Birdflu

So, mainly directed towards UK'ers, but who reckons it'll hit the UK?
I heard on the radio earlier that vaccines are probably going to be prepared, 120million of them, each person needing two. That's a lot of needles!

 

This subject is everywhere right now McA...our papers and news bulletins are full of it also. I'm tempted to say "media hysteria" on this one....I'm sure someone will correct me

 

Everyone's reacted badly to it, the media's fault, and making everyone worried.

 

I agree. It's that time of year where they hype up all the potential negatives of the season......bad winters, intensive non-antibiotic reacting illnesses, anticipated lowest Christmas spending on record ..... it happens every year. Quite frankly we could get last year's newspapers out the archives and they would read exactly the same as this year....just different buzz words.

Or am I just an old cynic?

 

nope, not just cynical lev.
we hear every year of some potential pandemic virus.
if one ever hits in our current society, we'll be done before we know it, no matter how many "boosters" we take. Instead, enjoy life and wonder about the next time we'll kill a few thousand avians at a seconds notice.
How's our media coverage of the aids epidemic? Oh wait, that only affects people of color and non-heterosexuals!
sorry, just sick of modern journalism.
(but i'd still like to thank the brits for the bbc!)

 

I sometimes have a hard time dealing with the annual hysteria over the various strains of flu cropping up world-wide. I have friends that won`t get thier flu shot because of the way they feel over the needle. I suppose I understand...but being a diabetic it can be a life or death situation for me. I myself have to have a shot everyday...and sometimes more often. I have an appointment to get my flu shots, as well as a pneumonia shot. I may not like it but I trust the docs to do me right. I suggest that everyone get a flu shot if possible...especially those of us with chronic medical conditions and the elderly. I damned near died from pneumonia a few years back...and I was just 41 years old. I learned my lesson.

 

I`m extremely tired of ANY coverage of the aids epidemic. Granted, it`s a horrible disease but I hold the notion that it`s a behavioral disease and except for the folks that get it through transfusions(very rare now)it`s preventable. I resent the moneys that have been spent to beat AIDS because it`s siphoned money away from other non-preventable diseases, such as cancer hemphilia diabetes et al.

And oh yeah...the BBC rocks !

 

thanks for the opinion sasquatch!
in our society it is more preventable than in third world countries. agreed.
I just see that entire countries (mostly poor) are being decimated in africa.
On your particular case, my best friend is a type I diabetic.
He's had alot of his expenses payed for by being a "lab rat" for new products, so we're definitely developing new tools for ya guys
It is a serious illness, and I don't mean to downplay your personal affliction.
rock on with the rockin on

 

And you know what I do to people that hijack my threads.....

 

sorry mcadam,
but i was a little on topic

 

Well that's it then...I'm officially hijacking this thread! I was sick this weekend, so on MSN a lot waiting for you to log on mcadam and re-add me...and you didn't! So here goes......

How much is anyone paying for eggs at the moment?

 

I paid $1.29 for a dozen jumbo eggs Saturday.

(sorry mcadam) heh heh heh

 

Really??? I didn't know jumbos laid eggs

 

They do when they are real lonely

 

I swear the media worships the 1918 flu pandemic. They just keep hoping....

Last I heard the bird flu still needed to make 5 discrete evolutionary jumps to go person-to-person and airborne. Not really likely to happen this year. Eventually? Maybe? This year? Highly unlikely. The bird to human threat is real, but that won't cause a human pandemic. I also heard that Tamiflu won't help against it. Any viable vaccine needs the real virus to culture from, so I doubt that any vaccine they can come up with NOW will do very much good. But when people panic, government critters feel the itch to do something, even if it's pointless.

 

*COUGH* *COUGH*

 

Actually, there is enough known about this Avian strain to begin work on a viable vaccine. While the strain is not yet capable of pandemic communication, the vaccines are based off of two conserved proteins -- hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. These two proteins do mutate and are used to define the specific strains of influenza each year, however, the mutations you speak of that can affect the communicability of the virus should not significantly alter the HA and N proteins that have already been characterized.

 

Good info Publius. I stand corrected. I guess the question now is how long to production in quantity. And what about whatever airborne variant is the big one for this year. Flu vaccines are always a crap-shoot. The experts have to guess ahead of time which one will make it big, before it does. They're pretty good at it though.

 

The CDC releases the names of the three influenza strains it believes will be the most widespread -- and makes them available to researchers and vaccine manufacturers in January of each year. The production time table is very tight and takes until early July, with testing and verification continuing until early August when the vaccine is distributed to the public. Any setback in the production or testing of the vaccine can cause a delay in the distribution, there is just no time for error.

There is a new technology for production of influenza vaccine which uses adenovirus vectors that can be grown in cell culture (link). This process only takes about four months from beginning to end, but it is not yet approved by the FDA.

I am not sure when the the HA and N proteins were identified for this strain of "Bird Flu", but if production of the vaccine wasn't begun many months ago, it is still some time before a vaccine could become available.

That being said, I agree that the media has blown this out of proportion. You don't see anyone that works in this industry in a panic about it.