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This isn’t a climate article, it is about a real problem.
Back in 1918, the infamous flu pandemic killed an estimated 3-5% of the population of the time – 50-100 million people. The awful potential of a new 1918 style flu Pandemic to sweep the world and kill millions, perhaps billions, despite all our medical advances, makes every flicker of infectious ability for novel strains of flu newsworthy.
Almost all of these flu scares are groundless – but one day the real new pandemic strain will arise.
Bird flu strain taking a toll on humans
By Dennis Normile Feb. 17, 2017 , 1:30 PM
SHANGHAI, CHINA—An avian influenza virus that emerged in 2013 is suddenly spreading widely in China, causing a sharp spike in human infections and deaths. Last month alone it sickened 192 people, killing 79, according to an announcement this week by China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission in Beijing.
The surge in human cases is cause for alarm, says Guan Yi, an expert in emerging viral diseases at the University of Hong Kong in China. “We are facing the largest pandemic threat in the last 100 years,” he says.
As of 16 January, the cumulative toll from H7N9 was 918 laboratory-confirmed human infections and 359 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite its high mortality rate, H7N9 had gotten less attention of late than two other new strains—H5N8 and H5N6—that have spread swiftly, killing or forcing authorities to cull millions of poultry. But so far, H5N8 has apparently not infected people; H5N6 has caused 14 human infections and six deaths.
…
Read more: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/bird-flu-strain-taking-toll-humans
Why am I mentioning this likely false alarm? The reason – how can we be totally sure it is a false alarm? This problem, the risk of a new Pandemic, is fixable – but we aren’t doing enough to fix it.
From Wikipedia;
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast, the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults.
There are several possible explanations for the high mortality of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Some research suggests that the specific variant of the virus had an unusual aggressive nature. One group of researchers recovered the original virus from the bodies of frozen victims, and found that transfection in animals caused a rapid progressive respiratory failure and death through a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body’s immune system). It was then postulated that the strong immune reactions of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.[11]
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
What more could be done to prevent the next Pandemic?
Flu is notoriously difficult to vaccinate against, because of its high mutation rate. Advances have meant we have a yearly flu vaccine which provides substantial protection – but it can be very hit or miss, because preparation of the vaccine is based on a model of which strains will likely be prevalent at the time the vaccine provides its protection.
A better way to produce vaccines, say a desktop system for producing vaccines on the spot for novel flu strains, would massively decrease the turnaround time for providing protection to people in hot zones. At the moment such a desktop system is science fiction – but I wonder how close we could get to such a system, if for a few years flu research received funding on the same scale as our climate heroes?
Other areas worth researching are how to handle cytokine storms, the body’s panic overreaction to novel diseases.
One of the treatments administered during the SARS outbreak in 2002-4 was to flood sick people with corticosteroids, to try to suppress their immune over-response, including cytokines. Not only has subsequent research demonstrated administration of steroids probably wasn’t very effective, some people who survived the SARS infection suffered crippling bone and joint problems, as a consequence of all the steroids they received to try to suppress immune system cytokine storm.
The following from PLOS Medicine is telling;
Conclusions
Despite an extensive literature reporting on SARS treatments, it was not possible to determine whether treatments benefited patients during the SARS outbreak. Some may have been harmful. Clinical trials should be designed to validate a standard protocol for dosage and timing, and to accrue data in real time during future outbreaks to monitor specific adverse effects and help inform treatment.
There has been research to try to find a better way of handling cytokine storms, which is believed to have made the 1918 strain so deadly for young, healthy adults. For example in one study the drug Gemfibrozil apparently helped to protect lab mice against death from flu infection.
But we need more than a few mouse studies.
Research into managing cytokine storms in people, without completely depressing a patient’s immune system, or destroying their life with crippling bone and joint disease after treatment, could help prevent deaths when the next Pandemic strikes.
We won’t know when the next scare turns into a 1918 style Pandemic, or worse, until it is too late. The next Pandemic will almost certainly not emerge fully formed, it will likely stumble into the news like any other flu scare, like the latest China flu scare – a few deaths, low transmission rates, hiding on the tattered edges of modern medical care. But the new disease won’t quite die away, it will linger on, clinging to survival, just barely escaping eradication efforts, maintaining a small reservoir of infected hosts. Then suddenly something will change, a mutation which dramatically increases infection rates. The new Pandemic will leap across the world in days, bringing death to every human population centre on Earth.
