China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

[4-ABBA]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HKG24761.htm

HONG KONG, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A prominent Chinese health expert has called on scientists in Hong Kong and China to cooperate and conduct joint research to prevent a flu pandemic, a pro-Beijing newspaper reported.

The call comes after China's Ministry of Agriculture and Chinese scientists criticised scientists in Hong Kong and the United States in recent weeks for publishing a study saying that a new, vaccine-resistant strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus had emerged in China.

Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory disease expert based in China's southern Guangdong province, told the Ta Kung Pao newspaper that both sides must communicate.

"China and Hong Kong are one family and they may be facing a dangerous co-explosion of the common flu and avian flu in coming days. I hope there can be more co-ordination, sharing of information in the future," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday.

While China rejected the findings by the Hong Kong and U.S. scientists, it agreed last week to share long-sought bird flu virus samples from 2004 and 2005 with the World Health Organisation.

Although the H5N1 strain remains largely a disease that affects birds, it has killed more than 150 people around the world since late 2003.

Experts fear though that it could start a pandemic that could kill millions of people if it were to mutate into a version that could spread efficiently among humans.

 

[standingfirm]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

"co-explosion" in the "coming days" makes me wonder. Pretty strong words and a pretty short time frame. Strange.

JMO, I think I may go into "the whites of their eyes mode" trusting only what I observe for myself. "We will know, when we know".

...and thats my personal record for metaphors in one post.

 

[Vibrant62]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

Perhaps of greater concern is that this press release will have gone through Chinese censorship procedures and is therefore likely to be released with their endorsement. Given the status of the person quoted within the field of respiratory disease in China I think that this may constitute a strong warning. Combined with other hints elsewhere from Dr. Niman, we may need to brace for bad news.

 

[Snowy Owl]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory disease expert based in China's southern Guangdong province made this statement via a Beijing newspaper..

IMO this is a bad news from a virological point of view and a good news from the Chinese Govern.

China had its candidate at the Head of the WHO and must now walk the talk more than before.

Despite their denial concerning the new resistant strain, well documented in Hong Kong and a couple of other places, it seems that they have decided to drive this crisis while considering their global responsabilies.

The statement of Dr Zhong Nanshan based in southern Guangdong allow to be relay by a major Beijing newspapar is a major change in the Chinese government policies.

One thing that worries me though, will their public health officials be allow to row in the same direction and second, will China manage to do that in the right time frame. ?

 

[sharon sanders]

More info on Zhong Nanshan - 2005

More info on Zhong Nanshan - 2005

'China has its own version of bird flu drug'
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-13 15:45

<!--enpcontent-->
BEIJING, Nov 13 (Reuters) - China has developed what it calls the equivalent of the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu in preparation for a feared pandemic if the virus begins spreading among humans.
<TABLE style="WIDTH: 209px; HEIGHT: 392px" cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=0 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=center align=left>
Zhong Nanshan, head of the Guangdong research institute for respiratory diseases, speaks during a news conference in Guangzhou, China, June 12, 2003. [Reuters]</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Zhong Nanshan, director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, was quoted in the Information Times newspaper as saying the drug would be effective in treating the virus.
"New progress will be achieved in the near future," the paper's Saturday edition reported Zhong as saying.
China has yet to report a human case of bird flu, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003, though the World Health Organisation (WHO) is helping to probe a possible human case in Hunan province, which had an outbreak in October.
The Information Times report did not say when the drug might be available or say how it compared with the antiviral Tamiflu, made by Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG.
In the absence of a vaccine for bird flu, the World Health Organisation recommends that governments stockpile Tamiflu, which does not cure the disease but can reduce its severity and might slow the spread of a pandemic.
Roche said last week it had stopped selling Tamiflu in China and was instead sending all supplies to the health ministry.
The move followed similar suspensions of supplies to pharmacies in the United States, Canada and Hong Kong to head off hoarding by consumers worried about the spread of bird flu as the world heads into the influenza season.
In the fight against bird flu, Zhong said close monitoring of patients who have caught pneumonia from unknown causes was vital to determine whether influenza, a recurrence of severe acute respiratory syndrome or an outbreak of bird flu was to blame.
As such, involving the WHO had been a sensible step. "This is helpful for the correct diagnosis of patients' diseases and for the treatment of these infectious illnesses," Zhong was quoted as saying.
One of the basic ingredients of Tamiflu is shikimic acid, which is derived from the pod of the star-shaped anise fruit, grown in China, or via fermentation.
But Zhong dismissed as groundless rumours that star anise, by itself, could be an effective treatment against bird flu or influenza because the amount used in Tamiflu was minute.
China has reported a total of eight outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in poultry since the start of October.
Premier Wen Jiabao warned last week week that the country was facing a "very serious situation" as the disease had not been brought under control and was likely to spread. The latest outbreak occurred in Jingshan country in Hubei province. Local authorities have culled more than 31,000 poultry within a radius of 3 km (2 miles), Xinhua news agency reported.
<!--/enpcontent-->

