Bird flu pandemic, let's get seriousOne thing that surprises me...

Bird flu pandemic, let's get serious
One thing that surprises me as a reporter covering health issues is the public attention the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will give to an issue like obesity and being overweight, but comparatively little to an issue like avian influenza.

It may be because all of the action is in southeast Asia right now, but we saw with SARS how quickly that can change.

What's troubling to me is that by the CDC's own system for categorizing pandemics, avian flu is currently in Phase 5:

Larger cluster(s) but human-to-human spread still localized, suggesting that the virus is becoming increasingly better adapted to humans, but may not yet be fully transmissible (substantial pandemic risk).

And, at any time, could jump to Phase 6, the worst one:

Pandemic: increased and sustained transmission in general population.

Today, a nonprofit group, Trust for America's Health, has released a sobering report on the projections for a pandemic flu hitting the United States. Among their conclusions: In the U.S., projection models predict that a pandemic may cause over a half a million deaths and two million hospitalizations. The estimated economic impact would be $71.3 to $166.5 billion due to death and lost productivity. Those figures exclude disruptions to commerce and society, which could be severe.

The group predicts 35,000 deaths in Texas and 161,000 hospitalizations. It also notes that supplies of antiviral drugs are far too low to meet expected demand.

In short, the report echoes the conclusions of some other leading scientists, such as Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota. His succinct summary of what will happen if avian influenza learns how to efficiently jump from human to human soon, as many scientists expect?

"If the pandemic were to hit today," said Osterholm, "I don't know what we could do about it except say, 'We're screwed.'"


And on that uplifting note, have a nice week.