[Archived] Pandemic

[jim mk2]

Gord, the champion of colonialism, where Brits brought new diseases to foreign lands in the name of "progress" now doesn't like it when they return the favor.

Leave orf, if it wasnt for us you'd still be living in a teepee. And favour is spelt with a "u".

Moving on, the French government said today it could close all schools in an attempt to curb the spread of swine flu.

[thenodrog]

Gord, the champion of colonialism, where Brits brought new diseases to foreign lands in the name of "progress" now doesn't like it when they return the favor.

I thought that was largely the spaniards? They exported syph and gonnorea whilst we gave the world colds, scurvy and trenchfoot.

btw Aids shouldn't have claimed 25m victims if it had been properly dealt with at the outset.

[colin]

The first lot of swine flu came from Mexico so surely all incoming flights from Mexico could have been re-routed to one dedicated airport or more likely airbase with the necessary quarantine facilities being put in place. Also all outgoing flights to mexico should have been cancelled.

As has been pointed out, the flu has a two week incubation period. It would have been impossible to predict it to close airports. But while on the subject, which airport or airbase have you in mind & what are the facilities there for quarantine facilities for x thousand people for 2 weeks. Don't forget that this is your suggestion, you need to supply an answer. Commenting that other people don't have a clue is not acceptable.

People fly from Mexico to France; Germany; Italy; Spain; Ireland; China; Argentina, indeed, to all corners of the globe. They then travel to the UK or they then pass on the flu to other people who travel to the UK. People are buzzing all over the globe all the time. Doing something about flights between Mexico and the UK is pointless really.

Incoming flights from Europe, Africa and Asia would have been unaffected so Colins point at this stage would not apply. Maybe you and he should have thought that point through a little further.

Sorry, I'm a little bit unsure what point I made that you wanted to refute. Please will you let us know what it was.

BTW no deviation to try and turn the subject to animal diseases. We're talking human swine flu here so just cut the foot & mouth references. We don't want to deviate from the subject do we?

In your own time.....

[tashor]

As has been pointed out, the flu has a two week incubation period.

Ooops colon - it's 2-4 DAY incubation period............

But the sooner we all catch it ( and hence get over it ) while it is a benign disease the better............

Unless you are relying on the vaccination ................................................

[Flopsy]

Silly little parting shot there brains. You don't appear to be able to help yourself do you? However I'll bet my knowledge of those subjects is 10x better than your spelling though.

And as for this "If it was a completely devestating disease with a 2 week gestation, we'd be just as screwed" And you call me thick!

yes i am. I see again that pciking on my typo's appear to be your only escape route from the hole your lacking intellect has dug for you

[thenodrog]

yes i am. I see again that pciking on my typo's appear to be your only escape route from the hole your lacking intellect has dug for you

Yu startid it cok.

[thenodrog]

As has been pointed out, the flu has a two week incubation period. It would have been impossible to predict it to close airports. But while on the subject, which airport or airbase have you in mind & what are the facilities there for quarantine facilities for x thousand people for 2 weeks. Don't forget that this is your suggestion, you need to supply an answer. Commenting that other people don't have a clue is not acceptable.

People fly from Mexico to France; Germany; Italy; Spain; Ireland; China; Argentina, indeed, to all corners of the globe. They then travel to the UK or they then pass on the flu to other people who travel to the UK. People are buzzing all over the globe all the time. Doing something about flights between Mexico and the UK is pointless really.

Sorry, I'm a little bit unsure what point I made that you wanted to refute. Please will you let us know what it was.

BTW no deviation to try and turn the subject to animal diseases. We're talking human swine flu here so just cut the foot & mouth references. We don't want to deviate from the subject do we?

In your own time.....

1. Colin you posted "You suggested some kind of quarantine measures. I asked what you had in mind, and that quarantine measures may be impossible and unworkable due to the vast numbers of people coming into the country via various entry points."

Initially it was not vast numbers it was only flights from Mexico. If every country had done likewise maybe less poeple would have suffered.

