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Vallat - OIE Remarks Clarified

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Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

he's back to "no one knows". Sounds familiar ?

however, the economy-people do know ...
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Anne said:
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/

Now OIE has sent out this message:

Dear All,

You may have certainly picked up yesterday's AP paper which quoted Bernard Vallat as downplaying the risk of a "bird flu pandemic" to occur. We had organized an informal meeting with the press as we usually do at the beginning of the year, for the new years greetings.

The event was not a press conference to deal with avian influenza, but it was a welcome breakfast for the new year for selected members of the press. During the general discussions on current and future activities of the OIE, the subject of avian influenza was raised by AP who pressed Bernard Vallat to talk about his view on the current situation with H5N1.

The title of the AP paper is a misquote of what Bernard Vallat has said.

He has been consistent in saying that the virus has proven to be considerable stable, that the epidemiologic behaviour has not significantly changed, referring to the infectivity in birds, as well as the way it is transmitted and manifested in human and other mammalian species.

Bernard Vallat has never said that a pandemic will not occur or that H5N1 is not a potential candidate.

What he said, as he has said before, is that while a pandemic is going to occur, no one can say when and what is going to be the causative agent. He has often said that there are other avian influenza strains that have the potential for being as infective or even more than the current H5N1 strain.

The OIE position has always been that we need to strengthen the infrastructure capable of early detection and rapid response for ANY emerging disease at animal level. For this we need to strengthen the governance of veterinary services and improve the collaboration between disciplines, as well as between private and public sector.

What we have been saying is that it is not JUST H5N1, but it is about all emerging and re-emerging diseases, including zoonoses.
Click to expand...


Even though there is no link for the above statement, crof blogs is a reliable source. I support the owner's decision to publish this statement based on his reliance on his sources.

Thank you Crawford.
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

> The title of the AP paper is a misquote of what Bernard Vallat has said.

just the title. The title is often added by other people later.

AP-headline: Group: Bird Flu Pandemic Risk Overblown
AP-body: ..."the risk was overestimated," said Bernard Vallat


> He has been consistent in saying that the virus has proven to be considerable stable,
> that the epidemiologic behaviour has not significantly changed, referring to the
> infectivity in birds, as well as the way it is transmitted and manifested in human and
> other mammalian species.
> Bernard Vallat has never said that a pandemic will not occur or that H5N1 is not a
> potential candidate.

ahh, 0%. We don't expect anyone to say that. Not even Fumento.

> What he said, as he has said before, is that while a pandemic is going to occur,
> no one can say when and what is going to be the causative agent.

huh ? 100% ? Clearly nonsense too.

> He has often said that there are other avian influenza strains that have the potential for
> being as infective or even more than the current H5N1 strain.

what's "potential" ? How can he know the potential of a strain ?

> The OIE position has always been that we need to strengthen the infrastructure capable
> of early detection and rapid response for ANY emerging disease at animal level.
> For this we need to strengthen the governance of veterinary services and improve the
> collaboration between disciplines, as well as between private and public sector.
> What we have been saying is that it is not JUST H5N1, but it is about all emerging
> and re-emerging diseases, including zoonoses.

...and earthquakes and tsunamies and war etc.
Clearly OIE doesn't say, what they think but rather what they anticipate
people want to hear.
What do we have these organizations for, why do we pay them, when they don't give
us their honest opinions ?
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Anne said:
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/

snip..

He has been consistent in saying that the virus has proven to be considerable stable, that the epidemiologic behaviour has not significantly changed, referring to the infectivity in birds, as well as the way it is transmitted and manifested in human and other mammalian species.

He has often said that there are other avian influenza strains that have the potential for being as infective or even more than the current H5N1 strain.

What we have been saying is that it is not JUST H5N1, but it is about all emerging and re-emerging diseases, including zoonoses.
Click to expand...

I suppose the good thing in this is that they're aware of the criticism of this statement and what a mess it's creating.

I guess there's a valid misinterpretation here: a "stable virus" could refer to the genetics of the virus, or to the effects that the virus has. However, it remains an unclear statement.

But I wonder how the "infectivity in birds" could change. The virulence of this virus is very high among birds; hence the culling. What more "infectivity" could a virus want - bird death through "clucking"? (sorry, couldn't resist)

And I guess it's fair to say the way its transmitted hasn't changed since H2H has not yet been officially recognized. And you can't change death too much, so the "manifestation" hasn't changed.

What other virus are candidates are there? Wasn't there an H7 that was considered for pandemic potential and rejected in the literature? What other zooneses are on the pandemic plate?

It's a step in the right direction for a retraction. But far from a satisfying one, IMO, even if we omit the frail attempt to re-assign blame at the beginning.