 

[GaudiaRay]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

It's actually funny to see this scientist being asked questions that were clearely settled a long time ago, and he having to answer them. This question has to do with using star anise as the antiviral, forget about Tamiflu!
> Zhong dismissed as groundless rumours that star anise, by itself, could be an effective treatment against bird flu or influenza because the amount used in Tamiflu was minute.

What this tells us yet again is that when PI Phase 6 is underway, every charlatain, mountebank, and crazy, reckless scheme to protect against and cure PI will be out there, on the streets, in the papers, on the radio and TV and internet.

For a quick refresher, look at Daniel Defoe's, A Journal of the Plague Year, online, where you will see depicted the same cast of characters plying their same hustles in 1665.

Otherwise, this entire article is about China's having duplicated Tamiflu. That's not big or important new news, imo.

Maybe they could have said they've converted zanamiver from an injectible to an ingestible? That would have been big news.

My new mantra during PI will be, "I know what I knew; I know there is no new news. I will pass on this new "curative". TY but no, TY." Remember that all of those terrible tauts in Defoe's book disappeared as they were not really protected from the disease, they got it and they died. A silver lining under an ugly cloud.

 

[sharon sanders]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

Gaudia - The above post was to give background only from 2005 on Zhong.

Also, can you elaborate on your comments about A Journal of the Plague Year?


S.

 

[MHSC]

Re: More info on Zhong Nanshan - 2005

Re: More info on Zhong Nanshan - 2005

From Post 5

China has reported a total of eight outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in poultry since the start of October.

Premier Wen Jiabao warned last week week that the country was facing a "very serious situation" as the disease had not been brought under control and was likely to spread. The latest outbreak occurred in Jingshan country in Hubei province. Local authorities have culled more than 31,000 poultry within a radius of 3 km (2 miles), Xinhua news agency reported.
<!--/enpcontent-->

 

[GaudiaRay]

Re: More info on Zhong Nanshan - 2005

Re: More info on Zhong Nanshan - 2005

The situation cannot be "very serious". China refuses to release current, 2006 sequences of H5N1. China is experiencing the classic example of "slip 'twixt cup and lip"; the guys who send out the samples and who post the samples' sequences have not gotten the message from the Premier... this is "very serious", and the rest of it being, "Get Help!!" The rest of the world is in on this event too. We count too. Hello Out There, Agricultural Ministry, Hello Out There!

From Post 5

China has reported a total of eight outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in poultry since the start of October.

Premier Wen Jiabao warned last week week that the country was facing a "very serious situation" as the disease had not been brought under control and was likely to spread. The latest outbreak occurred in Jingshan country in Hubei province. Local authorities have culled more than 31,000 poultry within a radius of 3 km (2 miles), Xinhua news agency reported.
<!--/enpcontent-->

 

[Jonesie]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

Florida 1- it probably needs to go into another thread:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gaudia - The above post was to give background only from 2005 on Zhong.

Also, can you elaborate on your comments about A Journal of the Plague Year?


S.
--------------------------------------------------------------

[/B]What this tells us yet again is that when PI Phase 6 is underway, every charlatain, mountebank, and crazy, reckless scheme to protect against and cure PI will be out there, on the streets, in the papers, on the radio and TV and internet.

For a quick refresher, look at Daniel Defoe's, A Journal of the Plague Year, online, where you will see depicted the same cast of characters plying their same hustles in 1665.

And many careless, greedy individuals will profit from the flu pandemic...until most die from the handling of contaminated mail and money. Some will make it through unscathed, however.


