Bird Flu Survival Guide

Indonesia has now surpassed Vietnam with the most fatalities arising from human bird flu infection. Recently two teenagers died on the 7th August, bringing the Indonesian death toll to 44 deaths from 56 confirmed infection cases in a little over a year. This is a 78% mortality rate and is way above the earlier rates of approximately 55% experienced in other countries since 2003.

Not only is the Indonesian strain deadly but analysis of the recently released Indonesian gene sequences of the H5N1 virus show that some human samples are no longer matching the avian samples. This suggests that chickens may not be the only source of infection that is infecting humans there. Many of these human samples of H5N1 virus are containing more and more mammalian characteristics. Not only is this constantly evolving Indonesian strain changing into strains very different from the original strain but it has also been shown to be mixing with the Chinese Quinghai strain that recently spread through Europe and the Middle East. A possible consequence of these changes would be to render any vaccine based on the original strain less effective.

Avian bird flu has been found in 27 out of 33 provinces of Indonesia so far including Bali, and has just been confirmed in neighboring Papua.

Another potential hotspot just emerging is Thailand. The government has declared 29 provinces bird flu disaster zones and experienced a recent confirmed human fatality on the 3rd August with another 11 hospitalized with suspected bird flu. The health minister recently announced that Thailand’s common human flu is getting deadlier each year and then quoted figures of over 6000 people infected this year with approximately 300 deaths. This 5% fatality rate is an extraordinarily high rate for the common flu, which is usually around .05%. Either his figures are wrong or their common flu has pandemic potential or H5N1 victims are being undiagnosed. This is one way a H5N1 pandemic could quite likely begin unnoticed.

Under high security some scientists recently experimented with the H5N1 virus and tried to cross it with a common human flu virus to make the H5N1 virus acquire pandemic characteristics. It is believed that an avian influenza virus combined with a common human virus to produce the Asian Flu and Hong Kong Flu pandemics earlier this century. They were unsuccessful with the strains they used but conceded it may be possible with other strains. In any case, analysis of the 1918 Spanish Flu shows that it did not combine with a human common flu before it turned pandemic. It just evolved into a pandemic strain and this H5N1 virus may be similar to the 1918 virus.