Avian Flu - Article from a Health Writer dated 17 October

[McKenzie]

This article is by a Health Writer called Helen Branswell. I searched for her biographical details; she seems to be well respected and has 20 years experience in her field.

The medical world seems divided on the communicability of the virus but two paragraphs in the article are interesting>>>

<snip1>

Olsen said where human-to-human transmission may have taken place, the dates of onset of illness suggest transmission stopping after one generation. In other words, if a person passed the disease on to someone else, the newly infected individual did not appear to have spread it further.

</snip1>

<snip2>

"If transmission from birds to humans had become more efficient, then we would be seeing more cases," Maria Cheng said from Geneva.

</snip2>

http://chealth.canoe.ca/health_news_details.asp?news_id=16005&news_channel_id=0

[mike_c]

1. that's because there is likely a high "threshold" of human...

...transmissibility. Think about it this way-- if only 1 in every 100,000 exposures results in human infection, but tens of thousands of people have been exposed to tens of millions of infected birds, a small number of human cases are statistical likelihoods. Now say that 100 people have been infected that way (I'm making these numbers up to illustrate the point)-- if the virus hasn't changed, the likelihood of them passing the disease to a "second generation" human infection is still 1 in 100,000, so there will be very few such infections. Third generation infections become highly unlikely.

Now imagine what would happen if the virus became much more easily transmissible among humans. The statistical threshhold goes way down.