2. The europeans appear to have achieved much better damage limitation than us. Would you care to suggest why? Also if our government is not up to the task should the Eu take control of our disease prevention measures?

3. Infectious and/or contagious diseases behave largely in the same manner whether in animals or humans. Don't forget we are all mammals. Please study up if you are struggling at this stage your forthcoming ban should allow you plenty of time.

4. As yet I have had criticism from the usual sources but despite me asking more than once we have had no answer to my open question about what we should do when one of these 'new' epidemics proves fatal in any %age of victims over 50% for example. So off you go...... Oh and if you cannot post then email me and I'll cut and paste it on here.

[Flopsy]

1. Colin you posted "You suggested some kind of quarantine measures. I asked what you had in mind, and that quarantine measures may be impossible and unworkable due to the vast numbers of people coming into the country via various entry points."

Initially it was not vast numbers it was only flights from Mexico. If every country had done likewise maybe less poeple would have suffered.

2. The europeans appear to have achieved much better damage limitation than us. Would you care to suggest why? Also if our government is not up to the task should the Eu take control of our disease prevention measures?

3. Infectious and/or contagious diseases behave largely in the same manner whether in animals or humans. Don't forget we are all mammals. Please study up if you are struggling at this stage your forthcoming ban should allow you plenty of time.

4. As yet I have had criticism from the usual sources but despite me asking more than once we have had no answer to my open question about what we should do when one of these 'new' epidemics proves fatal in any %age of victims over 50% for example. So off you go...... Oh and if you cannot post then email me and I'll cut and paste it on here.

Its spelt People.

If there was a mass outbreak of some highly contagious 50% mortality rate disease then you'ld find that they would probably ban all flights and quarantine all that had been involved.

But again I'm interested in why you keep saying it was flights from Mexico, its much more likely that the majority of the case came via the US, also as has become apparent and was apparent in Mexico at the time of the outbreak.

ITS NOT THAT SODDING SERIOUS!! I mean really, shall we overreact this hysterically to winter flu? To summer cold's? How many people a year die of non animal related flu? And how many in this country have died of Swine flu?

I say again, if something actually nasty does crop up, and it will, then you'll find that quarantine and the cancellation of flights will occur, until then

[ABBEY]

ITS NOT THAT SODDING SERIOUS!! I

it is when my gf..ooops wife can die froim normal flu if she gets it..so yep its serious.

[Flopsy]

so its no more serious than normal flu Abbey, thats the point.

And congrats on the nuptials and here's to wives and girlfriends and the hope that never the twain shall meet

[philipl]

In the interests of informing, here is a week old piece from the Observer. I appreciate that because the answer is not clear-cut, it will leave some of the intellectually simpler readers confused.

Should people travel abroad and risk the spread of swine flu to unaffected areas?

The Observer, Sunday 2 August 2009 Article history

Yes, says John McEwan, chairman of the Association of British Travel Agents

Swine flu has served to highlight a widely held view that large-scale international travel has hastened the spread of epidemics around the world. If this is the case then surely all such journeys should be halted immediately when we reach the situation when a pandemic threatens?

This is the logic of a viewpoint that calls on us not to travel abroad.

However, this carries disastrous implications for the world economy and serves no practical purpose.

Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation, last month gave a speech in Cancun, a venue chosen as a mark of respect for the excellent and sensible precautions taken by the Mexican authorities and people when swine flu first appeared in their country.

"As we see today, with well over 100 countries reporting cases, once a fully fit pandemic virus emerges, its further international spread is unstoppable," she said.

"Recommendations to avoid travel to Mexico, or any country or area with confirmed cases, serve no purpose. They do not protect the public. They do not contain the outbreak. And they do not prevent further international spread." A stronger rebuttal to calls for a ban on international travel would be hard to find.

However, it is understandable that people may still be worried about the risk of travellers from the UK spreading the virus to previously unaffected parts of the globe.

The travel industry is taking sensible precautions to minimise this risk. If you are clearly manifesting symptoms, the advice of travel association Abta - and that of the Department of Health - is not to travel, any cancellation fees being covered by insurance.

