenza is no longer a problem. I want to assure you that that is not the case.

http://www.medicalne...cles/200085.php

[Greg]

ethics, on 27 August 2010 - 09:33 PM, said:

By all means, everyone should be taking precautions, everyone and all the time. They are not hard once you get used to them. I come home, I wash my hands, I come to work, do the same. Same before meals. I've trained myself not to touch my face anywhere in between washes.

The above has cut down my colds to like 1 per year and FLU? Didn't have a bad one since 1995 (watch me jinx myself). So right there should be the first line of defense.

I do practically the same thing. Do not touch anything on your face while out in public, then wash your hands immediately upon arriving home. I consider my home to be a clean area contagion wise so I don't have any rigid wash hands before meals thing, but I mostly cook my own meals so I rinse my hands frequently while cooking.

I can't recall the last time I had a cold, flu, upper respiratory infection. It could be one or two decades since. I doubt I have any special immune system. The only reason I don't get sick is hygiene.

I wonder about all the people who are getting URIs, colds, flu all the time, wonder why they can't understand that their own actions are causing their diseases.

[Greg]

Buzz, on 29 August 2010 - 06:56 AM, said:

All I can do is repeat the words:

Repetition of the same argument is not going to convince anybody to join your side.

[Buzz]

Greg, on 06 September 2010 - 04:08 PM, said:

Repetition of the same argument is not going to convince anybody to join your side.

I don't have a side for people to join. I am not trying to convince anyone. It's not a repetition of the same argument at all. It is a restating of the facts.

Just as people believed:

a. The stock market always rises,
b. House prices always rise,
c. Sub-Prime Loans are a good idea,
d. Interest Rates will stay low,

All of these false beliefs came to a spectacular train wreck in 2008 and we are still dealing with that train wreck.

None the less people - the majority - were stupid enough to actualy believe these absurdities, because people are genetically very close to Chimpanzees and the majority of people are less intelligent than Chimps.

Socrates said it perfectly: "The Majority is always wrong".

People have false beliefs and eventually and in every case their stupidity is demonstrated in a spectacular way.

The only thing is - with Influenza, it's a matter of life and death.

This could easily be an instance where the stupid are all killed off in a mass extinction event for the stupid, and only the intelligent humans survive to pass on their intelligence to future generations.

Rather than the survival of the fittest - its the most intelligent that survives. The evidence is all there - and only the stupid cannot see and understand it.

[Greg]

Buzz, on 07 September 2010 - 06:06 AM, said:

I am not trying to convince anyone.

Nor is it working.

So we're entering a 20 year global financial depression and most of us are going to die from bird flu. Too bad you don't have some more cheery predictions, like global thermonuclear annihilation.

[tke711]

Buzz, on 07 September 2010 - 06:06 AM, said:

People have false beliefs....

Just wondering if you think that applies to all people, including yourself?

[Buzz]

tke711, on 07 September 2010 - 08:31 PM, said:

Just wondering if you think that applies to all people, including yourself?

Socrates said it - and he has been proved right many times.

"The majority is always wrong".

I am not in the majority.

[Buzz]

Greg, on 07 September 2010 - 02:38 PM, said:

Nor is it working.

So we're entering a 20 year global financial depression and most of us are going to die from bird flu. Too bad you don't have some more cheery predictions, like global thermonuclear annihilation.

The H5N1 virus is a fact - which you deny at your peril.

The 20 years of asset deflation, deleveraging and depression is also a fact after an asset bubble and debt bubble, which you also seem to be denying.

In February 2000, the Dow Jones was 11,753.

Today it is 10,340. Thats after 10 years and 7 months it is now 1,413 points lower that it was almost 11 years ago.

Thats called a Secular Bear Market.

In addition to that we have a Post Bubble Economy.

The last time they came together was the Great Depression.

Those are the facts about which you are in denial.

You can pretend and fantasise as much as you like but the H5N1 is a clear and present danger. The same can be said about a depression.

Reality - its called reality.

[Buzz]

Bird flu jumps to pigs

The H5N1 bird flu virus may be evolving the ability to spread from mammal to mammal, says a team who have discovered that pigs in Indonesia have been infected with the disease since 2005. It's one step in the frightening chain of events that could lead to human transmission and a pandemic.

The H5N1 bird flu kills 60 per cent of the people it infects. However, most infections occur after direct contact with an infected bird and the disease does not appear to spread well between humans. As long as human to human transmission remains rare, the virus cannot cause a flu pandemic.

This could change. One way the virus could develop the ability to spread among humans is to first infect pigs, which have many biochemical similarities to humans. Flu viruses adapted to pigs have less trouble adapting to humans than do bird flu viruses – one pig-adapted virus caused the swine flu pandemic in 2009.

Chairul Nidom of Airlangga University in Surabaya, Indonesia, and colleagues in Japan, have been tracking H5N1 in pigs since 2005 in Indonesia, the country hardest hit by the avian flu virus. They now report that between 2005 to 2007 when the avian flu peaked, 7.4 per cent of 700 pigs they tested also carried H5N1. There have been sporadic reports of H5N1 in pigs, but this is the first time the extent of the problem has been measured.
Poultry to pig

In each case, the virus in pigs closely resembled H5N1 from nearby outbreaks in poultry, suggesting it has jumped from the bird to the pig population. That and the small proportion of pigs infected suggests the virus cannot yet spread between pigs. "If the virus was better adapted to pigs it would have spread like wildfire," says Ab Osterhaus of the University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, a flu expert not involved in the research.

Since 2007, avian flu outbreaks have diminished in poultry and in people in Indonesia and the investigators found that the the rate of infection in pigs has similarly dropped. Although pigs are still carrying signs of recent infection.

This means the virus could still be spreading and evolving because the team discovered, to their surprise, that infected pigs show no symptoms. "H5N1 viruses could easily evade detection as they spread through Indonesia in asymptomatic pigs," warn Nidom and colleagues.

And there are worrying indications that H5N1 is already evolving. Nidom says that in one pig, the virus had developed the ability to bind to a molecule present in the noses of both pigs and humans. That's exactly the kind of change that could allow it to spread between people.

"This shows we should keep a close watch on pig flu, as it can change rapidly," warns Osterhaus. The European Union is heeding the call and is funding a scientific collaboration called FLUPIG, to study how bird flu adapts to pigs and how pig flu spreads to people. It will meet for the first time later this month.

http://www.newscient...ps-to-pigs.html