Daniel Defoe had little regard for these charlatains:

One mischief was, that if the poor people
asked these mock astrologers whether there would be a plague or no,
they all agreed in general to answer 'Yes', for that kept up their trade.
And had the people not been kept in a fright about that, the wizards
would presently have been rendered useless, and their craft had been
at an end. But they always talked to them of such-and-such influences
of the stars, of the conjunctions of such-and-such planets, which must
necessarily bring sickness and distempers, and consequently the
plague. And some had the assurance to tell them the plague was
begun already, which was too true, though they that said so knew
nothing of the matter.

The ministers, to do them justice, and preachers of most sorts that
were serious and understanding persons, thundered against these and
other wicked practices, and exposed the folly as well as the
wickedness of them together, and the most sober and judicious people
despised and abhorred them.
But it was impossible to make any
impression upon the middling people and the working labouring poor.
Their fears were predominant over all their passions, and they threw
away their money in a most distracted manner upon those whimsies.

....so they were as mad upon their
running after quacks and mountebanks, and every practising old
woman, for medicines and remedies; storing themselves with such
multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as they were called,
that they not only spent their money but even poisoned themselves
beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their
bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it. On the
other hand it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of
houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctors' bills
and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering in physic, and
inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which was generally
set off with such flourishes as these, viz.: 'Infallible preventive pills
against the plague.' 'Neverfailing preservatives against the infection.'
'Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air.' 'Exact regulations
for the conduct of the body in case of an infection.' 'Anti-pestilential
pills.' 'Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before.'
'An universal remedy for the plague.' 'The only true plague water.' 'The
royal antidote against all kinds of infection'; - and such a number
more that I cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a book of
themselves to set them down.

Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for directions
and advice in the case of infection. These had specious titles also,
such as these: -

'An eminent High Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland,
where he resided during all the time of the great plague last year in
Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that actually had the
plague upon them.'

'An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice
secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great
experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague there,
wherein there died 20,000 in one day.'

'An ancient gentlewoman, having practised with great success in the
late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice only to the female
sex. To be spoken with,' &c.

'An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of
antidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has, after forty
years' practice, arrived to such skill as may, with God's blessing, direct
persons how to prevent their being touched by any contagious
distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis.'


I take notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two or
three dozen of the like and yet have abundance left behind. 'Tis
sufficient from these to apprise any one of the humour of those times,
and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and cheated
the poor people of their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious
and fatal preparations; some with mercury, and some with other things
as bad, perfectly remote from the thing pretended to, and rather
hurtful than serviceable to the body in case an infection followed.

....But to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be
imposed upon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mountebank.
There is no doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great gains
out of the miserable people, for we daily found the crowds that ran
after them were infinitely greater, and their doors were more thronged
than those of Dr Brooks, Dr Upton, Dr Hodges, Dr Berwick, or any,
though the most famous men of the time. I And I was told that some
of them got five pounds a day by their physic.

But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may
serve to give an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people at
that time: and this was their following a worse sort of deceivers than
any of these; for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their
pockets and get their money, in which their wickedness, whatever it
was, lay chiefly on the side of the deceivers, not upon the deceived.
But in this part I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the people
deceived, or equally in both; and this was in wearing charms, philtres,
exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations, to fortify the
body with them against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand
of God, but a kind of possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be
kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so
many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as
particularly the word Abracadabra,

......I might spend a great deal of time in my exclamations against the
follies, and indeed the wickedness, of those things, in a time of such
danger, in a matter of such consequences as this, of a national
infection. But my memorandums of these things relate rather to take
notice only of the fact, and mention only that it was so. How the poor
people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them
were afterwards carried away in the dead-carts and thrown into the
common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery
hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along.

.....For when the plague
evidently spread itself, they soon began to see the folly of trusting
to those unperforming creatures who had gulled them of their money;
and then their fears worked another way, namely, to amazement
and stupidity, not knowing what course to take or what to do either
to help or relieve themselves. But they ran about from one neighbour's
house to another, and even in the streets from one door to another,
with repeated cries of, 'Lord, have mercy upon us! What shall we do?'

......Abundance of quacks too died, who had the
folly to trust to their own medicines, which they must needs be
conscious to themselves were good for nothing, and who rather ought,
like other sorts of thieves, to have run away, sensible of their guilt,
from the justice that they could not but expect should punish them as
they knew they had deserved.

.....One thing I could not help observing: what befell one of the quacks,
who published that he had a most excellent preservative against the
plague, which whoever kept about them should never be infected or
liable to infection. This man, who, we may reasonably suppose, did
not go abroad without some of this excellent preservative in his
pocket, yet was taken by the distemper, and carried off in two or three
days.