We have to be better prepared, for when the inevitable happens. We have to focus the attention of our politicians on real threats, not the imaginary climate bogeyman which has ensnared their attention for far too long.
I get a flu jab every year.,
Makes me ill for a month usually..:-)
I didn’t for a long time, as my father had Guillane Barre syndrome from a flu the year before the Swine Flu vaccine made it famous.
That may not have been as serious as claimed, and I figure the risk/reward level is tilting to reward as I get older.
The worst reaction I’ve had is a sore injection site for a day or two. The vaccines that are similar to the previous year’s generally give me no response.
I sometimes wonder if those of us who have auto-immune diseases (including my daughter and me) have a generally stronger than average immune system that sometimes goes overboard.
GBS is an interesting experience. I recommend you don’t try it.
That’s exactly correct. There is a genetic component to it (antibody formation is an interesting thing: it works by genetic families creating protein families where cytokines are intimately involved in the overall regulation process).
I believe people with auto-immune diseases have stronger immune systems. At one time, I tried allergy shots—and ended up in the ER over and over due to my system “over-reacting”. I try not to give it anything to over-react to now. 🙂
The innocent looking Campylobacter is a potent cause of Guillain Barre Syndrome in the immune compromised patient.
https://www.avma.org/News/Journals/Collections/Documents/javma_223_4_445.pdf
Under cooked chicken is a source.
In some subjects, such as myself, a flu vaccination makes me sick as a dog for at least a week.
I have been advised this is because the vaccine stresses my immune system and I succumb to whatever other viruses that are going around at the time.
I usually get the vaccine every year. Two years ago I missed out. I got the flu. In the small community I lost a couple of old ladies, and nearly lost a whole lot more. They missed the vaccine.
I used to work in ED departments. One year with a bad strain, 50% of staff (doctors, nurses, everyone else) got the vaccine, and 50% didn’t. The 50% with no vaccine all spent two weeks off, in bed, very very ill, in a small city in the middle of a mass outbreak.
Read the case reports of the 1918 pandemic. It is well studied if you are schooled in biology. It is scary. 5% of the worlds population is a lot of people, particularly in the modern jet age possibly making it worse..
The 1918 pandemic began in Australia in December, in high summer, when D levels will have peaked in the population.
I’m gonna be The Devil’s Avocado from he11 here – sugar-eaters and drinkers stop reading now.
Hadn’t there just been a bit of a war going on in 1918, so no physically malnourished people around then was there?. And mentally, if you’re ‘down-in-the-dumps’, you maybe don’t look after yourself as well as you might?
Then there was the wonder drug Aspirin, safe in the short-term in low doses but incredibly toxic when handed out and consumed by the handful – as it was then.
And why are human females capable, during their lifetimes of making 20+ babies when only 2 will suffice to keep the species going? Why did Mother Nature kill 9 out of 10 of human babies – if not to select out the very best ones – and that is exactly what made us what we are now.
We are unravelling all that hard work to the extent that stories like this will become self-fulfilling. Undoing it with antibiotics especially but with a plant based diet (yes lettuce and broccoli, you’re in the firing line again)
All those irritants, allergens and toxins plants create and use to try protect themselves exactly from being eaten are driving out immune systems nuts – to the extent that when a real threat like flu comes along, it gets under the very cluttered radar.
Finally, We Are Not Special and to imagine ourselves as being so will lead to a *very* big fall sometime…
Read up on the 1918 flu. While the war had a big impact, possibly including the high density housing in the US (e.g. Fort Devens Massachusetts), there were places like a small town in Colorado that blocked entry to nearly all visitors. They did allow the mailman in, and he came one day while he was coming down with the flu. A large percentage of the town got sick.
It wasn’t until I read a book on the 1918 flu that I realized how big an impact it had in areas I had lived in for decades.
Check out http://www.telegram.com/article/20061105/column21/611050532
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/influenza-letter/ , a letter from a doctor at Fort Devens:
Bacterial pneumonia doesn’t set in this quickly, this pneumonia seems to be directly caused by the flu triggering the cytokine storm.