Airlines have always screened customers who appear potentially infectious and anyone clearly suffering from swine flu would be unlikely to get on the plane. On board, modern aircraft have air filtration systems which remove the majority of viruses and bacteria.

We have heard the spread of a pandemic is largely inevitable. Staying away from countries reliant on tourism will have a real impact on the livelihoods and incomes of millions of people. Tourist services are often the main source of employment in many countries and any drop-off in visitor numbers is potentially disastrous.

After the devastating tsunami of December 2004, tourists snubbed Thailand and Sri Lanka for some time, many concerned they would add to the strain on local resources.

Because of this, the people of both countries were hit with a double whammy; losing their jobs after losing their loved ones.

At that time Abta was approached by the tourist boards of both countries asking us to emphasise that large parts were unaffected and crying out for our customers to visit.

The same applies to Mexico now, and will continue to be true for other nations in the event of further disasters, natural or man-made.

The argument is pretty clear; we should continue to travel while at the same time taking sensible precautions to minimise the risk to ourselves, our fellow travellers and the people of the countries we visit.

No, says Robert Dingwall, an adviser to the government on planning for pandemic flu

Sooner or later the influenza pandemic will reach every corner of the globe. The World Health Organisation already reports cases from 160 countries, although relatively few have yet experienced the same scale of infection as the UK. This is partly because of our position as a global communications hub. Our networks of international business, and opportunities for long-distance tourism, brought the virus to us more rapidly, and in greater volume, than to anywhere else in Europe.

Fortunately, we were exceptionally well-prepared - better, even, than our European neighbours. The UK government has been planning its pandemic response for at least five years. We have good stocks of anti-virals and advance contracts for vaccines. Our government has had both the foresight and the resources to maximise the protection available to its citizens.

Other countries are less privileged. The major pharmaceutical manufacturers have made generous donations to the World Health Organisation, but there are just not enough anti-virals to treat more than about 5% of the world's population - and most of them are held by governments in developed countries. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has virtually no stock in public hands and a huge challenge in treating people who are already very sick with HIV/AIDS.

Luckily, the pandemic has been spreading more slowly in Africa, possibly because of its limited travel links. While high African death rates seem inevitable, there is a chance they could be capped if the spread of infection could be slowed so that vaccination could catch up.

The World Health Organisation is clear that travel bans are ineffective in keeping the virus out of a country - and are likely to have a disproportionate social and economic impact.

However, we should ask whether citizens of high-incidence countries have a personal ethical responsibility to consider the potential impact of travelling to low-incidence, but high-risk, countries. Could long-distance tourism do more harm than the economic benefit that it brings? Paradoxically, this question may arise most acutely for the short development project/holiday that many young people participate in, particularly as their age group has a high incidence of infection.

One supposed benefit of these activity vacations is closer contact with local people than in the upmarket tourist ghettos. The result, though, may be greater risk of passing on infection. Modern air travel means you can be infected at home, travel in an infectious condition and deliver the virus to a remote destination with a vulnerable population before your own symptoms appear. You will get whisked off to a Western-style hospital, but the people you went to help will not be so lucky. Do the benefits of your trip really justify exposing them to this risk?

While travel bans may not be justifiable, UK travellers cannot avoid thinking about their personal ethical responsibilities to the people of the countries that they are visiting. Staying at home this year will often be the morally right thing to do.

• Professor Robert Dingwall is director of the Institute for Science and Society at the University of Nottingham.

[colin]

1. Colin you posted "You suggested some kind of quarantine measures. I asked what you had in mind, and that quarantine measures may be impossible and unworkable due to the vast numbers of people coming into the country via various entry points."

Initially it was not vast numbers it was only flights from Mexico. If every country had done likewise maybe less poeple would have suffered.

2. The europeans appear to have achieved much better damage limitation than us. Would you care to suggest why? Also if our government is not up to the task should the Eu take control of our disease prevention measures?

