Dyer: The coming influenza pandemic and how to meet it

[wschalle]

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2781432
-snip-
The long-term solution is to invest many billions of dollars and a huge amount of political capital in persuading peasant families throughout China and Southeast Asia to change the way they raise their poultry. The urgent short-term task is to develop a way of mass-producing influenza vaccine far faster than is now possible.
It's urgent because "the world is in the gravest possible danger of a global pandemic," as Dr. Shigeru Omi, Western Pacific regional director of the World Health Organization, told an emergency conference on avian flu held in Vietnam two months ago.
-snip-
The virus has now appeared in wild birds which can carry the virus far beyond its original reservoir in domestic chickens in southern China and Southeast Asia. In late May China closed all its nature parks after 178 migratory geese were found dead from the virus in Qinghai province in the northwest. The most recent outbreak has so far killed 53 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. And even more ominously, the first probable case of human-to-human transmission was recorded last September in Vietnam.
The danger of a global flu pandemic that could be as bad as, or worse, than the "Spanish influenza" outbreak of 1918-19 (which killed 40 million to 50 million people, half of them young, healthy adults) comes from the fact that a strain of influenza virus that normally affects only birds can swap genes with a strain that is highly infectious between human beings. If people with the human type of influenza should also be infected with the avian type (through direct contact with infected poultry), the gene swap can easily occur - and direct human-to-human transmission becomes possible.
-snip-
more at article

[Warpy]

1. Bush thinks we need to be culled

After all, there won't be as much whining over offshoring if there are fewer of us. If there are jobs around, then the rest of us won't want to retire and collect social security, thus depriving government of monies that can better be given to captains of industry. With fewer of us and the ones left working hard, they won't have to worry about all those ugly people walking along the beach and fucking up their billion dollar views.

Public health is a very low priority for the rich right now, since they need fewer of us around to serve them. It's the main reason we still don't have single payer health care, DECADES after every other industrialized country has gotten it. RICH MEN DON'T CARE.

Once you understand that, you'll have to understand the true nature of the class warfare in this country. We are losing it, and soon it will cost many of us our lives.

[oscar111]

2. FLU SHOTS: GET several during a year

each ups resistance a little more.

there is ALWAYS some flu around. stay resistant ALL year. Health workers do this.. several shots/yr.

BottomLine newsletter just reported, those who got flushots got less stroke {and less heart trouble i think IIRC}. Claim of a prof is that a pneumonia germ causes arterial damage, so flushot helps you avoid that germ later in the year, so also avoiding the germ getting in arteries.

Get the antiviral pills too. I think the name was Tamiflu.... a prescription pill. Site claims many ways of taking it.. like in addition to the flushot... or having it just on hand.. . or when no shots available... many ways all help. Keep your guard up.

As to warpy's post above me, see also Milton Friedman's harrowing barbaric quote in the end of my sig below

AVOID COLDS AND FLU: never never touch nose, eyes, mouth , ears with bare fingers. Use kleenex folded four thicknesses.. hold one layer up to the light.. see how porous it is? Use four thicknesses at all times.

Dont touch food with bare viurs laden fingers. Dont touch the food end of spoons, forks. Frankly, i dont eat at restaurants... who knows who coughed on your pizza? Or the food poisoning history of that place over the past year?

A campus eatery i used to frequent.. a friend who worked there told me of "rats running over the food back in the kitchen". No more for me.

[Warpy]

3. Frequent handwashing

will keep you much safer than getting multiple flu shots. I know of no one who bothers with more than one shot, and I'm an RN.

Training yourself to scratch your face with the back of your wrist, hand bent, will eliminate most hand to mouth contact and thus most ways for cold viruses to reach the promised land of mucus membrane. Those viruses will be picked up from surfaces by finger and palm, so those are the areas of the hand you need to keep away from your face. People will stare. You'll get used to it.

