Re: OT Bush says Bird Flu might get military quarantine of effected areas.
- From: "blart" <walkergwm@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:47:26 GMT
Hmmm
I did couch my opinion in terms of a 'quarantine', and what that quarantine
will have to be like if it is to contain a virus of the caliber of the bird
flu - the etiology, epidemiology and microbiology of which is reasonably
well known in academic circles. Its just that the reasoned warnings and
projections of academia are all too often ignored. Witness the dire
predictions prior to Katrina and Rita and others, also witness the total
lack of viable emergency management in the aftermath. Also witness the
standard malaise and ignorance of large swathes of the populace (also
modelled). Also witness the dire effects of living near a Tsunami rife fault
zone. Also witness the effects of carbon dioxide expulsion in African lakes,
living near a large modern corporations manfacturing plant (Bhopal?), Exxon
Valdez. Living in a bushy suburb that turns into an inferno because building
codes are lax, burnoffs are squelched by councils because 'important people'
don't like them, and folks build wooden (ish) dwellings on RIDGE LINES. Also
place a significant proportion of oil production/handling capacity in a
hurricane prone area and FAIL TO HURRICANE PROOF IT. Also fail to anticipate
that China will come out of enforced cold war isolation and suck up all
possible new avenues of oil production and them some. Also build millions of
SVU's (pun intended) that get 10mpg..... because the People want them? When
fossil fuel reserves are running out and grennhouse gases do seem to add to
global warming...
The point is that the flu may be readily amenable to modern treatment, its
just that by the time such treatment is swung into action, the draconian
nature of the quarantine needed may indeed result in the consequences
expressed below. Especially once the logistics of such a quarantine bite
down hard, in consequence with mob rule.
George Dantzig, George Orwell, George Bush anyone?
"Terrell Miller" <millerto@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:b_P0f.113$ge1.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> blart wrote:
>> The quarantine will be brutal, and will excise large areas and all exit
>> vectors quickly.
>> Once avian flu xenomorphs into humans it will kill over 60% of people it
>> infects initially, then the death rate will grow as medical
>> infrastructure and other societal needs melt down - people can and will
>> die of perfectly treatable ailments such as secondary bacterial
>> infections, starvation and gunshot.
>>
>> Expect that the rich and well connected to have enough anti-virals to
>> protect them and their private armies.
>> All others will have to rely on luck, natural immunity and fleet feet to
>> avoid death squads whilst looking for food.
>>
>> expect blackwater fever, typhus, typhoid and dysentry to clean up more
>> people
>>
>> do not expect medical insurance to be of help
>> do not expect government to help anyone other than themselves, and 'their
>> kind of people'
>>
>> farfetched?
>>
>> katrina and rita say Hi!
>
>
> you'll note that there was only one minor outbreak of Norovirus in the
> Gulf Coast region that quickly burned itself out, as well as scattered E.
> Coli outbreaks (that only last for a few days anyway) in a couple
> shelters. That's all.
>
> Not too shabby at all for one of the largest, if not the largest,
> evacuations in American history.
>
> You'll also note that SARS burned itself out very rapidly, even though it
> had a very similar etiology and propagation pattern to the hypothetical
> "killer virus".
>
> In this age of instant communication, it's so much easier for local health
> officials to keep in touch with (and call in the support of) the worldwide
> epidemiology community that it's very doubtful such a virus could spread
> far enough in a short enough period of time before somebody noticed
> something funny.
>
> Which is not to say thaty it can't happen, but the virus would have to
> have *extremely* slow onset (so infected humans come into contact with
> many people before they show symptoms, then those people infect others
> before they get sick, etc.), *extremely* efficient person-to-person
> transmission, *extreme* stability (so the virus remains viable and does
> not rapidly mutate into something that can't hurt humans), etc.
>
> Any one of those factors would seriously limit the ability of the virus to
> spread over a large area/population. Either it's so unstable that it
> mutates into nonviability in humans just as fast as it mutated into
> lethality, or the onset of symptoms is fast enough that it's easy to see a
> pattern developing and quarantine infected patients (as happened with
> SARS), or the virus is lethal but just doesn't "hop" from person to person
> fast enough to cause more than sporadic cases.
>
> Moral of the story: the public health infrastructure in the world today is
> infinitely more advanced than it was during the Spanish Flu pandemic in
> 1918, or during the plague outbreaks through history. We know a lot more
> about how diseases spread, we know a lot more about how to contain them,
> and we have a much more robust and effective world communication grid to
> help news of the problem disseminate. All that makes it much less likely
> that millions of people would die from teh same new virus.
>
> What's more likely is that a new, uncurable virus *will* emerge at some
> point (no way around that), but that the damage will be quickly limited to
> small "reservoirs" of dying humans, who will be very quickly quarantined
> until the virus can burn itself out.
>
>
>
> --
> Terrell Miller
> millerto@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Suddenly, after nearly 30 years of scorn, Prog is cool again".
> -Entertainment Weekly
.
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