IIRC, some men were evacuated from Devens to South Carolina, but some men on trains were already infected, and by the time the train reached the destination, many were dead or dying.
Virulent forms of pneumococcal (a streptococcus) pneumonia can kill a young, healthy person in 48 to 72 hours. And yes, cytokines are involved via the products of massive ‘septic shock’ apoptosis.
“I wonder how close we could get to such a system, if for a few years flu research received funding on the same scale as our climate heroes?”
Indeed! And how many other of mankind’s real problems could we go at least some way to solvjng with that sort of financial input? I’m sure there are a large number of very keen young science graduates just begging for the chance to do some useful research into all sorts of conditions that threaten mankind or would make some genuine improvement to the lives of future generations if the climate scaremongers could only be induced to get a proper job.
The article points out the largest issue of our times in science — the misapplication of public funding. Imagine 1/3 of the monies spent on construction (not operation) of windmills if applied to medical research would have produced. Then there’s just the issue of having cheap energy for third world nations. The list is endless of beneficial projects.
I bet CO2 is feeding the virus.
Heh, very funny. Viruses are basically a coated bit of DNA/RNA, with the coat being a handful of proteins needed to get the virus into the cells they use to reproduce themselves, via a takeover of the normal DNA/RNA metabolism that the self-replicating cells have.
Glad to see someone beside me is thinking CO2 low dose long term is not the innocent we have been told.
Also, in reading the internet there were very strong correlation graphs of the use of DDT and the rise in polio. Recall that WWI the young men were sent with every bit of clothing, blankets, towels, food containers, everything saturated with DDT. Researchers have great difficult in verifying this as most specific wording has been redacted.
This post from 2016 may be of interest – some people such as my paternal grandparents may have ha an immunity to the 1918-19 flu.
Best, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/28/germanys-merkel-contemplates-social-media-crackdown-to-counter-fake-news/comment-page-1/#comment-2356132
Hello again Crispin and thank you for your comments. Blessings on your great-grandmother and your entire family.
For no particular reason, your comments reminded me of my paternal grandparents, an Ontario farm family who left their own young three boys with the help while they cared for others during the great Influenza epidemic of 1918-19.
My grandma told me about it when I was little, but it was much later before I learned how bad this flu was. It the most devastating pandemic in recorded world history, killing between 20 and 40 million people, more than all the deaths in the Great War (WW1).
Nobody in my family caught this flu, even though both grandparents were closely exposed to it. It was reportedly an avian flu virus, and I have wondered for years if they had developed an immunity. My grandma kept chickens and “candled” the eggs, selling them to private customers in Montreal. This involved considerable handling of the eggs prior to shipment, a task that the entire family helped out with.
… just some random thoughts at 4am – time for coffee.
More on glacier melt soon…
Best personal regards, Allan in Calgary
Just how do you develop and produce a vaccine that fits into this (US-only) timeline?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/influenza/
March 11
At Fort Riley, Kansas, an Army private reports to the camp hospital just before breakfast complaining of fever, sore throat, and headache. He is quickly followed by another soldier with similar complaints. By noon, the camp’s hospital has dealt with over 100 ill soldiers. By week’s end, that number will jump to 500.
[N.B. This is probably from the first wave before the flu mutated into it historic form.]
…
August 27
Sailors stationed onboard the Receiving Ship at Commonwealth Pier in Boston begin reporting to sick-bay with the usual symptoms of the grippe. By August 30, over 60 sailors were sick.
Soon, Commonwealth Pier was overwhelmed and 50 cases had to be transferred to Chelsea Naval Hospital. Flu sufferers commonly described feeling like they “had been beaten all over with a club.”
…
September 13
US Surgeon General Rupert Blue of the United States Public Health Service dispatches advice to the press on how to recognize the influenza symptoms. Blue prescribed bed rest, good food, salts of quinine, and aspirin for the sick.
Royal Copeland, the Health Commissioner of New York City, announces, “The city is in no danger of an epidemic. No need for our people to worry.”
…
October 22
869 New Yorkers die of influenza or the resulting pneumonia in a single day. In Philadelphia, the city’s death rate for one single week is 700 times higher than normal.
