Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?

While the news has been a bit slow the past two weeks, there are developments in the Avian Flu World.

The WHO has officially acknowledged H2H2H transmission of Avian flu in Indonesia. True, they alluded to it after the Niman article appeared in the New York Times last month, but now, they admit that it is true. But . . . they say the virus was a dead end, and any mutations that occurred were insignificant.

Perhaps.

It is true there has not been an explosion of new cases, and if the virus had become a more virulent strain, we would have expected that by now. But in fact, we got very lucky. The virus has shown it’s ability to mutate, and having done so before, we can expect it will do so again. Every new host is an opportunity for the virus to be driven to a pandemic strain. The more hosts, the more chances.

For now, and for the next few months, most of the world is in the summer season, and the number of infected hosts should go down. The virus will likely continue to simmer, infecting unlucky persons who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Large outbreaks are less likely over the next few months, simply due to the season.

All of that will change in the fall, when flu season returns. October thru April are the months to watch. Once it takes off, then pandemic flu will respect no season. But right now, at least for the next 120 days, the odds of a pandemic emerging are reduced.

We are watching, for the first time, the likely birth of a pandemic strain of influenza. The last great pandemic was in 1918, and back then, we did not have the scientific knowledge or surveillance techniques to know it was coming. As such, we have no benchmark to tell us how close we are to a pandemic.

Had we been able to, we would have most likely have seen similar brush fires in the year or two leading up to 1918. Small clusters which flared up and died. The H1N1 Spanish flu virus evolving towards a pandemic strain. But of course, back then, we didn’t even know viruses existed. We’ve come a long way.

So the question before us is, are we in the spring of 1918, with the first wave only a month or so away? Or is this 1916, and we have two years before the virus acquires the ability to transmit efficiently?

The truth is, no one really knows what time it is. With what we learn this time, the pandemic-after-next may be easier to predict. We are wading thru uncharted territory, making guesses, and assumptions, based on a very limited dataset.

While it is possible the H5N1 strain will still die out and dissapear, there are few scientists willing to bank on that. Governments and private enterprise are spending billions of dollars preparing for a possible pandemic.

They see the writing on the wall, and although they can't decipher it perfectly, they see an ominous message.