Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

[hawkeye]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Welcome JVBarry

[GermTheory]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Dear Mr. Barry,

Many thanks for the reference to your 11/08 JID article and discussion about evidence pointing to immunity from the spring 1918 wave providing protection in the fall.

There are many opinions regarding the severity of the fall/winter wave, ranging from mild to catastrophic. What is your recommendation for family preparedness?

Thank you for working so hard to help us understand pandemic influenza.

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Welcome Mr. Barry.

Thank you for your dedication to writing what had been thought of as a history book, which has proven to be a very valuable resource.

Obviously influenza is perfectly capable of repeating its own history and creating some surprises.

.

[Evelyn]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

2. A willful misreading of the book: He complains about my sentence, "Antibodies, for example, carry thousands of receptors on their surface to recognize and bind to a target antigen." He argues that this means a single antibody can bind to thousands of antigens. Any reasonable reader of the sentence will conclude that it says the opposite. The antibody has thousands of receptors, but they only bind to one antigen.

Hi, Mr. Barry. Maybe the misunderstanding arose from the use of the word "receptors." As I understand it, antibodies don't have "receptors" at all. "Receptor" usually refers to cellular proteins that bind specific signaling molecules or ions, creating signal-mediated changes in a cell's functioning. An antibody acts like a receptor in that it operates by extremely specific fit of a protein to another molecule. The complex structure of an antibody's antigen-binding site is what permits this specificity, and maybe the complexity of the structural elements is what you meant to describe.

While I work in the biological sciences, I'm no immunologist, so I hope someone else will correct me as necessary. I've done a quick check against the Wikipedia articles on antibodies and receptors.

Thank you for your valuable work!

Evelyn

[pjie2]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

2. A willful misreading of the book: He complains about my sentence, "Antibodies, for example, carry thousands of receptors on their surface to recognize and bind to a target antigen." He argues that this means a single antibody can bind to thousands of antigens. Any reasonable reader of the sentence will conclude that it says the opposite. The antibody has thousands of receptors, but they only bind to one antigen.

An antibody cannot "carry receptors on its surface", an antibody IS what you are referring to as a receptor. An antibody is a single protein, and recognises a single antigen.

In your original sentence you appear to be referring to B lymphocytes, the cells which produce antibodies. Each individual B lymphocyte produces a single type of antibody, and carries many thousands of copies of that antibody on its surface. When it encounters an antigen recognised by that antibody, the B cell does two things: firstly it proliferates, so that you end up with more and more circulating cells capable of recognising the antigen, and secondly it starts secreting copies of the antibody molecule into the circulation. Once in circulation, the antibodies bind to the antigen and trigger other parts of the immune system to perform their functions.

[Treyfish]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

What an honor! Don't be a stranger!

[tropical]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

#20/21:...

Without entering the scientific distinctions, before the literature publishing, the sci. details usualy were supervised and rectified if neccessary by the book scientific correctors, not neccessary by the author.

This book were not claimed as an scientific publication for professional viral researchers, or waiting for scientific reviews, it is an wide public lecture probably, so the author could have some room.

[Rainbow Lake]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

I'm John Barry, am incredibly busy just now and plan to post a more detailed reply in the future-- if anyone still cares. However, let me respond briefly here.

First, I certainly know the difference between a retrovirus and other viruses, and I thank my critic for pointing out the imprecision of my language. In future printings of the book, this will be corrected. Any other factual error will also be corrected.

But most of his comments reflect either errors on his part, willful misreading of the book, or matters of opinion. Let me give you an example of each.

1. His error: He's wrong and I'm right about dendritic cells. Some, although not all, do do what the book says they do.

2. A willful misreading of the book: He complains about my sentence, "Antibodies, for example, carry thousands of receptors on their surface to recognize and bind to a target antigen." He argues that this means a single antibody can bind to thousands of antigens. Any reasonable reader of the sentence will conclude that it says the opposite. The antibody has thousands of receptors, but they only bind to one antigen.

3. Matters of opinion:... I think the evidence is very strong that the spring wave in 1918 was caused by the same virus as the second wave. But since the first wave was generally so mild, and killed so few-- the British Grand Fleet, which patrolled the coast of Europe, saw 10,313 cases but suffered only 4 deaths-- it's unlikely we'll ever get enough molecular evidence to prove or disprove this opinion. However, epidemiological evidence is in my opinion compelling.

There is no doubt a new pandemic virus erupted in the spring, long before late June when Taubenberger's article is willing concede that it began. In fact, the pandemic picked up its name "Spanish Influenza" when it struck Spain-- in May, before Taubenberger agrees that a pandemic existed.

So there are two possibilites. Either one pandemic virus was supplanted by another, or the same virus caused both waves. The first hypothesis is possible, and many people now fear that H1N1 could be supplanted by an H5N1 pandemc (or by a reassortant of H1 and H5, or another reassortant, or by an entirely different virus). But this seems quite unlikely.

