The False Bird Flu Scare

[Karlin]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060605/siegel

In 2003 concerns about the SARS coronavirus prompted the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to work with the World Health Organization to encourage reporting and isolation of cases and contacts while at the same time cordoning off parts of Asia and Toronto. Health officials spoke publicly of a new era of cooperation. But the media-saturated advisories and pronouncements resulted in the loss of billions of tourist dollars to the Asian and Canadian economies. Ultimately, SARS infected about 8,400 people worldwide. There was never any objective evidence that regional quarantine helped squelch the virus, and follow-up studies found SARS to be not nearly as infectious as had been originally thought. Yet public health officials continued to speak of that global action as an unqualified success.

The same pattern of CDC/WHO involvement has been followed in the US-fueled worldwide overreaction to H5N1 avian influenza. This bird flu cannot routinely affect humans in its current form (114 deaths to date in nine years). But the priority being placed on it as a potential threat to humans is obscuring diseases that are already worldwide killers: malaria, which kills more than 1 million people a year; tuberculosis, more than 2 million; and HIV/AIDS, more than 3 million. As the worldwide health network grows, promoted by US healthcare officials but involving public health agencies all over the world, I am concerned that there will be a simultaneous export of the American obsession with certain diseases while others are excluded.

Worldwide spending on AIDS was $8.3 billion in 2005, with almost half of this coming from George W. Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. But a 2005 WHO/UNAIDS report estimates that AIDS treatment coverage is $18 billion below global needs for 2005-07, with a projected $22 billion annual requirement by 2008. The WHO has not come close to its goal of treating 3 million AIDS patients by the end of 2005. Currently just over a million are receiving antiretroviral therapy.

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Meanwhile, here in the United States, Bush has proposed cutting $15 million in AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health, while increasing funds for studying avian flu and bioterrorism. Bush's proposed 2007 budget calls for increasing by 0.3 percent funding for the NIH's Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The money will be targeted for avian flu and biodefense. Bush is also calling for a 6.2 percent increase for other NIH biodefense projects, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science's analysis of the President's budget. This is in addition to the $5.6 billion already being largely wasted on Project Bioshield, which is supposed to help provide medical countermeasures against a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack, with much more to come in Bioshield II. Almost $1 billion has gone to the manufacture of 75 million doses of anthrax vaccine, for example, despite the fact that anthrax is not contagious and has not recurred since the twenty-two cases in 2001 thought to be linked to terror.

Some public health officials have argued that avian flu should be at least as high a priority as AIDS because of the theoretical worst case, in which it could cause a severe human pandemic, but it is not even clear that the money allocated for bird flu will be used effectively for real prevention. Ron De Haven of the Animal and Plant Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture says that although H5N1 is still a major threat to birds, only $4.4 million of his department's $1.1 billion budget for 2005-06 was earmarked for biosecurity outreach, to keep infected birds from coming here. And though $3.6 billion has already been approved for emergency pandemic preparedness against bird flu, with an additional $2.6 billion proposed, Dr. Andrea Gambotto, the creator of a new bird flu vaccine using modern genetic techniques (adenovirus) that has been effective in mice and birds, has been unable to get NIH funding to test this vaccine in humans. Newer approaches could lead to more potent vaccines with a quicker turnaround time--a much more effective tool for reacting to a pandemic as it is happening than current attempts to anticipate one that may never happen. But the President's new budget cuts 4.5 percent from the CDC's core programs while adding no funds for NIH. There is clearly no priority for key research programs. It is true that as part of his "worst case" pandemic flu preparedness plan announced in May, Bush awarded $1 billion in contracts to vaccine manufacturers to upgrade flu vaccine technology over the next five years. Of course, there is no guarantee that this goal will actually be met or that the money will reach the right hands.


Overseas, the biggest health problems that could benefit from our attention are malnutrition and the lack of clean water and proper sewage. Diseases like schistosomiasis and malaria thrive because of poor public health conditions. But our outreach does not emphasize them. Our public health system appears to be much more concerned about a disease like bird flu transforming into something that could threaten us than it does in helping the world with diseases that already threaten poor people everywhere. More than 16 million people die every year of malnutrition. Eight hundred million people worldwide currently suffer from hunger and malnutrition. How many people who survive mainly on poultry will have this food taken from them if worldwide health authorities--their perceived need to act in a hurry fueled by media reports--continue to kill domestic fowl indiscriminately whenever H5N1 appears?

