Just to add about the Spanish flu. It was very virulent compared with “normal” influenza strains, which has a mortality rate of less than 0.1% (I’m talking about the US, numbers may vary in other nations). But while the Spanish flu killed 675,000 Americans, the mortality rate was only 2.5%, and less than 5% overall. It was high compared to the standard run of the mill flu, but really quite low, as compared to something like Ebola.

The chicken flu spreading in Asia, in contrast, has a death rate of higher than 65%, although that seems to have dropped to about 35% in Vietnam. The first cases of humans catching a bird flu were back in 1997 in Hong Kong. So while the strain may be different, it seems that the virus may slowly be mutating to a form which infects humans.

Then again, put in perspective, the avian flu has killed hundreds of millions of birds. It has infected about 150 people in total (confirmed cases) in nations with very high population density and who often live in close proximity with their chickens and ducks. So out of hundreds of millions of people who have probably been in close contact with infected chickens, a minute number have actually become infected with it. Thus, it doesn’t seem like the virus is spread very easily between humans and birds at this point.

I also remember the panic over SARS a few years ago, which has all but been forgotten. That again, was also highly overhyped. SARS broke out in China, in a densely populated area, and weeks or even months passed before the strange new disease was noticed and quarantine measures were initiated. And yet a very small number of people were actually infected, despite the lack of precautions. The first infections were seen in China in November 2002. By July 2003, when the last case was reported, the SARS virus had infected over 8,000 people and killed 813. Considering that the virus had spread to over 24 countries including the USA, South America, Canada and Europe, and that it had gone virtually unchecked for weeks in China, that is a very small number of people. It doesn’t appear to have been very contagious, and I imagine that the death rate was this high because people didn’t initially seek medical help.

Anyway, this isn’t meant to downplay SARS but just to put things in perspective. SARS was not the deadly menace that mass hysteria, fueled by the media, made it out to be. Overhyping made it appear a lot more lethal and contagious than it really was. And now bird flu, which is still in its infancy stages. What concerns me is the report that the Spanish flu was also derived from birds, thus lending more support to the theory that this current strain circulating through chicken flocks in Asia does have the potential to mutate further and eventually be transmitted person to person.

Perhaps cleaning up the barnyard might be a start. Discouraging the consumption of raw chicken and chicken blood, which is how most humans appear to have contracted it. Better sanitation among chicken farmers, cleaner conditions, and so on, might keep the birds healthier. The factory chicken farmers in the US should pay special attention. Their birds are already doped up on antibiotics and hormones–a catastrophe waiting to happen.

It is impossible to look at the news without seeing the dire warnings of bird flu. One day the flu has the potential to kill 150 million, and the next, that warning has been dramatically reduced to 5 million. Meanwhile, bird flu has been around a very long time, as have cases of people catching in from infected fowl–most often chicken.

And it has been really hard to do anything except roll your eyes and plug up your ears, when listening to Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling. This current bout of bird flu, which has been cooking for the past two years, has killed a grand total of 60 people. Not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. You also have to place the sensationalist warnings of the great experts into perspective–remember how we were all going to be hit with bioterror attack of smallpox, and how the government was trying to push a dangerous vaccine on the public and military? The poor slobs in the military didn’t have a choice, lest they face a court martial, and several died from complications of the vaccine. But when healthcare workers balked at the very thought of it, and demanded more information, the smallpox vaccination scheme was quietly shelved.

So what happened to the great danger of a bioterror attack? If the threat of attack was so great, would the smallpox vaccination program been nixed that quickly? No, of course not. Just a scam to line the pockets of the company producing it.

Naturally then, people are just a little bit wary of yet more warnings. The bird flu is coming to get you. We will all die of the chicken illness. Yada, yada, yada.

I freely admit that I am one of the biggest skeptics, given all of the misinformation, and the fact that this is not the first “attack” of a bird flu that has spread to humans. However, what has convinced me that we may have something serious on our hands is work that has just been published, after about a decade of research.

Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history’s most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.

Better known as the Spanish flu, the great pandemic which killed more people than the action of WW I. It circled the globe, killing anywhere from 40 to 100 million people. The flu appeared suddenly and then vanished almost as quickly. And most disturbing about this particular breed of microbes is that it did not prey on the usual suspects–young children, the infirm, or the very old. Instead, it attacked and killed primarily young healthy adults.

The findings, the scientists say, reveal a small number of genetic changes that may explain why the virus was so lethal. The work also confirms the legitimacy of worries about the bird flu viruses that are now emerging in Asia.

So now I do agree. If the Spanish flu was indeed a bird flu, then it did make the jump from spreading from bird to bird, bird to human, and human to human. And that is quite scary. Also, the current bird flu appears more lethal than the 1918 version.

Read this fascinating article in the New York Times, and stay away from chicken!

This article, which also got side swapped when Katrina let loose her wrath on the Gulf coast, is really a comparison to the dorky one I mentioned yesterday evening. The major difference is that this article dares to go where no one has gone before (almost no one) and actually–gasp–acknowledge that the factory produced nurse may not be the answer. Mass production of cute RNs in starched white caps may not be the answer to the great crisis afterall.

You see, it seems that schools are putting out sufficient numbers of RNs. It’s just that they don’t stay put. Just because a school spits them out, doesn’t mean that they are going to stay in the community, sign up to work at the local hospital and fill a slot, stay in the same state, or even remain in nursing. This knowledge has been known since the Middle Ages, but well, never mind. I need to be grateful that someone noticed the discrepancy between supply and demand in NY.

Center Director Jean Moore said the latest statistics suggest that while registered nursing programs in the state may be graduating enough candidates to fill vacancies, a lot of those students don’t end up in the profession.

Between 2000 and 2004, the center said registered nursing programs in New York produced 25,000 graduates. But over the same period, only 7,300 new RNs were actually licensed in the state.

Now isn’t this a shocking revelation. How dare they shatter the myth of all-we-need-to-do-to-cure-the-nursing-shortage-is-produce-more-nurses. You see, our politicians, hospitals, and even so-called nursing experts are trying to make nursing seem like hospital equipment. If a hospital is short on IV pumps, for example, they call up a supplier and order more. The supplier puts in the order to a local factory, and the manufacturer churns out 150 fresh new pumps. They are sent to the hospital and there they remain, until the hospital decides to replace them.

The collective “they” seem to think that nurses function in much the same manner. Fill up more classrooms, swell the ranks, increase the numbers of fresh new graduate nurses coming off the assembly line. Then place them into empty hospital slots, and there they will remain until they die or become comatose. And thus will be the end of the shortage.

But as this daring article boldly suggests, this is not the case.

“We need to better understand attrition from registered nursing in New York state,” Moore said.

She said it is unclear how many New York nursing graduates are choosing to practice in other states or how many leave the profession entirely.

Yes, that would be a good thing to figure out. And then maybe they can take that next bold step for mankind and find out why nurses are leaving the profession. Gasp, gasp. I know, that is blasphemy.
Albany.bizjournals.com