J.
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

let's require that WHO starts a pandemic phase-scale
for other viruses too !
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Death by 'clucking'. roflmbo. Clucks turn to croaks near the end, then it would be death by croaking.
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Anne said:
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/

Now OIE has sent out this message:

Dear All, You may have certainly picked up yesterday's AP paper which quoted Bernard Vallat as downplaying the risk of a "bird flu pandemic" to occur.

(snip)

The title of the AP paper is a misquote of what Bernard Vallat has said.

He has been consistent in saying that the virus has proven to be considerable stable*, that the epidemiologic behaviour has not significantly changed**, referring to the infectivity in birds, as well as the way it is transmitted and manifested in human and other mammalian species.

Bernard Vallat has never said that a pandemic will not occur or that H5N1 is not a potential candidate.
Click to expand...
_____________________________________________

* compared to what?

** my emphasis - begging the question - "Based on Science - or Policy?"
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

tropical said:
Pardon me Denise, but seems that you name me off context now, instead of some other partecipant.........
Click to expand...

MY first sentence was referring to your earlier post #30:
Maybe we can name those actual stable news:

"The media blanket" :magnify:
Click to expand...
The remainder of my post was a general comment.

.
<!-- / message -->
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Thank you very much Denise for the "blanket" clarification.

The no panic media blanket policy obviously have been introduced regards many historical items.

I remembered those docs with many happy people (with dark lens on) standing in the rows, and hailing (many with open mauth for the extraordinariety of the event) the brighting moment of a test nuclear explosion, and the subsequent coming tide of the sanded air blast moving under their rows.

Now, 50 years after, and with new studies about, because of fluids mixing, we know that all those toxic radionuclides are uniformly disseminated in every part of the earth atmosphera.
What a beautiful, sane, oxigenated air fluid.

30 years after a period when many sci. don't want to officialy take part of, some even maked laud humor about, now we have a whole sci. estab. saying us of the climate change reality.
Now, when we all can see the changes without sci. studies.

Can somebody imaginate that one day one chief nuclear plant scientist decided: we must shut down the automatic devices which control the cooling of the core - it's necessary experimenting our reaction time of manual start cooling, in the case of need.
Indeed, how can a human think that manual doing will be faster than the automatic devices reaction time? But he does!
And than we have it! The Chernobyl waste.
The core was too hot for cooling prior they even start the manual proces.

The humans created a whole bunch of artif. enge. very harmfull bugs, already. Why no major releases happened till now?

Only because we was lucky about that!

What I'm trying to say?
We was lucky for the pandemic flu possibility of happen, also.

The facts are that no country wants to enlarge enaugh the health sector to make a difference if an flu pandemic happens. dot.

And I'm realy laughed at parts of JohnW post, but: maybe it's only a matter of time.

For his other statement:
"Sadly it takes more brains to debunk hysteria and that's why you never hear real doctors babbling about bird flu or global warming — they're too busy working."
can be inserted in this (for now) lucky story.

The fact is that real doctors (the main part) waits that the infectology/epid. sector (and they wait the gov. health boss tells them) tells them that there are something bad coming.

They are too busy to working indeed, but that behavior will not reverse, or falsed the climate change process, nor the pandemic apearance.
It's a good policy that everybody move a head in the oposite direction for not thinking of that possibility?
In the context of health, they are the ones from whom the citizens have aspectations of sentence about the real events!

Many real doctors don't even want to alarm the public about the superbugs hospital infections. Why? Because - it will change something?
Will somebody resolve (read: put money) the needs for change that? Nope.
 
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Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

While it seems that this thread is approaching the end of its lifespan, it did make me realize that this whole event was a dry run, for the types of misinterpretation and just plain mis-information that we can expect in the "heat" of the moment and following moments of an actual initiation of a more humanized bug - and the natural tendency of potential denial (from certain agencies due to the counter-motives of their missions to the release of 'reliable and true facts') of an event such as the emergence of such a (God forbid) pandemic as H5N1 presents.

I for one, have always considered it good fortune that one Dr. Henry Niman and his work happens to be around at this very moment in history.

And I feel especially relieved that he had chosen FT to "hang around" with his much needed candid insight - and unique methodologies for reading the tea leaves with a new set of eyes.

I can feel in many of your posts that you too share such feelings.

As for me, thanks Dr Niman.
 
Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Re: Whew - we can all go home now.....