....As for quackery and mountebanks, of which the town was so full, I
listened to none of them, and have observed often since, with some
wonder, that for two years after the plague I scarcely saw or heard of
one of them about town. Some fancied they were all swept away in
the infection to a man, and were for calling it a particular mark of
God's vengeance upon them for leading the poor people into the pit of
destruction, merely for the lucre of a little money they got by them;
but I cannot go that length neither. That abundance of them died is
certain - many of them came within the reach of my own knowledge -
but that all of them were swept off I much question. I believe rather
they fled into the country and tried their practices upon the people
there, who were in apprehension of the infection before it came
among them.

This, however, is certain, not a man of them appeared for a great
while in or about London. There were, indeed, several doctors who
published bills recommending their several physical preparations for
cleansing the body, as they call it, after the plague, and needful, as
they said, for such people to take who had been visited and had been
cured; whereas I must own I believe that it was the opinion of the
most eminent physicians at that time that the plague was itself a
sufficient purge, and that those who escaped the infection needed no
physic to cleanse their bodies of any other things; the running sores,
the tumours, &c., which were broke and kept open by the directions of
the physicians, having sufficiently cleansed them; and that all other
distempers, and causes of distempers, were effectually carried off that
way; and as the physicians gave this as their opinions wherever they
came, the quacks got little business.

..... having seen the
foolish humour of the people in running after quacks and
mountebanks, wizards and fortune-tellers, which they did as above,
even to madness, the Lord Mayor, a very sober and religious
gentleman, appointed physicians and surgeons for relief of the poor - I
mean the diseased poor and in particular ordered the College of
Physicians to publish directions for cheap remedies for the poor, in all
the circumstances of the distemper. This, indeed, was one of the most
charitable and judicious things that could be done at that time, for this
drove the people from haunting the doors of every disperser of bills,
and from taking down blindly and without consideration poison for
physic and death instead of life.

This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of the
whole College; and, as it was particularly calculated for the use of the
poor and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so that everybody
might see it, and copies were given gratis to all that desired it.

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext95/jplag10.txt


http://www.mayflowerfamilies.com/enquirer/defoe/defoe_part_1.htm

 

[Gnosis]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

Perhaps of greater concern is that this press release will have gone through Chinese censorship procedures and is therefore likely to be released with their endorsement. Given the status of the person quoted within the field of respiratory disease in China I think that this may constitute a strong warning. Combined with other hints elsewhere from Dr. Niman, we may need to brace for bad news.

My thoughts EXACTLY.

 

[LMonty]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

Originally Posted by Vibrant62
Perhaps of greater concern is that this press release will have gone through Chinese censorship procedures and is therefore likely to be released with their endorsement. Given the status of the person quoted within the field of respiratory disease in China I think that this may constitute a strong warning. Combined with other hints elsewhere from Dr. Niman, we may need to brace for bad news.


My thoughts EXACTLY.

I'm trying to interpret this through the cultural mindset.Snowy and others with more experience in it would know better than I.

My first reaction, too...but could it also be a "political" gesture to reapproach the Hong Kong researchers that the Chineses scientists insulted by denigrating their research on the Fujian strain? A way to reapproach without losing face? An apology is unlikely, I'd guess, because of "face" on the Chinese researchers side. Perhaps this agency has been tasked to smooth over relations with Hong Kong, by stating they are important and needed in the coming pandemic.

Which doesnt change the very real possibility that Vibrants insightful interpretation is correct! In fact, it was Vibrants comment about status that made me tink of it- the high status of the speaker she pointed out made me think about it. I just wonder if it's possible that the news release was meant to kill two inscrutible birds with one stone.

 

[Vibrant62]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

LMonty: I think that this is entirely possible and indeed, likely. Given the recent scientific papers and genetic analysis of recent isolates, this is no time to have the worlds leading scientists and governments locked into a disagreement.

 

[GaudiaRay]

Re: China: "Co-explosion of seasonal + bird flu"

Neither one of these groups is addressing recombination. They're both off the mark, imo.

Look at what Dr. Niman just posted at recombinomics.com. If this virus is recombining with influenza B, both of these groups on the wrong scent trail.

Still, even said, they're not posting the full sequences of the latest human infections.

And when they are, they're not speaking to the cause, not the markers of the cause, but the cause of the evolving viral infections.