Bird Flu as a Weapon? A Bit of History of Biological Weapons

[Magda Hassan]

The white paper was written immediately post-Katrina after a long-term provocative telephone conversation with a physician who informed me of the importance of a 'cytokine storm' in the outbreak of a human flu pandemic, what it was, how it is treated, why it is so deadly, who it will kill, et alia. When asked -- in a public forum for people in the field about how to prepare for such an outbreak -- about the syndrome and why pharmaceutical firms weren't being asked to develop a potent drug to counteract the massive fluid overload of the lungs in such a 'storm', a leading public health official, a physician, said he'd never heard of the syndrome, and couldn't answer my question(s). So, should you see reports of young healthy people dying in large quantities in ICU's [is that what's happening down under now, Magda?], then you know you have a pandemic on your hands.

Not so far Ed. There are about 1,200 cases in Melbourne Victoria and the rest of the country has just a few in other states but not too many. Footballers being the main form of transmission here at the moment apparently . No deaths, few hospitalizations and mostly just quarantine. A few schools closed. The government here seems keen to down play the seriousness of it saying things along the line of it just the numbers infected not a sign of the intensity of the virus. People are being asked not to visit Melbourne if they can avoid it and when they return are to stay home for a week to see if there are any symptoms. Strangely, they are letting in 15,000 US service personnel for war games though even if that is an excellent form of vector distribution as we saw in the 1918 outbreak. The show must go on I suppose as there is money and prestige at stake and we all know that is more important than peoples health and well being. Chile, on the other hand, has about the same amount of infections but has 3 deaths and much more hospitalizations. This could be from the generally poorer living conditions there, US style medical establishment, and the usually appalling air pollution at the best of times. Or it could be that Latinos are more affected by this strain. :bandit:I'd be interested to know the ethnic backgrounds of those 28 who have died in the US and the 4 in Canada.