…
November 20
In only five days, influenza leaves 72 of the 80 native Inupiat inhabitants dead in the small town of Brevig Mission, Alaska. Local survivors bury the victims in a mass grave.
…
December 4
The U.S. public health service publishes an estimate that 300,000 to 350,000 civilian deaths can be attributed to influenza and pneumonia since September 15. The War Department records indicate that another 20,000 deaths have occurred among soldiers.
A few days ago, Bloomberg had an article about the flu vaccine.
This year it is 49% effective.
Two years ago, it was 7% effective.
Darn those mutations!
Good information at
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/vaccine-selection.htm
More alarmism.
Asteroids, volcanoes, flu.. this site is just one alarmist meme after another.
But aren’t they ever so amusing??? 🙂
As everyone knows, if it weren’t for CO2, nobody would ever die and the world would be perfectly safe.
Passenger pigeons were once the most numerous bird in the US, perhaps the world. They disappeared in the 1890s and were extinct by 1914.
They were NOT hunted to extinction, They died from bird flu, which made the jump to human 30 years later to 1918 pandemic.
The H5N1 scare 10 years ago saw 100% OVERNIGHT mortality in chicken farms that were unlucky enough to be exposed by random carrier.
Be afraid of influenza, be very very afraid.
I never bought the hunted to extinction story. It seemed logistically difficult to get the last few million and also too convenient for the ‘mankind is the only villain’ theorists. What is the evidence for the flu hypothesis?
The “hunted to extinction” actually did make sense if you consider the pidgeons defense was to stick together in huge flocks, making them easy targets. Also, people reportedly destroyed nests, crushed eggs, etc in an effort to keep others from getting into their supply of tasty and pricey birds. There was a mad rush to sell as many pidgeons as possible because the price was good. Consider that if the birds defense was to stick together in large flocks, as the flocks shrank, there was no defense for the remaining birds. The pidgeons had unique habits and survival methods compared to other birds. In defense of humans, no one thought that many birds could ever be hunted to extinction so they never considered limiting the hunting of the birds (until too late, perhaps). Sometimes humans are the cause, though it’s not always something they could have foreseen. Really, it’s no different than any other species hunting another species to extinction. Humans do what seems logical (or profitable, perhaps) at the moment. 20/20 hindsight is great, but useless for prevention of things like this.
The loss of the passenger pidgeon wasn’t a ecological disaster in any way. Species go extinct—I read Darwin and he agrees with that. 🙂
It wasn’t just hunting but loss of habitat. The hardwood forests of the eastern US were largely cut and burned down to make way for crop farms, mainly of corn. This caused the pigeons to become even more concentrated into easily picked off groups.
Extinction was demonstrated by Cuvier in 1798, who showed that mammoths and modern elephants were different species and genera, so was well established as fact long before Darwin’s 1859 “Origin of Species”. Buffon had earlier speculated about extinction, but Cuvier provided instances of it. By the 1820s even former extinction skeptics like Thomas Jefferson had come around, thanks in part to the discoveries of Mesozoic fossils earlier in the 19th century, many by Mary “She sells seashells by the seashore” Anning of Dorset, England.
COLD WEATHER KILLS MANY MORE PEOPLE THAN HOT WEATHER. This trend is true in cold and also in warmer climates.
Excess Winter Mortality is the number of people who die in the four Winter months, as compared to the 4-month average for the non-Winter months.
Excess Winter Mortality globally is about 2 million people per year, including about 100,000 per year in the USA and up to 50,000 per year in the United Kingdom. Excess Winter Mortality rates are high even in warm countries like Australia.
Paradoxically, rates of Excess Winter Mortality are sometimes greater in warmer climates than in cold ones, probably because people in cold climates adapt better to cold weather.
Sensible governments encourage practices that reduce Winter Mortality, such as cheap energy, central heating, good home insulation, and free flu shots.
When governments foolishly adopt costly green energy programs. they drive up Winter Mortality – real people die in increasing numbers due to doctrinaire government incompetence..
A common-sense approach for governments would be to encourage cheap energy policies, not to drive up energy costs and winter mortality rates. Governments that drive up energy costs to “fight (fictional) global warming” are following imbecilic polices that preferentially kill off the elderly and the poor.