3. Infectious and/or contagious diseases behave largely in the same manner whether in animals or humans. Don't forget we are all mammals. Please study up if you are struggling at this stage your forthcoming ban should allow you plenty of time.

4. As yet I have had criticism from the usual sources but despite me asking more than once we have had no answer to my open question about what we should do when one of these 'new' epidemics proves fatal in any %age of victims over 50% for example. So off you go...... Oh and if you cannot post then email me and I'll cut and paste it on here.

1. It's a possible "pandemic." That's global. Singleing (sp) out Mexico would be too little too late

2. Yes the EU should take control of our disease prevention measures. That would be fine by me. I can think of a few people who would have fit if this was proposed. It would be like watching Donald Duck having one of his apoplexies.

3. Agreed. But very few other mammals travel on airplanes for holidays & business trips & their movements can be restricted very quickly.

I'll take your advice on being banned from here seriously as you are far more experiance than I on the subject. Thanks for the tip.

4. It won't be over 50%. The black death in medieval times didn't reach anywhere near those levels. That was a time when no one understood viruses and hygene was non-existance. OK there was no air travel, but people still travelled spreading the disease.

If someone is unable to post a comment here what makes you think they can e-mail you? Strange comment.

Why do the words "Blackburn Rovers" spring to mind?

[thenodrog]

In the interests of informing, here is a week old piece from the Observer. I appreciate that because the answer is not clear-cut, it will leave some of the intellectually simpler readers confused.

HA HA MR LAR DI DAR GUNNER GRAHAM AT HIS SUPERCILIOUS BEST !!

Should people travel abroad and risk the spread of swine flu to unaffected areas?

The Observer, Sunday 2 August 2009 Article history

Yes, says John McEwan, chairman of the Association of British Travel Agents

Swine flu has served to highlight a widely held view that large-scale international travel has hastened the spread of epidemics around the world. If this is the case then surely all such journeys should be halted immediately when we reach the situation when a pandemic threatens?

This is the logic of a viewpoint that calls on us not to travel abroad.

However, this carries disastrous implications for the world economy and serves no practical purpose.

Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation, last month gave a speech in Cancun, a venue chosen as a mark of respect for the excellent and sensible precautions taken by the Mexican authorities and people when swine flu first appeared in their country.

"As we see today, with well over 100 countries reporting cases, once a fully fit pandemic virus emerges, its further international spread is unstoppable," she said.

"Recommendations to avoid travel to Mexico, or any country or area with confirmed cases, serve no purpose. They do not protect the public. They do not contain the outbreak. And they do not prevent further international spread." A stronger rebuttal to calls for a ban on international travel would be hard to find.

However, it is understandable that people may still be worried about the risk of travellers from the UK spreading the virus to previously unaffected parts of the globe.

The travel industry is taking sensible precautions to minimise this risk. If you are clearly manifesting symptoms, the advice of travel association Abta - and that of the Department of Health - is not to travel, any cancellation fees being covered by insurance.

Airlines have always screened customers who appear potentially infectious and anyone clearly suffering from swine flu would be unlikely to get on the plane. On board, modern aircraft have air filtration systems which remove the majority of viruses and bacteria.

We have heard the spread of a pandemic is largely inevitable. Staying away from countries reliant on tourism will have a real impact on the livelihoods and incomes of millions of people. Tourist services are often the main source of employment in many countries and any drop-off in visitor numbers is potentially disastrous.

After the devastating tsunami of December 2004, tourists snubbed Thailand and Sri Lanka for some time, many concerned they would add to the strain on local resources.

Because of this, the people of both countries were hit with a double whammy; losing their jobs after losing their loved ones.

At that time Abta was approached by the tourist boards of both countries asking us to emphasise that large parts were unaffected and crying out for our customers to visit.

The same applies to Mexico now, and will continue to be true for other nations in the event of further disasters, natural or man-made.

The argument is pretty clear; we should continue to travel while at the same time taking sensible precautions to minimise the risk to ourselves, our fellow travellers and the people of the countries we visit.

