Sept. 20, 2005, 11:18PMThis is scary. Keep informed of it.In face of killer flu threat, Bush speech was for birds -- U.S. finally addresses pandemic, but is it too late?
By MICHAEL A. BABCOCK
The most important speech President Bush gave last week was not the prime-time address from Jackson Square in New Orleans. The world will little note nor long remember what he said there. It was stagey and prosaic, and his words were artificially elevated in importance by the passing political moment, not the substance of his remarks.
The most important speech Bush gave last week was delivered at the United Nations. It contained an ominous reference, which very few people seem to have noticed. The president signalled his concern over a new threat currently building in southeast Asia — and this time the threat has nothing to do with terrorism.
In the poultry farms of Vietnam and Thailand, in the slums of Indonesia, along the migratory routes of wild fowl in China, a new strain of bird flu is mutating and spreading. It's just a matter of time, scientists say, before the strain — H5N1, the most virulent form of influenza ever identified — will fully lodge itself within the human population. When that happens, start looking for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse — in particular, the one named Pestilence who's riding a pale horse.
This is not your ordinary, off-the-shelf, garden variety flu strain. It's a superbug. Currently, the virus is transmitted to humans only through direct contact with birds. Up until now, there's been very little to worry about unless you work with chickens in Thailand, or you eat Vietnamese delicacies such as uncoagulated duck blood soup. But scientists tell us that the virus is mutating, and it will soon become a human-to-human contagion that's spread the old-fashioned way — by nose, hand and mouth.
And here's what's really disturbing. The documented mortality rate from the current oubreak in southeast Asia is around 55 percent. Even if the bug is less virulent in its mutated form (which is likely), H5N1 could well be as contagious and deadly as smallpox.
The virus is poised to make its way around the world, killing perhaps hundreds of millions in its wake. There are no human antibodies for the virus, and there is no vaccine. The only drug known to be effective in treating the symptoms is Tamiflu, which governments around the world have been quietly and aggressively stockpiling for the past two years. Governments, that is, except our own.
While France and Canada and Australia have been amassing doses of Tamiflu, we've been fixated on preventing bioterrorism threats such as anthrax. France has a population of 60 million, but will soon have 12 million doses of Tamiflu on hand. For our own population of nearly 300 million, we have a paltry 2.5 million doses. That's a 24 to 1 advantage for the French.
The Next Hurrah.
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