Words to the Wise: Pandemic Preparedness

Here's a terrific summary of the expert opinions presented at the lastest 2007 Summit, sponsored by the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, on how to prepare for a pandemic. Although the summit was geared toward businesspeople, the advice applies to everyone. Here's one example:

"John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza, a history of the 1918 pandemic, warned the audience that planning documents do not equal preparedness. He cited the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans as exhibit A: 'If there was an event more planned for than a hurricane hitting New Orleans, I don't know what it is.' "

For years, experts had predicted that a category five hurricane would overwhelm the levees and destroy much of New Orleans. Yet no one did prepared for it. We shouldn't make the same mistake twice, but clearly it's up to individuals, not government agencies, to do the heavy lifting.


(Major hat tip to Maggie and Gordon Johnson of the superb Little Tree B&B in Taos, NM, for the heads up on this report.)

Vitamin D, the Virus Killer

Now that bird flu is in the news again, maybe it's time to rethink some of "conventional wisdom" about the spread of virus. As this excerpt from the latest issue of the invaluable newsletter published by the non-profit Vitamin D Council shows, the belief that viruses from sick people are spread to those who are well may be a mistake. If this is the case, then avoiding the infected is not going to protect anyone. Then what does? There's a good chance that the answer to that question is vitamin D. (By the way, the Vitamin D Council is simply a group of world-class scientists from some of the most respected universities in the world who believe adequate amounts of vitamin D could prevent many of today's most common diseases. They are not selling anything. And even if they were, they would not be getting rich, since supplementing with vitamin D only costs about 10 cents a day.)

That said, here's the excerpt:

"Five controlled human studies were conducted on volunteers in the desperate days of 1919 when 50,000,000 people in the world had just died from influenza. All five attempted to show influenza is transmitted like the common cold, from the sick to the well. It gave me chills to read what the 100 Boston volunteers were willing to risk in the largest study, one published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.(Rosenau, MJ. Experiments to determine mode of spread of influenza. JAMA. 1919;73:311-313.)

In the above study, Rosenau and his six colleagues took 100 volunteers, "all of the most susceptible age," none of whom had ever had influenza. That is, "from the most careful histories that we could elicit, they gave no account of a febrile attack of any kind," during the previous year, and thus no evidence they would have had immunity to the 1918 virus. The authors took great care to select their influenza donors from patients in a "distinct focus or outbreak of influenza, sometimes an epidemic in a school with 100 cases, from which we would select typical cases, in order to prevent mistakes in diagnosis of influenza." Rosenau went on to say, "A few of the donors were in the first day of the disease. Others were in the second or third day of the disease."

Now, read this to see if you would volunteer for the experiments, knowing the lethality of the 1918 virus.

"Then we proceeded to transfer the virus obtained from cases of the disease; that is, we collected the material and mucous secretions of the mouth and nose and bronchi from cases of the disease and transferred this to our volunteers. We always obtained the material in the following way: The patients with fever, in bed, have a large, shallow, traylike arrangement before him or her, and we washed out one nostril with some sterile salt solution, using perhaps 5 c.c., which is allowed to run into this tray; and that nostril is blown vigorously into the tray. That is repeated with the other nostril. The patient then gargles the solution. Next we obtain some bronchial mucous through coughing, and then we swab the mucous surface of each nares and also the mucous membranes of the throat." Then they mixed all this "stuff" together and squirted it into the noses of the volunteers! "None of them took sick in any way."

Undaunted, Rosenau reported they conducted another experiment on 10 of these brave souls. "The volunteer was led up to the bedside of the patient; he was introduced. He sat down alongside the bed of the patients. They shook hands, and by instructions, he got as close as he conveniently could, and they talked for several minutes. At the end of five minutes, the patient breathed out as hard as he could, while the volunteer, muzzle to muzzle, received this expired breath, and at the same time was breathing in as the patient breathed out. This they repeated five times, and they did it fairly faithfully in almost all instances. After they had done this five times, the patient coughed directly into the face of the volunteer, face to face, five different times. I may say that the volunteers were perfectly splendid about carrying out the technic of these experiments. They did it with a high idealism. They were inspired with the thought that they might help others. They went through the program in a splendid spirit. After our volunteer had had this sort of contact with the patients, talking and chatting and shaking hands with him for five minutes, and receiving his breath five times, and then his cough directly in his face, he moved to the next patient whom we had selected, and repeated this, and so on, until this volunteer had had that sort of contact with ten different cases of influenza, in different stages of the disease, mostly fresh cases, none of them more than three days old. We will remember that each one of the ten volunteers had that sort of intimate contact with each one of the ten different influenza patients. They were watched carefully for seven days - and none of them took sick in any way."

Rosenau concluded, "We entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person-to-person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease."

Can you imagine volunteering for this study, the year after 50,000,000 people died in the world from influenza? Courageous volunteers who knew nothing about the evidence vitamin D protects one from influenza. I wish modern virologists would read these 1919 studies, which are the only ones that ever attempted to show human influenza is transmitted from the sick to the well. If any reader knows of any controlled human study, in any language, of any date, that proves influenza is propagated by an endless series of transmissions from the sick to the well, I invite its citation for my continuing education."

Another Decade of Bird Flu Watch

We haven’t been hearing much about bird flu lately, but according to experts, that isn’t because it’s gone away. “The virus is likely to be with us for another five or ten years,” said David Nabarro, Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza at U. N. Headquarters in New York. He advised continued vigilance in the event the virus mutates and becomes easily transferred between humans.

“As long as the virus is present in birds, there will also be the threat of sporadic human infection,” he added, “and the possibility of a mutation causing a pandemic.”

Repeated outbreaks of human infections mean the virus will not be eliminated for some time, he noted, but he is hopeful that efforts undertaken to combat the virus in recent months have increased pandemic preparedness.

“The difference now is that countries all over the world are much more geared up to deal with this phenomenon than they were a year ago. It gives me some hope that when the virus appears in a new country, it can be controlled,” he said.

“It’s the reason why we have to work toward long-term reform of poultry farming techniques, which could reduce the risks of human infection.”

It’s nearly impossible, says Nabarro, to estimate the number of deaths that a pandemic could cause. His best guess: somewhere between five and 150 million.

Welcome to the blog based on the book, Stop Bird Flu Now! The book is nearly half done and should be available in February, 2007. Meanwhile, the blog is where I’ll be posting late-breaking news and other information on bird flu. Check back often, because things are changing fast.

Example: Last year, authorities at Health and Human Services (HHS) claimed they had stockpiled enough H5N1 vaccine for four million people. But now it turns out that the vaccine loses effectiveness over time. Experts now say that there is enough for only about three million individuals. Of course, if the pandemic is set off by a mutated form of the virus, it will be a moot point, because the H5N1 vaccine isn’t going to work at all.

The bottom line: Don’t be scared, be prepared. Getting (and staying) healthy is a key step. If you don’t already take nutritional supplements, start by adding a high-quality multi-vitamin to your daily regimen. Several studies have shown that this simple step would save billions of health care dollars each year.