No, says Robert Dingwall, an adviser to the government on planning for pandemic flu

Sooner or later the influenza pandemic will reach every corner of the globe. The World Health Organisation already reports cases from 160 countries, although relatively few have yet experienced the same scale of infection as the UK. This is partly because of our position as a global communications hub. Our networks of international business, and opportunities for long-distance tourism, brought the virus to us more rapidly, and in greater volume, than to anywhere else in Europe.

Fortunately, we were exceptionally well-prepared - better, even, than our European neighbours. The UK government has been planning its pandemic response for at least five years. We have good stocks of anti-virals and advance contracts for vaccines. Our government has had both the foresight and the resources to maximise the protection available to its citizens.

Other countries are less privileged. The major pharmaceutical manufacturers have made generous donations to the World Health Organisation, but there are just not enough anti-virals to treat more than about 5% of the world's population - and most of them are held by governments in developed countries. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has virtually no stock in public hands and a huge challenge in treating people who are already very sick with HIV/AIDS.

Luckily, the pandemic has been spreading more slowly in Africa, possibly because of its limited travel links. While high African death rates seem inevitable, there is a chance they could be capped if the spread of infection could be slowed so that vaccination could catch up.

The World Health Organisation is clear that travel bans are ineffective in keeping the virus out of a country - and are likely to have a disproportionate social and economic impact.

ARE THESE TWO STATEMENTS NOT SOMEWHAT CONTRADICTORY?

However, we should ask whether citizens of high-incidence countries have a personal ethical responsibility to consider the potential impact of travelling to low-incidence, but high-risk, countries. Could long-distance tourism do more harm than the economic benefit that it brings? Paradoxically, this question may arise most acutely for the short development project/holiday that many young people participate in, particularly as their age group has a high incidence of infection.

One supposed benefit of these activity vacations is closer contact with local people than in the upmarket tourist ghettos. The result, though, may be greater risk of passing on infection. Modern air travel means you can be infected at home, travel in an infectious condition and deliver the virus to a remote destination with a vulnerable population before your own symptoms appear. You will get whisked off to a Western-style hospital, but the people you went to help will not be so lucky. Do the benefits of your trip really justify exposing them to this risk?

While travel bans may not be justifiable, UK travellers cannot avoid thinking about their personal ethical responsibilities to the people of the countries that they are visiting. Staying at home this year will often be the morally right thing to do.

• Professor Robert Dingwall is director of the Institute for Science and Society at the University of Nottingham.

Anyway nice to see that you have come up with a serious comment Gunner. Pity though that you have had to cut and paste other people and appear to be unable to formulate your own opinion though. I guess you must belong in the intellectually simpler corner yourself.

If someone is unable to post a comment here what makes you think they can e-mail you? Strange comment.

Eh? Why wouldn't someone who has been banned on here be able to email me?

Its spelt People.

Rool 7 transgrest ther I bileev Flopmod.

Tut Tut. btw Who mods the mods?

[broadsword]

Tut Tut. btw Who mods the mods?

Paul Weller.

[philipl]

I have my own opinion 'drog-

You are a typical know nothing know it all who actually has no access, power or influence over public policy.

With regards to the pandemic:

It is a horrible job but the WHO and public health authorities actually have to play God. There are global actuarial tables which place an economic value on life and suffering in each country of the world and those factors inevitably come into consideration when assessing the emmergence of each new disease.

There is nothing particularly exceptional about H1N1. The world is generally geared up to the emergence of new flu varieties on a regular basis and with global travel being the norm, the emergence will inevitably be cross-species as there are no isolated pockets of humans harbouring their own mutations of flu left anywhere to infect the rest of us. New types of 'flu have always appeared with regularity and will continue to do so.

Putting it in context, H1N1 is probably less lethal than any of the common or garden varieties of flu knocking around and certainly less lethal than car driving. It doesn't even sit on the same scale as tobacco and alcohol which individually are killing many times more people than all the illegal substances combined.

