Sickeningly Lazy

19 October 2005



America Unprepared for Avian Flu

The current global fuss over a possible pandemic is largely over-blown. A couple of years ago, the SARS virus was supposed to be the big bad bug. Before that, Ebola in all its various forms and its fellow hemorrhagic fevers were going to kill of a sizable portion of humanity. Yet, the odds suggest that someday, something is going to tear through the human population because that is the nature of disease. And in the last 30 years, America has grown less, rather than more, capable of reacting.

The great swine flu scare of 1976 is now regarded as an oddity of that decade (the lowest point in western civilization) along with WIN buttons, polyester leisure suits and TV shows like “Supertrain.” However, at the time, the swine flu was taken as a very serious threat because it so closely resembled the Spanish flu of 1918. In the 1970s, most research suggested that the Spanish flu was a variety of swine flu – now, it is believed to be an avian-based disease. That is about where the parallels end because in 1976, America actually acted.

In February 1976, a young Army recruit, Private David Lewis of Ashley Falls, Massachusetts, died within 24 hours of telling his drill instructor that he didn’t feel well. When the diagnosis of swine flu appeared 2 weeks later, the government geared up to fight the disease. The result was the National Influenza Immunization Program (NIIP), the goal of which was to vaccinate every one of America’s 220 million residents. By December 16, 1976, 40 million had had the shots produced by four US-based manufacturers. The program was cancelled after 500 cases of the rare Guillain-Barre syndrome (a polio-like condition) turned up among those vaccinated. And only Private Lewis actually died from the disease. The swine flu scare was much ado about not quite nothing, and merits the title of “The Epidemic that Never Was.” Be that as it may, the US today couldn’t replicate the effort if the nation’s very existence depended on it.

For example, during last year’s flu season, the nation discovered it was going to be about 50 million doses of vaccine short. After the British government canceled the license of Chiron in that company’s Liverpool facility, the Americans were sent scrambling to find replacement vaccine, and in the end had to accept the fact that there wasn’t enough to go around. This year, the authorities are confident that 100 million doses will be ready, but taken on recent form, a grain of salt is in order.

If the current version of avian flu does mutate into a version that is transmitted easily from human to human, the current "solution" is to hand out Tamiflu, an anti-viral which appears to decrease the amount of time one is sick and to reduce the severity of any flu-related symptoms. The nation has a couple of million doses at most stockpiled – and the recommended course is 5 days of treatment. In short, most Americans get nothing, and no one is even going to try. Relenza is another anti-viral that may work, but it is in even shorter supply. Best of all, there are reports that there is one case of a girl in Vietnam whose avian flu is resistant to Tamiflu.

There is some good news. There is no evidence yet that the H5N1 virus has mutated into a human-to-human disease. There is no reason to believe that it must evolve that way. And there is no evidence that, if it evolves that way, it will remain as lethal as it is now. Of course, one would rather live in a country that is capable to inoculating the population with something that would prevent the disease; hoping that bad things won’t happen isn’t terribly proactive. Meanwhile, Britain has just announced a plan to inoculate every resident of the UK. Bids are being accepted to produce 110 million doses -- two each. And in Washington . . . .


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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