More importantly, there is overwhelming evidence that spring wave exposure provided protection against the lethal wave. This protection was much greater than can be explained by the cross-protection that one strain might provide another. In fact it was equal to or better than a good modern vaccine. A modern vaccine is considered decent at 70% effectiveness, and a few years ago the vaccine was only 44% effetcive. Spring exposure protected against the fall wave often with 80-90% effectiveness. I wrote about this at length. See: Barry, JM, Viboud, C, Simonsen, L,, Cross Protection Between Successive Waves of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic: Epidemiological Evidence from US Army Camps and Britain, J Infect Dis. 2008 Nov 15;198(10):1427-34.

I wrote that article hoping to convince those who speculated that the waves were caused by different viruses that they were wrong. Apparently I was unsuccessful in this.

Those who argue the virus did not change virulence in 1918 are not being logical. They're being tautological. They are saying that influenza viruses don't change virulence; waves in 1918 were of different virulence; therefore the viruses were different.

Until H5N1 surfaced, most people did not believe influenza could jump directly from birds to people either.

Mr. Barry -

We are all honored that you chose to weigh in on this discussion. Your book has helped many of us see the overall evolution of the 1918 pandemic and I think it will be a great help to us in our vigilance regarding the current H1N1.

Quite apart from specific scientific details, we should all learn from your book about the behavior of governing bodies (Philadelphia versus San Francisco), the strategies that were successful against the virus (quarantine), and the countries and populations that might be most vulnerable to the current strain of the virus (India ?, South America ?, isolated communities, etc.).

There have been two post lines lately that seem to want to divert attention from the Spanish Flu. I believe that is a mistake. Yes, the 1918 strain and the current A/H1N1 may behave differently, but if it turns on us as it did in 1918, we can draw upon lessons from the past. If we do not learn from the mistakes of our predecessors, we will likely repeat their mistakes (mistakes like not telling people about the danger, holding parades eventhough the dangerous strain had moved from the camps to the general population, allowing soldiers to be crammed into railway cars where the death rate far exceeded that in less crowded conditions).

There are many lessons to be learned from "The Great Influenza". We hope that you will become a regular contributor to this site.

[tropical]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

"If we do not learn from the mistakes of our predecessors, we will likely repeat their mistakes"


Unfortunately, not only we did not learn,
we ultra-fasten, and augmented the disseminations by huge touristic fluxes, and by new air vehicles intercontinental vectors ...

[colormyquilt]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Welcome, Mr. Barry.

I remain impressed with your attention to detail in the writing of The Great Influenza. Also, your ability as historian to enlarge/ to include the multitude of factors that played into the response to the 1918 Pandemic in a manner that was factual/ non-judgmental.

[SonicHappyHourAddict]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

What an honor to have you post here! I have your book. Being a lay person, current RN student, it is written to where I can understand it. I often refer to the month we are currently in and compare it to the goings on of that same month in your histories. It is eery in the similarities, tho I pray the similarities stop soon. Thanks so much for posting and even more for writing the only thorough book on the history of the pandemic. My husband's grandfather was an elderly doctor and died in Feb 1919, his wife seven days later. All their grown children, 14, lived. We have only the headstones, no other information. Family history says they both had the flu and pneumonia, tho no one in this part of Arkansas seems to remember the pandemic.

Thanks again for all your research.

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Thank you J Barry for your very informative work. I found it goes well with Black November: The 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand by Geoffrey W. Rice http://www.nzine.co.nz/views/1918pandemic.html



another J Barry paper

WHITE PAPER ON NOVEL H1N1 PREPARED FOR THE MIT CENTER FOR ENGINEERING SYSTEMS FUNDAMENTALS http://esd.mit.edu/WPS/2009/esd-wp-2009-07.pdf
John M. Barry Distinguished Scholar, Tulane University Center for Bioenvironmental Research
Member, Advisory Board, MIT Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals jvbarry@aol.com

[sharon sanders]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Crof at H5N1 blog is speculating that the poster JVBarry is not John Barry who wrote "The Great Influenza". I can tell you that it is. I interviewed him last week and also spoke to him today about his response to the blog essay by Racaniello. He chose to respond here because he felt he would have a fair chance to fully express himself without the typical bashing that permeates the internet.

We have a reputation for trying to maintain a civil dialog here.

Mr. Barry will not be responding on Dr. Racaniello's blog. He is invited here to reply and will be afforded the same courtesy we give all posters.

By the way - John Barry's email address is jvbarry..

Why? Who knows....it is his business.

[Pathfinder]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Mr Barry, I am very fond of your work. It is a great honor.

[Niko]

Re: Blog - The problems with Barry?s ?The Great Influenza?

Mr. Barry,

Welcome to FT!

In spite of tracking influenza for several years as a layperson, I'm embarrassed to admit that I just got around to reading your book. After reading the first 1/4 or so, my only regret is that I did not read it sooner!

Great work!

With Respect,
"Niko"