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BRACING FOR IMPACT: How to Prevent and Prepare for an H5N1 Pandemic By Evan Anderson
Why Read: As H5N1 has spread across the nation's farms, the risk of a mutation event that leads to a human pandemic has increased significantly. This week, we review what those risks are, what an H5N1 pandemic might look like, and, most important, what we can do about it. Read on for a description of policies and preparations we can make as a society and as individuals so we aren't caught unprepared. _______ It's really important to understand that no one - and I mean no one - knows what H5N1 influenza virus is going to do to the human population. - Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm The World Health Organization (WHO) says its estimates suggest that 4-8bn doses of influenza vaccines could be produced within a year in an H5N1 pandemic. Experts say that would require a significant expansion of the global capacity for making flu vaccines, placed at about 1.2bn doses. "Remember that it takes two doses, three to four weeks apart, to achieve protective immunity," says [Dr Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's vaccine research group]. "You can quickly do the maths and see where that leaves us." - The Guardian (5/11/24)
In June of last year, we published an issue titled "The Next Pandemic: H5N1 and Why You Should Be Paying Attention." In its pages, we offered a clear warning of the risks posed by the strains of H5N1 passing through both wild and domesticated animal populations (perhaps most notably in mammals and, specifically, domesticated cattle). The TL;DR of it all could have been summarized as follows: The pathogen is one of the most dangerous, including to humans, and many herds and humans are now being infected. With struggling infrastructure, public distrust of public-health officials, and many opportunities now for the virus to mutate to something transmissible, this is likely to be the next pandemic. Watch for human-to-human transmission. That transmission has yet to occur. If it does, we could get collectively "lucky" if a very mild strain just so happens to be the one that makes the official leap. (For example, it appears that the strain circulating in birds, compared with cattle, might be more harmful to humans.) But hoping to get lucky makes for bad public-health, and personal, strategy. What has happened so far, over the course of this winter, has raised, not lowered, the risk profile. Our farming practices, which have become industrialized more with each passing year, feature overcrowding and poor treatment in both cattle and chicken environments. And animal infections have continued apace, providing more opportunities for spread and mutation. Meanwhile, chaos in Washington, DC, has complicated the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the US Department of Agriculture - the most important organizations dealing with this particularly American animal outbreak. Now, we face a potent combination of widespread animal infection, fired specialists, downsizing at USDA, and reduced preparedness in the midst of a massive set of outbreaks of one of the most feared potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs) in the viral world.
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