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Hang on, maybe it has mutated into a milder form. In Vietnam they said they had found evidence of a milder form, which was going undetected until some antibodies showed up in blood work.
I can't see how they could hide all sorts of dead and dying. Isn't there a member or two that is close to that country?
Thailand has had an intensive bird flu education programme.
Lots of people are reporting them selves as sick.
They are being tested. Most of the tests have come back and they are negative.
I assume the test is for Influenza A and that it is the first test done when looking for H5N1, is this correct?
WASHINGTON - Scientists combined genes from the notorious Asian bird flu with human flu but weren't able to create a strain that could be easily spread.
Still, that doesn't mean Mother Nature won't find a way for the virus to create a pandemic.
While one leading expert called the test result a "small dose of reassurance," that sentiment wasn't shared by the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Let's not use the word reassuring," Dr. Julie Gerberding said at a briefing on the study. "This virus is still out there, it's still evolving."
Viruses change to become easily spread in two main ways, Gerberding said. In one case they gradually evolve, which is probably what happened in the 1918 worldwide flu pandemic. In other cases they exchange genes with human flu strains, which she said happened in the pandemics of 1957 and 1968.
So the researchers mixed genes from human and bird flu viruses to see how easy it is to create a rapidly spreading strain.
It isn't easy.
The importance of the research is in determining that the process is complex, said Dr. Jacqueline M. Katz of CDC, a co-author of the paper appearing in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition, Gerberding said, it provides a new tool to test viruses for ease of transmission.
The H5N1 bird flu virus has spread widely in Asia and parts of Europe, killing millions of chickens and other birds and raising fears of a worldwide epidemic if it were to spread between people. More than 130 people have died of the illness, but most cases were traced to contact with poultry rather than person-to-person transmission.
Researchers at CDC used ferrets to test the H5N1 bird virus that had exchanged genes with a common human flu known as H3N2. Ferrets and humans respond similarly to flu, including spreading it by coughing and sneezing.
Some combinations of genes resulted in viruses that were able to reproduce well but still could not be easily transmitted between animals. In other cases the mixed viruses had little ability to reproduce or transmit.
This test in ferrets can be a valuable tool in determining whether future mutations of the bird flu virus are easily transmitted, the researchers reported.
Katz said the research used a 1997 version of the bird flu virus and that further tests are ongoing using more recent versions. Tests are also planned in guinea pigs as well as ferrets, she said.
Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University agreed that this could be a way potential pandemic viruses could be tested rather quickly.
"For example, they could have taken that virus from that cluster in northern Indonesia and rushed it into the CDC laboratory and said: 'Do the ferret experiment.' And I would not be surprised if this becomes one of the ways some of these candidate viruses ? viruses we worry about ? are tested," said Schaffner, an influenza expert who advises the government on the disease.
Schaffner, who was not part of the research team, found a further glimmer of good news.
This may help explain why the current bird flu virus, which has had plenty of chances to encounter human flu viruses and exchange genes, has not yet combined successfully to produce an efficiently transmitted human strain, he said.
"It is because it's very complicated. The right combination of genes, we haven't identified yet, and apparently the bird flu virus hasn't been able to find yet either," he said.
"So this may give some small dose of reassurance that perhaps this is not the bird flu viral strain that's going to cause a pandemic. We should not go to sleep totally at ease, however. But if we're looking for small doses of reassurance in a very troubled world ... maybe this is a small bit of good news," he said in a telephone interview.
Dr. Wilbur Chen of the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine agreed that the study highlights the complexity of how the virus changes.
"I echo the authors' endorsement of the ferret model as a valuable tool" for identifying if a virus is easily transmitted, added Chen, who was not part of the research team.
Do they do blood tests for antibodies - that would only show after a certain amount of time having been sick and/or having recovered - in which case it is useless at the beginning of the illness? Or are they doing throat/sputum/bronchial swabs tests, which would show positive/negative results earlier in the course of the illness - though not entirely reliable if the virus shows a preference for deep lung infection rather than upper respiratory tract?
“Respiratory specimens (nasopharyngeal aspirates, throat swabs, endotracheal aspirates, and sputum) were collected and stored in viral transport medium. Only nasopharyngeal or endotracheal aspirates were examined by rapid virus detection methods.”
So the throat swabs and sputum not used for testing.
It looks like nasopharyngeal aspirates and endotracheal aspirates are the best for a rapid diagnosis.
Sure, it's very possible it has gone to a milder form. It's exactly what the 1918 virus did, before it went amok and started killing by the millions. Sounds to me that this *is* the first mild round. especially when you throw in vietnam and indo's numbers. and china's and ......hell, the whole asian continent.
and yes, i know WHO did not make BF. I'm just surprised, and dissappointed that we haven't heard from them concerning Thailand. Why aren't they there supervising like they did in Turkey? They certainly didn't wait this long and for the situation to get this bad, before they went in. WHO knows better than testing by blood. and maybe that's just it. If they did go in, there would have to be correct testing procedures done and we'd be getting correct information on results. As we all know, a blood test is only good to test for antibodies....at least a full 2 weeks AFTER infection. So, why do this test when they first walk in the hospital door? and why did they decide to just start medicating everyone who comes in with "just the regular flu" with tamiflu before they even get a inappropriate blood test result back? cause they already know they have a big problem.
I call a stink when I smell a stink and this one's ripe.
Thank you. So they do blood tests... which are sure to bring false negatives... Sigh. I'm going to have to programme prepping outings a little more often now instead of going for a well-deserved holiday.
correct me if i'm wrong, but.. i believe there has been mention of *the first* possible cluster. over a week ago. a father and his two children. oh yeah. they tested negitive, didn't they.
well then, how about the mother and her daughter who came down sick after contact with dead birds? oops. sorry again..their blood test came back negitive too, didn't it.
hmm. dang those blood tests. it's just messin me up. guess your right. with the what...maybe a thousand... blood tests that have now been done (that we're aware of anyway)....there've been no clusters.
Clearly there needs to be more transparency. The situation is confusing. There could be a problem there.
However, remember that there are possibly multiple vectors there. We are talking about 131 suspected cases in 4 areas, in a country with a population of 65,000,000.
It is highly speculative to guess how many diagnostic tests are wrong, or if the testing procedure is flawed.
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