A TV movie that aired in May, Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, capitalizes on fear by depicting a crippling loss of basic services and mass graves. This movie wasn't made in a vacuum--many scientists and journalists have been doomsaying on bird flu to such an extent that they have created a fear terrain even Disney could exploit. Sadly, hyperbole is not a method of discourse exclusive to TV drama; a public health blog for bird flu fanatics recently suggested the United States should pull out of Iraq and use the resources we save for bird flu preparation. On the surface this sounds like a terrific idea. On further reflection, it seems clear that going into Iraq in the first place was based on the same kind of argument--in which a remote but scary risk is exaggerated so it appears to be looming--that has characterized the public health reaction to bird flu.

See? Its a corporate money maker and Bush distractor from the real threats, which are Bush and Harper.

Karlin

 

[Toro]

RE: The False Bird Flu Sc

This is such silly nonsense.

The "false" bird flu scare helps a few companies like Roche and Gilead, and hurts many other companies and the economy in general by taking resouces out of productive areas. It also hurts farmers and corporations like Tyson, who are large chicken producers.

 

[Karlin]

Please, enlighten me - what lost resources from the Bird flu scare?

And, do you mean the Scare, or the actual pandemic, is what causes those losses?

And as for the balance of various corporate losses and gains - Pharmacy Giants, and Rumsfeld[did you hear?], will be making Billions on Tamiflu alone, plus billions more on vaccines. The losses of other corporationss, which I am taking for granted on your word for it, will likely not reach those high levels, so compensation could be given to them by the pharmacy if they were to protest the media scaring people with bird flu farces. But pharmacy likely would not care if others lose out, its just business, and pharmacy has a lot more pull that other corporations with governments.

Did Tyson lose birds? I see that some farmers in Canada got their flocks culled - were they compensated? i would suggest that the bulk of poultrty losses have been in other, third world, nations - Tyson has no concern there do they?

I really think you just puled this outta your hat because the idea of a fake bird flus driven by media is repugnant to you, But I submit that it is nonetheless real. There have been a dozen announcments of pandemcis about to hit, and NONE of them have.

One more question, if it is not too personal [don't answer if you don't feel comfortable about it] - did you or would you get Tamiflu for yourself, based on these media reports?

 

[EastSideScotian]

RE: The False Bird Flu Sc

Karlin you do know that, the post is a conspirocy Theroy....It does make some good points though about real problems like malnutrition and maliria..I think they definatly need to be combated, that way when Bird Flu does get the weaker countrys they can ahve a fighting chance....

Bird Flu is a real and serious threat, To birds.....
I dont agree that you think it is some big scam to keep our minds of other issues.
But I do agree that Bird flu is being a little over hyped because its not really that big a deal it rarely seems to be infecting let alone killing any humans at all...and as for it mutateing to a stronger virus....That could happen...but lets nto forget our bodys also can advance to fight it off...so its all a bunch of nonsense....But its not some sort of ploy to get people to forget about the wars or what a shitty job Bush is doing....The Opinion polls prove that poeple are still playing plenty attention to him and noticing what a poor job he is doing.

 

[JonB2004]

Bird flu, for the time being, should be more important than other viruses or diseases because it could easily mutate and cause a worldwide pandemic potentially killing hundreds of millions of people. Bird flu is not being overexagerated.

 

[Karlin]

The sky could fall too I suppose

Bird Flu warnings have come every season, twice a year, for the past 5 or 6 years now and nothing has come of it. Either stop crying WOLF!! or risk losing people's attention. But they don't, thats because they know there really is no looming threat of a pandemic.

False media reports of the severity really clued me in to the fakeness of bird flu - they have said outrageous things like "50% of the human population could be killed by bird flu"!!
Thats crazy - the 1918Spanish flu death rate was less than that, and why would we think it would be worse nowadays?
Now, in the modern age with better sanitation and lots more abilites to fight flu effects, people will not die of it. The deaths so far are all in backwater impoverished places, it would not be like that here in Canada.

 

[JonB2004]

The sky could fall too I suppose

Bird Flu warnings have come every season, twice a year, for the past 5 or 6 years now and nothing has come of it. Either stop crying WOLF!! or risk losing people's attention. But they don't, thats because they know there really is no looming threat of a pandemic.

False media reports of the severity really clued me in to the fakeness of bird flu - they have said outrageous things like "50% of the human population could be killed by bird flu"!!
Thats crazy - the 1918Spanish flu death rate was less than that, and why would we think it would be worse nowadays?
Now, in the modern age with better sanitation and lots more abilites to fight flu effects, people will not die of it. The deaths so far are all in backwater impoverished places, it would not be like that here in Canada.

I haven't heard any of the media telling us that 50% of the population is going to die from a bird flu pandemic. Karlin, you're overexagerating that number. The largest death estimate I heard was that 1 billion people could die. That's 15% of the world's 6.5 billion people.

