Bill Frist is on the TV talking about how millions of people will be dead

[Maraya1969]

from the bird flu in ???? years unless they make up millions of vaccines.

What happened to SARS?

What happened to Monkey Pox?

What happened to HIV taking away 1/2 of our population by the year 2000?

I think these people at the CDC have to justify their jobs so they come up with a - new virus that isn't - every 5 or so years. The term "virus hunters" is very appropriate here in my opinion. New viruses are job security to them.

It is just more fear mongering. And now I think they have even started yelling about bird flu mutations. Every time a virus doesn't act like they hystericalized that it would they yell "Mutation!"

When I was younger I had OCD and worried about illnesses that were so rare some people never heard of them. And there was never these type of "You'd better be scared" messages except for cancer, of which I have had every single kind. I worry now about the poor people who are dealing with that type of OCD and how cruel it is to scare the shit out of them with a virus that hasn't even happened yet!

BTW, what makes them think that this bird flu is going to cross the species line when there are thousands of others that don't? I haven't seen anyone with Parvo or Kennel cough or Distemper or Feline Leukemia lately have you? And they have been around for years and my poor animals have to get shots for them and I always wonder how much of it is sincere concern and how much is bottom line profit.

And why is it always some animal in some far away country that they say is threatening us? Personally I think it is because people would demand a full explanation if it started happening with our pet dogs and cats and the straw man would fall real fast. So it has to start far away in some remote place in the world where many people do not have access to computers to look things up and where most people from more modern countries just do not go.

[arcane1]

1. I wonder which pharm company paid him to say that?

:shrug:

[Warpy]

4. It doesn't matter. It's not like we make flu vaccine any more

in the US. Mergers and offshoring have taken care of that.

Feel safer now?

[rainy]

5. Doesn't Rumsfeld sit on the board of a huge pharma....

the one that makes theraflu?

[verse18]

8. i think you meant tamiflu n/t

:)

[Maraya1969]

12. Theraflu would probably work just as well for the bird flu!

[Clark2008]

14. Probably his own.

HRC would certainly benefit: http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/the-bad-doctor/3253/

[rodeodance]

2. IT's people like Frist who promote panic!

[jaxx]

9. And try to keep the focus off the daily scandal.

How can anybody have faith in what that POS says after diagnosing Terri Schiavo on video? LOL he's a bird brain.

[Maraya1969]

13. OMG you may have solved the puzzle! Bird Flu is the chronic

malaise suffered by a country under the bird brain administration under bush.

[malaise]

3. Fugg Bill Frist n/t

[Bitter Cup]

6. I'm still waiting for Ebola

remember the movies and books like the Hot Zone that were flooding the market back in the 90s? We were all going to bleed out and die any day.

I don't deny there is a risk of a new pathogen tearing up a species...over specialization can and has done that many times. But we're jumping at shadows here. Funny how often the end of the world comes up and how seldom it actually happens.

But hey, someone needs to crank out new plots for bad Made for sci-fi movies.

And we all know how important it is for us to be afraid...always afraid.

[Maraya1969]

18. Forgot Ebola!

:banghead: Does Ebola make you band your head against the wall?

[Progressive4Life]

7. Sorry, Billy-boy. Wrong booga-booga!

IMO, those same millions are more likely to die from nuclear war and/or the residual effects of radiation exposure.

Why?

With Dumbya beating the war drums with Iran and with the Pentagon wanting to use its Trident missiles (with 'nonnuclear' warheads) for pre-emptive war, I believe bird flu is the least of our worries.

[CoffeeCat]

10. Please tell me that Frist--A DOCTOR--did not say this!

Please correct me if I'm mistaken. I'm not a doctor.

However, it's my understanding that a vaccine cannot be manufactured until the
virus mutates to its deadly form that can be passed from human to human.

We couldn't start making a vaccine now, if we wanted!

Is Frist really suggesting that we have to get started NOW, making a vaccine
to protect the public from bird flu?

If he truly is---this is worse than his dead-wrong, long-distance diagnosis
of Terri Schiavo.

Please someone...is this what he is saying???

[Maraya1969]

15. This is what he said; It was a segment played on the Oprah show.

http://www.all-creatures.org/health/birdflu2005.html

Two weeks ago a Dr. "Frist" wrote an op-ed in the Washington Times warning that the bird flu virus "poses an immense potential threat to American civilization."<1> A threat to civilization? Who is this guy? This "guy" is Bill Frist, M.D., Majority Leader of the United States Senate.