How is this related to influenza? The flu is a major contributor to Winter Mortality. Greater and lesser flu’s are a chronic seasonal threat to all societies. Governments that adopt imbecilic policies that drive up energy costs and increase deaths from influenza are incompetent governments that should be defeated.
That includes most federal governments in Western Europe, Canada and the Provinces of Ontario and Alberta, Australia and some of its States, etc.. Governments in the United Kingdom and the United States recently were changed and adopted sensible energy polices, after years of delusional green energy nonsense.
Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
When imbecilic politicians fool with energy systems, innocent people suffer and die.
Regards, Allan
Reference
Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
I was wondering on this “cytokine storm” thing if that might be why hantavirus and meningitis B have very high mortality rates in the young. There are others, but those came to mind.
Death from infectious disease is caused by malnutrition. In the winter most people are very deficient in Vitamin D. The average American diet is hideously deficient. Just look into their bloated pale faces and the high fructose glazing on their eyes There’s no wonder they have to take several courses of antibiotics every year. There is no better antibiotic than the healthy human immune system. The immune system requires good nutrition.
The flu vaccine is a fraud if not a threat to your health.
Not agreeing with the flu shot being a “fraud”, but Americans do lack Vitamin D, in part from sitting in front of a computer or TV and in part because of their obssession with sunscreen. It is perfectly acceptable and quite probably desirable to be outside an hour a day without suncreen. The sun is supposed to be our life-giver, not our mortal enemy.
An interesting study would be to chart the relationship between an imagined dependence on flu shots and a belief that government needs additional empowerment to combat climate change.
I wonder if the US having an anti-vaxxer and anti-science President will affect the incidence of influenza?
Keep antihistamine and Sudafed in your home health kit to prevent pneumonia, which is the fatal stage of pandemic influenza.
Only aniti-hygene can do that. BTW, Trump is not anti-science. He is anti-Faux science. Enjoy these facts! http://www.vaclib.org/sites/debate/web1.html
One reason there won’t ever be a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic and that all recent “repeat of 1918” pandemic scares have never materialized is that in 1918 no one knew what a virus was! As recently as the 1960’s m.d.’s were “preventing” the common cold with antibiotics! Every pandemic scare seems to presuppose that knowledge about basic measures to prevent exposure and the spread of viruses doesn’t exist.
Scientists knew that viruses existed in 1918, but not precisely what they were.
https://rybicki.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/a-short-history-of-the-discovery-of-viruses-part-1/
French medical researchers showed in 1918 that the Spanish flu was caused by a virus.
The Spanish flu probably did not kill as many people as the Black Death pandemic of 1346-53, but the estimates of dead overlap. The Plague outbreak also lasted longer.
Percentage of total population killed of course was much higher for the Black Death, when there were perhaps 400 million people, versus 1.8 billion in 1918.
With all the worry about the dangers of modern life, it’s nice to remember and be thankful that–in the developed nations of the world at least–life expectancy continues to increase, and overall health continues to improve.
Unfortunately, those facts are rarely mentioned because happiness doesn’t sell self-help books or wack-job nutritional schemes. Fear makes money. (Hello, CAGW!)
One problem with this scenario is that flu seems to have exhausted it novelty. Its combinatorial arsenal for producing heavy-hitting mutations is very small. So far, the only mutations that have ever resulted in an antigenic change big enough to cause a pandemic occurred in only 7 residues around the active center of the HA. There is not a lot of room for fitness-preserving variation there.
There hasn’t been anything new in flu since 2009, and annual vaccination automatically recommended by physicians hardly makes any sense. In this situation, you might want to do it once every 5 years or so, because if you are like most people, you will retain immunity to flu for 5..7 years after exposure.
Details here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4403388/
I am astounded by the claim of cytokine storm and other possibilities rather than the most obvious cause: DDT. While the many of articles relating DDT to polio and the 1918 flu deaths seem to have disappeared, recall that the Army sent its men overseas with every blanket, towel, clothing, tents, food containers, everything saturated with DDT. There seems to have been a wash of the literature of the time as researchers have dug only to find oblique references and inferences. Perhaps there is infor out there I have not been able to find. Books?
Minor little problem with your “1918 flu pandemic and DDT” scenario–DDT was not introduced as an insecticide until 1939.