Two stories have emerged on the influenza front, both dealing with potential vaccines — one specific to avian H5N1 flu and the other an all-around flu panacea.

U.S. government scientists say they have successfully tested in people a vaccine that they believe can protect against the strain of avian influenza that is spreading in birds in Asia and Russia. Health officials have been racing to develop a vaccine because they worry that, if the H5N1 strain mutates and combines with a human influenza virus to create a new virus, it could spread rapidly through the world.

Tens of millions of birds have died from infection and culling to prevent spread of the virus. As of Aug. 5 112 people have been infected, and 57 have died from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. So far, there has been no sustained human-to-human transmission.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that while the vaccine that has undergone preliminary tests could be used on an emergency basis if a
pandemic developed, it would still be several months before that vaccine is tested further and, if licensed, offered to the public. He cautioned: “We don’t have all the vaccine we need to meet the possible demand. The critical issue now is, can we make enough vaccine, given the well-known inability of the vaccine industry to make enough vaccine.”
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U.K. and U.S. teams used computer models to work out the possible scenarios that could occur if the H5N1 avian influenza virus mutated and became capable of spreading from human to human. The result could be deaths on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that claimed between 20 million and 40 million lives. However, a combination of surveillance and the targeted use of antiviral drugs could halt it, the teams told the journals “Nature” and “Science.”

The models used by both teams were nased on incidences and controls used in Thailand, one of the countries at highest risk from bird flu. More than 50 people have died from the virus in southeast Asia since the first human cases were reported in 1997.

Currently, the H5N1 avian influenza poses a limited threat to humans because it is difficult to transmit from person to person. But health experts fear the H5N1 virus could acquire this ability, causing an influenza pandemic that could kill as many as 50,000 people in the United Kingdom alone.

Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in London and his colleagues found two specific conditions that would have to be met to limit an outbreak of human-transmissible avian influenza to fewer than 200 cases. First, the virus would have to be identified while confined to about 30 people. Second, antiviral drugs would have to be distributed rapidly to the 20,000 people nearest the infected individuals.
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Bird flu. Doesn’t sound very threatening, does it? Perhaps you’re more concerned about the possibility of getting West Nile virus or SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome). But you should be worried about bird flu, or the H5N1 virus, as it’s known. Very worried.

Avian flu virus has every earmark of becoming a pandemic, or worldwide epidemic. The last pandemic the United States experienced was the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed 675,000 Americans and several million people worldwide. The H5N1 virus could easily top that, as humans have absolutely no resistance to the virus. It’s too new.

H5N1 only emerged in Asia a couple of years ago. Like swine flu, it is a trans-species virus that mutated and crossed over from birds into humans from close contact. It can be transmitted through feces or sputum, from touching, eating or just being close to infected birds. Not all infected birds show symptoms. It has already crossed over to swine in China — only a short hop from there to people.

At this writing, 54 people have died from bird flu in Asia since December 2003. Millions of domesticated and wild fowl have been killed to stop infection or have died of the infection. Millions more have been vaccinated with a vaccine developed in China that has not been proved effective. Indeed, some health experts think it could spread a vaccine-resistant super-version of the illness.

Where is it? Infections have been detected in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China and, most disturbing, eastern Russia, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Human deaths have been confined so far to Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong and China.

H5N1 has been found in flocks of migratory geese, and when those birds migrate, well, they take the virus with them. Hence, the pandemic scenario, with eastern Europe having a high probability of infection in 2005. Health experts also fear that the virus is being spread through illegal meat imports.

What can you do? Nothing. The virus is spreading and will continue to spread, inexorably, across the planet. Take vitamins, exercise and read this News Watch column regularly, as this topic is still under the radar of Western journalists.

We will post the latest information on avian flu here, as it becomes available, from a variety of international new sources.

O.J. Simpson has offered his assistance to Pres. Bush in getting to the bottom of the Plame CIA leak investigation. Speaking from a golf course in Florida Tuesday, O.J. vowed to find out who exposed Plame’s identity to reporters after her husband, Joseph Wilson, contradicted Bush’s version of Iraq’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction as the basis for pre-emptive war.

“The real leaker is out there,” O.J. said, “and I won’t rest until we find him and clear the good name of whoever it isn’t.”

Pres. Bush responded warmly to O.J.’s offer.

“I have complete confidence in O.J.’s ability to track down the perpetrators of this dastardly deed,” Bush told reporters. “And if he actually does find the guilty party, I promise to take swift and immediate action, up to and including giving that person a stern talking-to. And I mean that. You can take it to the bank.”

Bush added that finding the leaker has been a difficult and arduous process, one that O.J. will probably be able to extend indefinitely unless he kills someone else and has to go to jail.

“I’ve done everything short of walking across the hall and asking if anyone knows anything,” Bush said. “O.J. has an uncanny ability to look for suspects as far afield as possible, so I know he will be thorough in all the wrong places. Excuse me, I meant right places. Next question.”