Senator Frist gave a talk on Bird Flu recently at Harvard Medical School, his alma mater. He described the horrors of 1918. Fifty million dead, killed by a bird flu virus finally sequenced this month in the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, Nature<2> and Science.<3> Dr Frist asked "How would a nation so greatly moved and touched by the three thousand dead of September 11th react to half a million dead? In 1918 - 1919 the mortality rate was between 2.5 and 5 percent, which seem merciful in comparison to the 55 percent mortality rate of the current Avian flu. In just 18 months, this Avian flu has killed or forced the culling of more than 100 million animals. And now that it has jumped from birds to infect humans in 10 Asian nations, how many human lives will it or another virus like it take? How, then, would a nation greatly moved and touched by three thousand dead, react to five or fifty million dead?"<4>

Or 150 million. Two weeks ago World Health Organization executive director Dr. David Nabarro was appointed the bird flu czar of the United Nations. At the press conference at UN headquarters in New York, Dr. Nabarro predicted as many as 150 million human deaths in the upcoming pandemic arising from bird flu. Progress, he said, will demand appealing "to people's recognition that we're dealing here with world survival issues – or the survival of the world as we know it."<5>

The pandemic is what reportedly keeps our Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt awake. "It's a world-changing event when it occurs," Leavitt said in an interview. "It reaches beyond health. It affects economies, cultures, politics and prosperity - not to mention human life, counted by the millions."<6>

Yeah, but what are the odds of it actually happening? What are the odds that a killer flu virus will spread across the world like a tidal wave, killing millions? This morning it was reported that Secretary Leavitt answered that question. "The burning question is, will there be a human influenza pandemic," he told reporters. "On behalf of the WHO, I can tell you that there will be. The only question is the virulence and rapidity of transmission from human to human."<7> The Director General of the World Health Organization: "there is no disagreement that this is just a matter of time."<8> The Director of the Centers for Disease Control told Newshour with Jim Lehrer last week: "Most experts are saying that it's not really a question of if; it's a question of when."<9> As the Executive Director of the nonprofit Trust for America's Health put it, "This is not a drill. This is not a planning exercise. This is for real."<10>

And finally it's getting a fraction, at least, of the press attention it deserves. "It could kill a billion people worldwide, make ghost towns out of parts of major cities, and there is not enough medicine to fight it. It is called the avian flu." So started the ABC News Primetime special on bird flu on September 15th, 2005.<11> What, now we're up to a BILLION human deaths? Where did they pull that number from? They pulled it from Dr. Irwin Redlener, Associate Dean of Columbia University's School of Public Health and Director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness.<12>

Within the last month it was the cover story of National Geographic, Business Week and TIME Magazine in Asia. What more attention could one ask for than for our President spending five minutes on it in the Rose Garden, openly musing about putting the military in charge when the pandemic hits. The Washington Post quoted Columbia University's Dr. Redlener calling the president's suggestion an "extraordinarily draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had "built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu, and not allowed the degradation of the public health system." "The translation of this, Redlener said, "is martial law in the United States."<13>

[Maraya1969]

17. Yes, and they make up enough vaccines every year for the new

mutations. But Tamaflu seems like it is some basic, flu vaccine that would help stop a "flu"


Oh I don't know.


BUT if they have the virus that is in the birds now why don't they make a vaccine with that virus and vaccinate people who work with birds? At least these people who are getting "whatever" would be protected. And I really mean "whatever" because who knows? They could have died from some sort of infectious meningitis. We'll never know. That is for sure.

[gkhouston]

19. the virus that humans are getting from birds now doesn't easily

pass from one human to the next. The version we'd really really want a vaccine for hasn't emerged yet, but a lot of scientists think it will pop up sooner or later. It's quite likely that a human-to-human variant of bird flu would be so different from what's going around now that a vaccine against the current strains of H5N1 wouldn't help. Tamiflu might help if you take a big enough dose, soon enough, for long enough. It's a crap shoot, and Tamiflu's going to be in such short supply in a true pandemic that I don't think we can look for much help there.

As for whether those people died from H5N1 or something else: at least some of the victims died in hospitals and were tested fairly thoroughly. It wasn't meningitis.

[CoffeeCat]

23. Can I ask you a question about Tamiflu?

You mentioned that Tamiflu might help if you took a big dose, early enough.

In your opinion, do you think the current Tamiflu doses are enough to combat bird flu?

When I had the flu, my doctor gave me an Rx for one course of Tamiflu---10 pills, 2 each day.
Do you believe that this dosage would be enough to fight bird flu?

I've heard that the 10 pills would not be enough...interested in your insight. You seem pretty informed.

Thnx!

[gkhouston]

30. I don't remember the correct dose/duration off the top of my head

but I do recall that for bird flu, you need to take a higher dose of Tamiflu than is typical, and also for a longer period of time. There was an article written about this about a year ago, which indicated that Tamiflu does have some effectiveness against bird flu, but only when given in higher doses and for longer periods of time. And for any kind of flu, you need to start taking the Tamiflu pretty soon after falling ill or it won't help, which is why I doubt Tamiflu is going to be a "magic bullet" in a pandemic -- distributing massive quantities of it to the right people in a timely fashion is a logistical nightmare.

on edit: the article I read last May or April was based on the strain circulating in Viet Nam in the winter/spring of 2005. IIRC, even with the Tamiflu, some of the patients died; not clear whether they started taking the Tamiflu early or not.

[mcscajun]

21. You are correct; unless and until the current H5N1 virus mutates

to make human-to-human transmission possible, we cannot begin making a vaccine for it.

I don't know what he said verbatim, but if he's suggesting starting up the vaccine machine now, he's dumber than a stump.

[CoffeeCat]

24. Exactly...

LOL..."start up the vaccine machines now." Just wait...Frist will soon suggest that
he's invented a bird-flu-vaccine machine!