Comments on recent OIE Director General statements on the avian influenza situation
Paris, January 16th 2008 - At an informal meeting with the press on 10/1/08 , the Director General of the OIE, Dr Bernard Vallat presented an overview on current and future activities of the organisation while addressing the need for global animal health strategies to control emerging and re-emerging infectious animal diseases worldwide.
In this context, the issue of highly pathogenic avian influenza and the current situation with H5N1 was raised by some of the reporters.
Dr Vallat said ? as he has said in the past ? that although the H5N1 virus is extremely virulent, it has shown to be quite stable over the last few years and its epidemiological behaviour remained the same from the beginning of the crisis in 2003. He added that this observed stable behaviour of the H5N1 strain of the virus does not allow ruling out the risk of a mutation into a new dangerous form for humans, thus becoming a potential candidate for an avian influenza pandemic.
Dr Vallat also said that while no one can predict when and how a human influenza pandemic will occur, this may not originate from the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 South East Asian strain which is only one of many other influenza virus strains that can eventually be responsible for a pandemic.
?Bird flu will always remain a risk, be it H5N1 or another and for that reason pandemic preparedness as well as permanent control of the pathogen at the animal source are important?, he said.
In line with the organisation?s position and that of its international partners, Dr Vallat reinforced the need to strengthen the infrastructure capable of early detection and rapid response for any emerging disease at animal level, especially those with a zoonotic potential. He regretted that such capacities were not in place at the very beginning of the H5N1 avian influenza crisis, which delayed the reaction of countries, especially the poorest ones, first hit in South East Asia . He welcomed today?s much better preparedness of countries to detect and control the disease.
Dr Vallat repeated the need to strengthen the governance of veterinary services and to improve the collaboration between disciplines, as well as between private and public sectors.

http://www.oie.int/eng/press/en_080116.htm
 
Re: Vallat - OIE Remarks Clarified

"..Dr Vallat also said that while no one can predict when and how a human influenza pandemic will occur, this may not originate from the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 South East Asian strain which is only one of many other influenza virus strains that can eventually be responsible for a pandemic.
?Bird flu will always remain a risk, be it H5N1 or another and for that reason pandemic preparedness as well as permanent control of the pathogen at the animal source are important?, he said.
In line with the organisation?s position and that of its international partners, Dr Vallat reinforced the need to strengthen the infrastructure capable of early detection and rapid response for any emerging disease at animal level, especially those with a zoonotic potential..."


Thank you Dr. Vallat for clarification.
 
Re: Vallat - OIE Remarks Clarified

for me it's an unclarification. The previous statement was clearer.
 
Re: Vallat - OIE Remarks Clarified

"Comments on recent OIE Director General statements on the avian influenza situation
Paris, January 16th 2008
...
Dr Vallat said ? as he has said in the past ? that although the H5N1 virus is extremely virulent, it has shown to be quite stable over the last few years and its epidemiological behaviour remained the same from the beginning of the crisis in 2003."


Than, "Whew - we can NOT all go home now",

but we can say bye, bye, to the H2H2H2H, H5N1 infections TRACKING,
because after such stable epid. behaviour during the past 4 years (cited: "from 2003"), we can start looking for other strains H2H surging ... :tiphat:

___
Start eating those bunkered rations before we dumped them. :D
 
Re: Vallat - OIE Remarks Clarified

> which is only one of many other influenza virus strains that can
> eventually be responsible for a pandemic.

"many", that's 10 or more ?
Let the probability of a pandemic be 3% per year from all strains
(historical average) then that makes less than 0.3% per year for H5N1 ????

so, is there an increased pandemic danger now or not ?
(according to WHO more than anytime since 1968)

Or is it just the high virulence of H5N1, not an increased
pandemic likelyhood but only an increased expected damage
should H5N1 be the one ?
 
Re: Vallat - OIE Remarks Clarified

OIE comment here:

http://www.oie.int/eng/press/en_080116.htm


hmm, nothing new there. However PathForward said:
OIE does not acknowledge that Vallat had any responsibility for the dismissive tone
which was captured by both the AP and AFP reporters, regardless of whether they
misquoted his actual words or not.
I can't find a referrence for this
 
Re: Vallat - OIE Remarks Clarified

Vallat said, "Dr Vallat also said that while no one can predict when and how a human influenza pandemic will occur..."

Dr Vallat, are you a defeatist?
On what basis do you say that no one can predict how a human influenza pandemic will occur?
Are you saying that no one can predict the day and hour or the minute and second?
Are you saying there is no way to predict until the event occurs, and then there will be a fact trail to follow, looking backwards, so one can say that some then identifiable moment was the start of the pandemic?
Is this not analogous to weather predicting? For example, is it foolish for the weather bureau to look at tropical depressions and then guess in advance if they will become hurricaines, or to look at hurricaines and predict which direction they will move or how severe they may become?

Dr Vallart, I find your comments to be a poor example of a scientifically enquiring mind. Failure to exhaust every avenue, to examine every idea, especially one that has proven predictions associated with it, such as homologous recombination, to be less than responsible on your part, on the part of the organization you lead, and on the part of the many colleagues who firmly believe there is no other answer than reassortment.

I believe your thought pattern and theirs is reckless, and for me, that's a kind description of the completely unsupportable position you and they espouse.
 
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