Influenza is spread by contact and by droplet, so if this thing hits, spend as little time in public places as you can. Avoid crowds if you can. Buy and wear surgical masks if you have to ride crowded subways.
People will stare. You'll get used to it.

The last cold or flu I had was in 1986. This stuff WORKS, folks.

[oscar111]

5. handwashing not as good as fingers always away from nose etc

Logically, that is.

A washed hand half an hour ago, has by now touched many doorknobs , tabletops, you name it. Then ... your nose, depositing influenza virus.

The idea of using the back of the hand is ok, better than fingertips for sure. But, if you like a margin of safety, then i say dont do that, as handshakes {which you may have forgotten} are able to land viruses on the back of the hand.

Better to scratch the nose, et, by using the folded kleenex, four layers thick.

I read that healthcare workers get several flushots a year... perhaps warpy {gee i hate to disagree with him... such a fine post at the first re in this thread. Sorry to disagree so much , warpy}..... perhaps he works where the others SHOULD get many shots/year, but are just not up to doing things really top-notch.

Fact is indisputable: flu is around ALL YEAR. Otherwise it would die off and vanish. Low levels in summer for sure, but there. one extra shot does up resistance... was it seven percent?.. and the recmmmended extra .. total four IIRC.. might up it a small bit more. But keeping the baseline resistance there is the big idea, not going over the good baseline.

more on handwashing... Avoiding fingers to face works even without handwashing. Washing is not practical many times... avoiding fingers to face is always do=able. Use kleenex over fingers when scratching is needed. Much easier than going to wash before scractching.

I have never understood the stress on handwashing, rather than kleenex over fingers. Looks to me like tradition keeping an inferior idea going.. like the idea of interns in ER's working 48 hours with no sleep.

Must have killed off thousands with that hoary medical tradition... would you want the driver of the eighteen wheeler coming in the opposite lane, to be awake 48 hours straight?

Sleeplessness makes for errors, and interns are not really God. Nope. ER is the last place to be sloppy, BTW. Be sloppy on healthy folks who need plastic surgery, not car crash victims with guts hanging out... which is what the ER sees. Medical Establishment is really a prize winner for idiocy.

Warpy, hate to disagree so much. Apologies, and compliments on a fine post at the top of the thread re's.
Keep posting.

[fed-up]

4. Build and Maintain a Healthy Immune System

I had two flu shots in my life. One in the late 1970's or was in early 1980's? That was the year the batch that triggered Guillien Barre Syndrome in some of the unlucky flu shot victims. I was young and believed the hype that everyone needed a flu shot.

The last shot I got was in 1997 when I was taking care of my mother and was concerned that I might inadvertantly pass something on to her. I was sick as a dog for two weeks after the shot.

Now I concentrate on eating a healthy, mostly organic diet and getting regular exercise and have rebuilt my immune system after a long illness. Many of us are exposed to germs, viruses and bacteria daily, but only those that do not have strong immune systems succumb to illness.

I don't trust anything the administration would want to give to the masses. I take responsibility for my own health care!

That said, those with chronic illnesses or compromised immune systems may want to think about getting a shot.

[oscar111]

6. SLEEP, plenty of it, also helps your immune system

dont apologize for getting a lot of sleep. Let that be your secret "edge' in competing with others.

many experts lament our national shortage of sleep.

downsizing and anxiety probably have a lot to do with causing it.
So blame the RW! LOL.

ALSO: at night, apply vaseline to the inside of the nose, with a finger covered with the usual four layers of a folded Kleenex. This keeps the sinuses moist, which all experts recommend. Mucous floats the viruses that land, off to the rear and one swallows that down to the stomach where acid kills germs. Main thing is that viruses cannot land on dry sinus cells and then infect them. Stay moist... do this daytime if the air is very dry.

PS again, no fingers to
mucous membranes in the

nose,

eyes {you can catch flu here too it seems, and mouth too}

mouth

{one source added, ears too. I dont understand that , but that is what he said}

[oscar111]

7. Nominate for greatest page.. button , bott of OP

xxxx