So much hit the Flublogia’s radar this week that I am literally at a loss as to what to write. And, I continue to struggle with whatever “bug” I managed to make friends with at the IDSA conference in DC at the beginning of February, still finding it difficult to string three thoughts together in any coherent fashion, especially frustrating with the new availability of four intriguing scientific papers.
Perhaps the most immediately interesting item has been the open speculation of what is happening (or not) in China regarding H5N1. We’ve seen challenges issued out of Hong Kong as to what the actual facts are, and those challenges have been picked up by pretty main stream media outlets. Which, coincidentally, highlights the talk by Ms. Joanne Siberner of NPR (Wash. DC) at this year’s IDSA conference for Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza.
The gist of Ms. Siberner’s talk was the press had become bored with H5N1 because all the “stories” as they existed have been done Ad nauseam. China potentially hiding a wider [and potentially catastrophically deadly] problem with H5N1 is “fresh” news.
On one hand, it is quite understandable why the news media no longer carries many stories about H5N1 and pandemic influenza: saying the same thing repeatedly is boring to produce, and boring to read. Yet, even Ms. Siberner understood the importance of bringing the information to the news consuming public.
The implications of this week’s speculations and accusations, if true, bode ill (no pun intended) for the Chinese, and potentially for the other five billion people around the world. Stepping into the realm of speculation: Should an influenza pandemic manifest itself – say – three weeks from now – exactly how many people in the US would feel betrayed because they would feel they had not been adequately warned of the dangers so clearly looming?
Who will be blamed? The news media? The recent past Bush administration? The current Obama administration? The Chinese? They will surely not blame themselves for not digging up the information that is “out there” (Flublogia and pandemic dedicated government websites as examples).
Pulling a quote from the recent Time article Is China Making Its Bird-Flu Outbreak Worse?:
“The point is, this virus has not disappeared at all,” says Malik Peiris, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “It kind of dropped off the radar screen of media attention, but the virus itself has increased its spread. It’s not only entrenched in Asia, the Middle East, in Egypt, Africa, parts of India and Bangladesh. It’s really a problem.” [Emphasis added]
I had another brief discussion with my General Manager (at my day job) after the Panasonic news hit Bloomberg. He asked me, rather pointedly, why he was not reading about what I was saying in his several subscribed papers, he was at that point still unaware of the Bloomberg piece. Having to say no one was interested in writing, printing, or reading the bits of news on the H5N1/Pandemic Influenza front seemed such a pathetic statement.
I have no answer to this problem, like every other problem that exists within the H5N1/pandemic influenza issue; I just know it’s a problem that needs remedied. We, as a society, cannot afford to be taken unawares by such a potentially catastrophic virus, a virus currently killing roughly 60% of those infected. A virus that still refuses to offer any glimmer of hope or reassurance in the four new scientific papers on avian influenza/H5n1 I mentioned in the opening of this post.
SZ