And the World Health Organization says bird flu will be worse because they can't find a cure. They found a cure for the 1918 Spanish flu. And most countries don't have better sanitation than they did back in 1918. Look at countries where they have to live cramped together like China, Japan, and India. Or countries that don't have sanitation resources such as most African countries. And alot of deaths will occur in Canada, mostly in urban areas. Media reports say that at least 32,000 people will die in Canada.

 

[Toro]

Please, enlighten me - what lost resources from the Bird flu scare?

Cash that would be used for productive purposes are used for something, like you claim, as unnecessary is a wasteful use of resources. It creates nothing. It destroys wealth. Its like building a bridge to nowhere. Its a waste. Taxpayers get upset at that, and corporations get upset at having to pay something that is not useful.

And, do you mean the Scare, or the actual pandemic, is what causes those losses?

I am referring to the scare.

And as for the balance of various corporate losses and gains - Pharmacy Giants, and Rumsfeld[did you hear?], will be making Billions on Tamiflu alone, plus billions more on vaccines. The losses of other corporationss, which I am taking for granted on your word for it, will likely not reach those high levels, so compensation could be given to them by the pharmacy if they were to protest the media scaring people with bird flu farces. But pharmacy likely would not care if others lose out, its just business, and pharmacy has a lot more pull that other corporations with governments.

The corporations and the government are the ones who pick up most of the bill, since most health insurance is purchased by corporations and the government. What you are trying to have us believe is that all the other corporations will happily pay costs that are unnecessary. Even if we take the "corporations are evil" theory at face value, and that Bush et. al. are merely puppets to evil corporate interests, what the author is telling us to believe is that Bush and the "neo-con cabal" would happily screw all the other corporations to make a few other corporations happy. In other words, Bush and the neo-con cabal are going to piss 1,000 corporations off to satisfy 15.

Did Tyson lose birds? I see that some farmers in Canada got their flocks culled - were they compensated? i would suggest that the bulk of poultrty losses have been in other, third world, nations - Tyson has no concern there do they?

The author of the article does not understand basic economics. Its not about culling a flock. If everyone thinks that chickens are going to kill you, who is going to buy chickens? More practically, if the concern is high enough amongst the general public, demand will fall, and so will the profits of companies like Tyson and other farmers.

I really think you just puled this outta your hat because the idea of a fake bird flus driven by media is repugnant to you, But I submit that it is nonetheless real. There have been a dozen announcments of pandemcis about to hit, and NONE of them have.

No. It comes from working in the business world and seeing how business operates up close.

I can gaurantee you that if bird flu starts killing thousands, there will be writers - probably from the same sources - who will criticize corporations for not doing enough to stop it.

One more question, if it is not too personal [don't answer if you don't feel comfortable about it] - did you or would you get Tamiflu for yourself, based on these media reports?

I did not.

 

[fuzzylogix]

There is no question that the possibility of a global bird flu pandemic is real. The danger is when the virus mutates so that human to human transmission is possible. There are concerns that this is all ready happening in Thailand. Influenza is a serious disease. It regularly kills up to 1500 people each year in Canada depending on the strain. The concern is if the strain is so foreign to the population that noone has immunity- then a pandemic occurs and many many people die. A foreign strain is one that comes from another species and in most cases these have been from birds. Witness SARS was a virus mutated from animals, as was AIDS.

I dont think it false concern to be spending time and money monitoring bird flu. But the questions about other diseases such as malaria are appropriate. There are many diseases in third world countries that could be and should be eradicated or at least treated... sleeping sickness, parasites, cholera outbreaks, typhoid, polio, etc. However, unless these disease pose a threat to the developed countries, they receive little attention. Witness how we never paid any attention to AIDS or West Nile Fever until it was clear that it had become endemic in our own societies. I dont believe that the hype over Bird Flu is because the drug companies want to make a killing on it.... I think the hype is because the disease is a serious threat to our society. If malaria becomes established again in our mosquitos, then we will see it become a top story and a disease that gets more funding to prevent and treat. But as long as it remains endemic only in third world countries, it will remain low on the list of importance.

Bird flu will also get more press because of the sensationalistic scenario of a mass infection, much as SARS and Ebola virus get. The idea of a disease that you cant escape or avoid will always be a headliner in the papers. But that doesnt mean that the concern is unrealistic, it just means that it is a disease that they know will sell papers.

Rather than going after the angle that hype over bird flu is ridiculous, Karlin, I would suggest focussing on the fact that many other disease should be getting the same funding and attention.