I'm perplexed by all of this--because if Frist is suggesting that we can manufacture vaccine for bird flu NOW--then he's completely uninformed. His entire speech is based on underlying suppositions that are medically and scientifically invalid. If he's drumming up fear while spewing inaccurate information, then the likelihood that he's using bird flu as a distraction--is very high.

That really troubles me. I'm wondering what in the hell he's doing.

I've researched bird flu. I'm certainly no expert. However, I've read a great deal. I have a degree in science writing, and I try my best to understand complex medical information. I can usually weed out the fear-mongering bs from the sound science. I believe there is the potential for a pandemic--and it is dependent upon the virus mutating. No one knows if that will happen. Not the scientists or the politicians.

If the government was really interested in this issue--they would working on preparedness. So far, I've only heard Junior discuss government-mandated quarantines.

We've got reason to be greatly concerned about bird flu. The problem is--it seems--we've also got a bunch of lying, debased politicians who are willing to exploit the bird flu issue for their own gain.

[mcscajun]

26. You've got it. Our government is behind the curve, and using this

as a tool. The problem is just as you state it: those lying, debased characters who've taken control of our country and have their own damnable agendas rather than our welfare as their prime concern.

Other governments are taking avian flu more seriously. Scientific organizations and journals around the world are taking it more seriously. Media abroad are taking it more seriously.

True, it has not mutated yet, and unless and until it does, no threat exists. It's the potential that is the only thing we need be concerned about, and now is the time to plan and prepare, not to panic; yet sticking our heads in the sand because BushCo is ratcheting up the hype does us no good, either.

Your approach to this sounds pretty darned close to my own. For that reason, I'll point you to the following item I picked up at The Guardian website last month:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,,1752804,00.html

I've also posted (fairly rationally, I think) on this subject several times in the past year. A sampling here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1103522

[KamaAina]

11. Hey Catkiller! Diagnosed any coma patients lately?

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, when it comes to doctors, those who can, heal. Those who can't, run for the Senate.

[Recursion]

16. Pharma money is part of the problem

But another big part of the problem is our worldview. We're stuck in the 19th century trying to find single pathogens for diseases. Single pathogens are exciting and sexy because they make researchers famous and make pharmaceutical companies lots of money.

What are the plagues of the 21st century? SARS, AIDS, possibly bird flu. None of these spread or kill like cholera, TB, typhus, or any of the other 19th-century infectious plagues. They are associated with a pathogen, but it's not like the old pathogens. You don't always get sick. You might get sick 20 years later, or never, or the next month. Environmental cofactors make a huge part of these problems.

I'll take AIDS as my example because it's the disease I've studied the most about. In our rush to find the one virus, HIV, we completely ignored the fact that HIV isn't the whole picture. Why do some people go decades being HIV+ without getting drugs, and never get AIDS? Why do some die within months? Why does drug use (intravenous or not) have such a strong impact on the rate of AIDS development and on the types of AIDS-defining diseases you get? Why are the epidemiological patterns in North America so different than in Africa, and why are both so different from Asia? Are we sure this is one single disease?

Finally, why has it taken 20 years for people who are arguing that there are cofactors to AIDS development to no longer be called a lunatic fringe?

These plagues are 21st-century plagues and we're fighting them with 19th-century tools. These plagues are a result of environmental degradation, toxic pollution on the personal and societal level, and horrible nutrition. That a certain pathogen exploits these conditions in certain ways doesn't mean that killing that pathogen will fix the problem. These plagues are hotpoints of the death by a thousand cuts we're inflicting on ourselves.

Just another inconvenient truth, I guess...

[zbdent]

20. Damn, did I miss the

flesh-eating virus again? . . . I miss all the fun . . .

[enid602]

22. millions dead . . .

If this were true, wouldn't BushCo be building hospitals, rather than giving KBR half a billion dollar contracts to build detention centers? If millions are going to die sometime soon, would BushCo continue to throw away $10 billion each month in Iraq? If BushCo really feels that we are just about to experience a medical emergency that will result in millions of deaths, why do they continue to de-fund the Government by cutting taxes and no longer reporting M3? If this were true, Bush will look even more evil and incompetent that he did before.

[mcscajun]

27. So what?

His 'base' will survive; they'll succeed in weeding out all those pesky poor people and illegal aliens.
What's the problem? More for the rest who are left, eh? :sarcasm:

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

25. "You'd better be scared" Good Motto for this WH.nt

[PaDem]

28. Perhaps a stupid question, but...........

if millions of vaccines are produced will the government automatically purchase them, or will they only purchase the vaccines on an as needed basis?

[Roland99]

29. I'll wait for the videotape....

[Skidmore]

31. Let's find out who besides Rummy owns stock in Tamiflu?

There was actually an item on MSNBC or CNN about Rummy and Tamiflu yesterday. My viewing was interrupted by the doorbell so I just caught the intro sentence or two. Wonder if these bastards are setting themselves up retirement plans prior to the elections.

[ComerPerro]

32. Sean Hannity seems to be suffering from a case of Distemper

and O'Reilley has rabies.