The issues about H1N1 are that it is a particularly unpleasant illness for about a third of the people who catch it (perhaps a third who catch scarcely notice they have got it). Also because young people have less exposure to flu viruses, amongst the people who have a terrible reaction to H1N1, the relatively young are ost suscepible to being fatalities. Putting it in perspective, if you get H1N1, you have about a 0.05% chance of snuffng it which is significantly less than being killed in a road accident if you do 10,000 miles a year or more this year.

So the WHO and public health issues are how to manage a lot of people falling ill at the same time and being highly contagious whilst a proportion (perhaps a third) become accutely ill for up to two weeks and a tiny proportion (but a large number in the context of general health issues because so many people will get the flu) become dangerously ill requiring hospitalisation.

It is in this context that prevention, vaccination and care policies are being prepared.

Fortunaely for the northern hemisphere, we can learn from wat is happening in the southern hemisphere- particularly South America- who are the first to go though a winter with H1N1. It won't make the coming winter any easier but the statistics of spreading infection will be much better understood and policies for school closures etc much better informed..

Back to the origination of H1N1 and containing the initial spread.

Inevitably, the virus is always out and about before it is diagnosed. With H1N1, the Mexican authorities seem to have been incredibly quick. Retrospective research does not seem to have any cases more than a month before the alarm was raised. When you think there is a few days incubation then a smart doctor has to recognise he/she doesn't know what they are dealing with, add a few days for the path labs to examine the samples, cross-check and double-check the results to avoid an unnecessary scare, the Mexicans have to be absolutely applauded and thanked for the sheer professionalism and speed with which they reacted.

The point of origination was actually an American owned pig unit out in the Mexican provinces a long way from anywhere of any significance. The Mexicans spotted the flu when it emerged in Mexico City and traced it back using usual medical research procedures back to that particular pig unit.

The disease had already crossed the border to the southern USA through totally normal and legal movements of people when the Mexicans had identified it. More to the point there were two hotspots of infection in the USA nowhere near the Mexican border, one of which was in South Carolina - the HQ of the pig company. It is pretty clear that of the first 20 sufferers of H1N1, probably five were US citizens who were visiting their Mexican facility.

In other words, quarrantining Mexicans would be totally useless as the virus was in the USA two or three weeks before anybody knew there was a problem.

At that point, you could argue for banning all trans-Atlantic travel but as a health prevention measure, it ranks below stopping all driving in the UK as an effective and beneficial measure.

And I think there is somebody on here who is quick to whinge about nanny states and all that stuff. Strange how he puts his pettycoats on when the ban is something he likes- stopping the free movement of peoples.

When a disease emerges which is far more life threatening then strict quarrantines get slapped on by the WHO- some very unpleasant diseases have been remarkably effecively constrained to parts of rural Africa and eradicated dispite all the logistical issues involved. Incidentally, there were no diseases in the history of humanity that have killed 50% of populations infected until tobacco consumption came along. There are a couple of famous plage villages (one in Derbyshire and one in Hertordshire) which are famous precisely because the plague uniquely took nearly 50% of the villagers- the real figure is perhaps 20% of the population died prematurely as a result of the plague or its consequences.

So in treating health hazards, be it smoking, road deaths, H1N1 it is a matter of proportionality and to an extent what society will stand as the price of modern living.

Those of us living in a timewarp perhaps will have a different perception of what modern living entails, but all things are a balance and a subtle shade of grey.

[thenodrog]

So in treating health hazards, be it smoking, road deaths, H1N1 it is a matter of proportionality and to an extent what society will stand as the price of modern living.

Those of us living in a timewarp perhaps will have a different perception of what modern living entails, but all things are a balance and a subtle shade of grey.

Very good Gunner. Do you have a link to where you cut and pasted that from?

Anyway right on cue more health problems caused by misuse of antibiotics and unecessary travel.

http://news.aol.co.uk/health-news/new-supe...090845156485428

[Paul]

I've been away in rural north Wales for a few days without so much as a mobile sigal. I was looking forward to this thread on returning, nice to read it hasn't disappointed. Come on Rovers!