randomWalks

There was a good article in the New Yorker about this. Also, this is scary.

what gets overlooked is just how well-prepared Hong Kong is in fighting and detecting this.

You can read my article on it on Monday, which I will provide a link to next week.

Now, I would acknolwedge, however, athat the issue is how unprepared the rest of the developing world is.

Davis said that most are in denial about the whole thing--even the WHO. He pegs the number of potential deaths as in the hundreds of millions. He said it's basically inevitable given that A) how widespread Avian Flu already is and B) the concentration of birds and other animals in giant agribusiness farms. These things are essentially giant pools where the Flu is constantly mutating. And it's just a matter of time before a lethal strain develops and jumps to humans. There were some staggering statistics he trotted out, including describing this one (I think) hog farm in Utah where there is more waste created than Los Angeles' sewage system handles.

Oh yeah, Davis mentioned that there is a vaccine that could stop Avian Flu--Tamiflu. So naturally the U.S. only has 2 million doses of it. Gee. I wonder who'll get those?

Davis is a pretty powerful thinker--analyzing stuff in really amazing ways. He really outlined how this is, in fact, something that is entirely being goaded on by capital. ... The creation of huge, extremely dense slums in the Third World is one thing that could make this really bad. The development of agribusiness and building of huge cities of animals (billions of chickens or pigs in one location) creates huge seas of the flu that are constantly mutating. ... The fact that the drug companies in their quest for profit have increasingly shrunk their research budgets and upped their marketing budgets and leaned more towards developing high-profit items like Viagra rather than treatments for disease. (They want people on their products for life rather than something that will cure them too quickly). There used to be something like 26 companies that produced Flu shots. Now there are only four.

People keep pointing to Asia on this. And it sounds like it's likely that the impact will be most terrible in "developing" nations in Asia. But it's going to hit everywhere hard. It could break out in the U.S. first, even, from what Davis said.

Dare I suggest everyone just go veg? (Or at least stop eating birds and their eggs, so we can stop raising them by the billions.)

If' i'm not wrong, Hon gKong has stockpiles of this vaccine, too. The US is not the only one with this medicine.

I would also like to suggest that the real dilemna about avian flu's transfer from a bird-to-human pathogen to a human-to-human pathogen, has less to do with massive state farms of poultry than it does with a traditional farming practice in the Southeast Asian world.

WHO representative Henk Bekedam has said in interviews that the issue worrying health officials is that duck farmers in Vietnam and Cambodia and Indonesia, follow a practice of letting ducks, which carry the virus but do not get sick, from rice paddy to rice paddy, thereby infecting other poultry along routes that are hard to trace and impossible to control.

It really has less to do with huge farms of chickens. The disease mutates in pigs, they think, and these ducks are more likely to transfer the disease to pigs than a farm of poultry that is usually isolated and not found near other types of livestock.

Please, it seems like you're doing a lot of scare-mongering, Zagg. Does Davis have a bias against pharmacuetical companies or big business, or globalisation?

How can I contact him?

douglas.crets@singtaonewscorp.com

Davis is a Marxist, so yeah, he does have an axe to grind with corporate globalization. Google "Mike Davis" and you should find him. His most well-known book is City of Quartz. He's based in London, IIRC. If you google "Mike Davis" and "Avian Flu" you can find some essays and interviews he's done on this.

A few things. As for the vaccine, I was specifically talking about the U.S.'s supply. There's more than 2 million doses worldwide and, as I understand it, there's a lot of other countries better prepared than the U.S. (Dare I even mention that Nader was the only candidate in the 2004 election that even talked about this? Oops. I guess I did.) My point was specifically about the U.S.

Davis also mentioned hog farms. The farm in Utah he described is a hog farm. He specifically talked about how the appearance of avian flu in hogs (and cats) is an ominous sign since historically hogs and cats have not been susceptible to flu strains. As for stopping the spread with birds, it sounds like it's already too late.

Davis has a bone to pick with WHO on this too and thinks they're underplaying the real threat here.

Anyway, I'm entirely paraphrasing here. I'm not trying to pretend to be an authority. I'm just glad that there's an actual discussion occurring on a rW post.

As for scaremongering? Yeah, I'm probably being a little extreme. But that's partly because the Davis talk scared the shit out of me!

Yeah, I see what you're getting at now, but, I disagree on a point.

There are far more than 2 million antiviral medications worldwide. They've been stockpiled by the Chinese, the Thai, the Vietnamese, health authorities in Hong Kong. I question how accurate that US number is and its relevance to the worldwide supply.

Pick up the WHO's "Checklist for Pandemic Influenza Preparedness," and you will find that the WHO has a very very good plan for getting this together.

Problem: how many in the developing world can do this, as well?

Professor Malik Peiris, who pinpointed the coronavirus that causes SARS, has said that all this preparation will not have been done in vain, and he thinks that countries around the world should take this preparedness plan and accomodate it do their own country's plans.

When that is done, the entire world is in a great position, actually, and there really is no reason to resort to the kind of bone-picking Davis is doing.

That being said, I will look further into what Davis is doing and figure out where this is all coming from.

In the meantime, check this:

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5191

written by Thomas Abraham, author of a book called "Twenty first Century Plague," about SARS. He's a leading journalist expert on how Hong Kong basically saved the world because it has a very good health system and a somewhat responsive government.

and some drier reading:

http://www.dhhs.gov/nvpo/pandemicplan/

health and human services

and

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/pandemic/en/

The WHO, what, where, when and why of influenza pandemics.

there's a big conference today in Hong Kong about avian flu. the big guys and girls are going to be there.

hopefully, they can sort out some of this.

something is going to happen. instead of getting panicked about it, we should work on it.

before you read this: a miscommunication has put the number of avian flu deaths at 70. the number is really 50. my bad.

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Metro/GD18Ak08.html

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Metro/GD18Ak09.html