H5N1

Unfortunately, that’s not the new Hyundai sports model

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

10/12/04

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/S&E/h5n1.htm

The other day there was an article in the papers about a team of researchers playing around with H1N1, the influenza virus that swept the globe in 1918, killing forty million people and temporarily incapacitating over a billion in the space of 40 weeks. The military was interested in something that could quickly and effectively incapacitate up to half the population while only killing one or two percent. If you happen to be of a military-sociopathic frame of mind, it’s a humane and effective way of getting your own way in world affairs.

I always think of "The Stand" when I read news stories like that. "The Stand" was a Stephen King novel, later a miniseries, about the military losing control of a "shifting antigen" flu virus. The element that made this stuff nasty was that the virus changed every few days, faster than the body could produce new antibodies, while maintaining 99.9% lethality, and once it broke lose of military confinement, stock prices plummeted. The handful of survivors from around the world got to fight Satan for control of Las Vegas, and the viewer is left to ponder such imponderables as why the virus didn’t kill off Molly Ringwald’s annoying character when it had the chance, or why the hell they just didn’t LET Satan have Vegas if he wanted it all that bad. Ever been there in the summer?

The epidemiological premise behind King’s "superflu" isn’t going to cause any sleepless nights among the staff at the World Health Organization; any virus that unstable isn’t going to remain lethal for long. But it made for a good story, and served as a reminder that the next pandemic is out there, and will sweep across the globe, killing hundreds of millions of people, and it will probably happen sooner, rather than later.

There are some reasons why the operative word is now "sooner". One is called H5N1. Another is SARS. A third is called Chiron.

H5N1 is the latest generation of "Type A" influenza ("The Spanish Flu," H1N1, was the 1918 pandemic) and while the previous versions (the last of which was the Hong Kong flu in 1968) were pretty nasty, this one might be worse. Presently, it’s been popping up around Asia, killing about 75% of the people infected. Type A is called avian flu, since it usually migrates to humans from birds. Until H5N1, this migration was through intermediary species, such as pigs or horses. H5N1 can transmit directly from birds to humans.

Avian flu kills birds by the millions, sometimes the billions. Some variants can approach 90% contagion rate with 95% mortality. Uncorrected errors pop up when cells replicate ("genetic drift" or "evolution in action") which leads to new strains. Eventually, a human unlucky enough to have both avian flu and existing human flu at once has two entire colonies of bugs who end up creating a new type of bug that has elements of avian and existing human flu, and human-to-human transmissions of the bug begin. It’s believed that such a case has already occurred in Thailand. Type A bugs from different species can swap or "reassort" genetic materials and merge. That’s when the fun begins. When this happened in Hong Kong in 1997, the city killed its entire chicken population – some 1.5 million birds – in hopes of eradicating this new and dangerous virus.

It didn’t work, not completely. Not only is H5N1 still knocking around Asia, but other variants emerged in the Netherlands (H7N7, which is even more lethal to birds than H5N1) and again in Hong Kong (H9N2 which makes birds cranky and gives humans a slight upset tummy.)

The problem with this virus is that it seems much more adept at reassorting genetic material with other viruses that are already adapted to other animals, including humans, with the result that it is spreading species-to-species at a rate faster than any previously observed.

Evolution in action. The next avian flu pandemic is coming. The only question is whether it will be this winter, or a couple of years from now. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that such a pandemic might kill a billion people, including perhaps fifty million just in the United States in just a few months. (Given the severe pressure American freedom is under from the far right – both the theocrats of the religious right and the fascists of the corporate culture, it’s unlikely the constitutional democracy would survive such a blow).

Incidently, chicken soup won’t give you flu. You can eat well-cooked bird in perfect safety, and so may enjoy your Thanksgiving tryptophan rush this year, same as ever.

But live birds are contagious not only for several days before they show the first symptoms, but for up to ten days after they recover – if they recover. Dead birds remain contagious for a couple of days. At least, that’s the case with H5N1.

So if you handle live or uncooked dead birds, wash up thoroughly immediately afterward.

SARS is a medical mystery. We now know that it, too, was a form of Avian flu. But we still don’t know exactly what the vectors of transmission are, or why it went quiescent the way it did. But there is increasing speculation that it is nothing more than an offshoot of H5N1.

Two winters ago, there was fear – well justified – that SARS would be the next great pandemic. But then it fizzled. While WHO did an exemplary job of working to contain the virus, the agency got off to a late start, delayed by corrupt Chinese government officials who didn’t want to admit there was a problem. WHO can take credit for stopping a pandemic in the rest of the world, but nobody is quite sure why it didn’t wildfire through China, killing tens of millions.

Certainly we ducked a bullet.

But nobody knows where the bullet came from, or if the gun is still loaded. We have to assume that it is.

The third problem we face is exemplified by Chiron Corporation. The American company figured they could bluster and coerce the British government into letting them slide on some of the production standards demanded by the American government, and so opened a plant to manufacture flu vaccine in Liverpool. And when sloppy procedures inevitably led to contamination problems, the British government warned of "systemic problems" at the plant last year. The FDA, under pressure from the administration, didn’t push on demands that the plant permit inspection (after all, they were only the largest customer and were only demanding what was in the contract) and were content to accept Chiron’s word that they had the problem solved.

They were still blindly believing Chiron when the British government, realizing that anything coming out of that plant was at best suspect and at worst likely to poison the population, suspended their licence and told them to throw out their entire batch of influenza vaccine.

That meant half the planned flu shots for this winter in the US and England just went down the toilet. At the very least, it means a couple of thousand extra deaths this winter. It will hit the US hard, since part of the deal Chiron signed in order to operate in Britain gives the UK first dibs on stock in the event of a shortage.

Now, can you guess which company has been granted a leading role in developing a vaccine for H5N1? Can you?

Darn. You guessed.

But we can close this with a stirring exaltation of the human spirit. American Republicans quickly realized what a terrible blow the implosion of Chiron meant. Their projected profits for the next quarter were cut nearly in half!

But the US Senate, the best senate money can buy, was on top of things: they passed a $138 billion tax cut for corporations, including $40 billion for US corporations operating overseas. Chiron will probably be able to write off all the costs incurred by their negligence and incompetence.