Influenza Pandemic: Is the MSM Scaring the Public unnecessarily?

The voices on the avian flu topic have been a bit panicky. I'm not certain to what level we should be concerned. Especially since many of the voices are not doctors. And not being one myself, I'm hoping that the people who do have the appropriate knowledge are starting to push for appropriate control.

The last time a new influenza virus reached pandemic levels was in 1968, but the episode was not significantly deadlier than a typical bad flu season. Few people who lived through it even knew it occurred. Still, it killed 34,000 Americans. The 1918 pandemic was far more lethal. It killed 675,000 Americans at a time when the U.S. population was 100 million. Fifty million to 100 million people perished worldwide in the 1918 pandemic, according to Nobel laureate F. Macfarlane Burnet. The flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years. The difference in the death toll between 1918 and 1968 had little to do with such medical advances as antibiotics for secondary bacterial infections. The 1968 virus was simply much less virulent. But it wasn't just the virus. As with Hurricane Katrina, some of the deaths in 1918 were the government's responsibility. Surgeon General Rupert Blue was his day's Mike Brown. Despite months of indications that the disease would erupt, Blue made no preparations. When the flu hit, he told the nation, "There is no cause for alarm."

The article reads like someone looking to start a panic though.

Alarm was needed. Victims could die in 24 hours. Symptoms included bleeding from the nose, mouth, ears and eyes. Some people turned so dark blue from lack of oxygen that an Army physician noted that "it is hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white."

False reassurances from the government and newspapers added to the death rate. They also destroyed trust in authority, as Americans quickly realized they were being lied to. The result: society began to break apart. Confidential Red Cross reports noted "panic akin to the terror of the Middle Ages of the plague" and victims starving to death "not from lack of food but because the well are afraid to help the sick." Doctors and nurses were kidnapped. One scientist concluded that if the epidemic continued to build, "civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth within a few more weeks."

Alarm was needed? Appropriate precautions and response was needed, not alarm. The state of medicine in 1918 wasn't exactly at the level that could have prevented a pandemic either. The problem today is more related to how quickly a pandemic can spread, due to the ease and availability of travel. If a pandemic spreads quickly, I'm betting that the medical infrastructure would be overwhelmed quickly.

Unfortunately, the Time article compares the preparations for the pandemic to the preparations for hurricane Katrina. Listening to the talking heads on several news casts, I've heard stated by all that there is a chance of avian flu jumping to humans, but that the certainty that it will be as bad as the 1918 influenza pandemic are not highly probable. I suppose that is something, but it doesn't mean it won't or can't be as damaging as 1918.

From the CDC web-site:

CDC is taking part in a number of pandemic prevention and preparedness activities, including:

• Working with the Association of Public Health Laboratories on training workshops for state laboratories on the use of special laboratory (molecular) techniques to identify H5 viruses.
• Working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and others to help states with their pandemic planning efforts.
• Working with other agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration on antiviral stockpile issues.
• Working with the World Health Organization (WHO) and Vietnamese Ministry of Health to investigate influenza H5N1 in Vietnam and to provide help in laboratory diagnostics and training to local authorities.
• Performing laboratory testing of H5N1 viruses.
• Starting a $5.5 million initiative to improve influenza surveillance in Asia.
• Holding or taking part in training sessions to improve local capacities to conduct surveillance for possible human cases of H5N1 and to detect influenza A H5 viruses by using laboratory techniques.
• Developing and distributing reagents kits to detect the currently circulating influenza A H5N1 viruses.
• Working together with WHO and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on safety testing of vaccine seed candidates and to develop additional vaccine virus seed candidates for influenza A (H5N1) and other subtypes of influenza A virus.

Something is being done. I just hope that it is sufficient and that the threat level is understood. Maybe there isn't any need for panic, but being a touch nervous strikes me as appropriate.