Vaccine Best to Counter Bird Flu

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - The most effective way to combat an outbreak of bird flu in people would require a rapid and aggressive vaccination campaign as soon as the outbreak began, even if the vaccine wasn‘t a perfect match, a study concludes.

But even a bird flu vaccine that is poorly matched to the form that breaks out would be likely to provide some protection and could help slow the spread of the disease, according to a research team headed by Timothy C. Germann of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Their findings, developed by using computer models of how flu spread would be affected by vaccines, other medication and social steps such as closing schools and restricting travel, are published in this week‘s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

More than 100 people have died from the virus, but most seem to have contracted the disease from domestic or wild fowl, with the illness slow to spread from one human to another.

Indeed, just last week Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government‘s leading bird-flu scientist, said he was more worried about the virus arriving in a sick airline passenger than via migrating birds.

Targeting antiviral drugs to people in the area of flu cases is likely to be effective only during the earliest stages of an outbreak due to the labor-intensive requirements. As the flu spreads a community health system could be overwhelmed by the number of cases, the researchers said.

However, the research team reported, their study indicated that even a 90 percent reduction in domestic travel would slow the spread of the flu by only a few days to weeks and would not reduce the eventual size of the outbreak.

The spread of flu could potentially be controlled by delivery of 10 million doses of vaccine per week for 25 weeks, they concluded.

In the report, Andrew Tatem of England‘s University of Oxford and colleagues analyzed more than 30,000 international ship and aircraft routes. They found the spread of the Asian tiger mosquito — which has not been linked to disease — followed high-traffic sea shipping routes.
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U.S. Not Ready for Fast-Spreading Bird Flu, Study Finds
Scientists have used a sophisticated computer model to predict how a deadly flu virus might spread through the United States, and how the disease might respond to efforts to contain it. The results suggest that the U.S. is prepared to contain a virus with low transmissibility but perhaps not one that spreads more quickly.

Another team of scientists has also reported that it has developed a preliminary human vaccine against bird flu. But the team acknowledges that more work is needed before the vaccine could successfully contain an outbreak.

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(Maps of a simulated flu outbreak in the U.S. depict rates of infection if antiviral drugs were administered in 60 percent of reported cases (bottom) and if none were administered (top). The maps show high infection rates in red and low infection rates in green.)






U.N. Notes Quick Spread of Bird Flu

BEIJING (AP) - The deadly bird flu virus has spread at lightning speed over the past three months, infecting birds in 30 new countries - double the number previously stricken since 2003, the U.N.'s bird flu point man said Tuesday.

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Bush military bird flu role slammed

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law.

Bush said aggressive action would be needed to prevent a potentially disastrous U.S. outbreak of the disease that is sweeping through Asian poultry and which experts fear could mutate to pass between humans.

Such a deadly event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, the president said.

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I wonder whats going to happen to the people who refuse to get the vaccine ... will their rights be violated and will they be shipped off to FEMA camps around the country...??? FEAR will make people do abnormal things... and when the FEAR is induced then the peoples actions must be what the group inducing the fear wants.

One might ask how anyone pushing for mandatory vaccines can justify forcing those who don’t want the vaccine, on the basis they might infect vaccinated individuals! If the latter were vaccinated, why are they suddenly at risk? -Az