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The Plague/Virus Scenario |
Whether it's an Al-Qaeda-produced smallpox or monkeypox variant with a week-long incubation period, an Ebola or Marburg variant being transmitted accidentally at airports, or a suddenly-intense mutation of avian influenza, the impacts would be dramatic. See Laurie Garrett's magnificent The Coming Plague, winner of the the Pulitzer Prize, for more information, as well as The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control, National Academies Press, 2006. The government, and the public health system, unfortunately would be unlikely to effectively respond with vaccine development, distribution, and direct implementation.
We are hypothesizing a disease with a slow incubation, extreme transmissibility, and a death rate of 10-30%. This is actually low for many of the possible pathogens. This sort of pandemic would likely drive much of the following:
There are plenty of sub-scenarios where contagion doesn't fully apply; where antigens, antivirals, and/or inoculations hold sway. We hope that happens. But we think it more likely that infection, uncertainty, and accidental transmission will lead to a general population who are fearful, uncertain, and reactive. In that case, society will shut down, at least for a few weeks, which (in this fragile just-in-time economy) is enough to cause catastrophe.
| from Washington Post (US), 01/09/08 Virus Starts Like a Cold But Can Turn Into a Killer "Infectious-disease expert David N. Gilbert was making rounds at the Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon in April when he realized that an unusual number of patients, including young, vigorous adults, were being hit by a frightening pneumonia. "What was so striking was to see patients who were otherwise healthy be just devastated," Gilbert said. Within a day or two of developing a cough and high fever, some were so sick they would arrive at the emergency room gasping for air. "They couldn't breathe," Gilbert said. "They were going to die if we didn't get more oxygen into them." Gilbert alerted state health officials, a decision that led investigators to realize that a new, apparently more virulent form of a virus that usually causes nothing worse than a nasty cold was circulating around the United States. At least 1,035 Americans in four states have been infected so far this year by the virus, known as an adenovirus. Dozens have been hospitalized, many requiring intensive care, and at least 10 have died. | |
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| from The Observer, 01/09/08 Inside Ebola "Inside Ebola's zone of death Uganda is gripped by fear of an epidemic explosion' as the killer virus develops a slower and potentially more lethal version." | |
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| from Reuters, 01/05/08 Tuberculosis exposure feared on India-to-U.S. flight "U.S. health officials are trying to track down 44 people who sat near a woman infected with a hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis aboard an airliner from India to determine whether they have been infected, authorities said on Friday. The infected woman is 30 years old and is being treated for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR TB, at a hospital in the San Francisco area, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She had been diagnosed in India with MDR TB but traveled last month anyway, the CDC said." | |
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| from BBC (UK), 01/12/08 Stomach bug sweeping the country "Doctors estimate more than 100,000 people a week are catching norovirus, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting... At least 56 hospital wards across England and Wales have been closed to new patients, the BBC has learned. The Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust says it is cancelling all non-urgent operations until 9 January because of what it calls the "unrelenting pressure" caused by the virus." | |
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| from Reuters UK, 01/13/08 U.N. says prepare for big flu pandemic economic hit "Most countries have now focused on pandemic as a potential cause of catastrophe and have done some planning. But the quality of the plans is patchy and too few of them pay attention to economic and social consequences," he told BBC radio. "The economic consequences could be up to $2 trillion (1 trillion pounds) -- up to 5 percent of global GDP removed," he said, reiterating previous World Bank and UN estimates. | |
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| from San Francisco Chronicle, 01/21/08 Bacteria race ahead of drugs "...Dr. Jeff Brooks has been director of the UCSF lab for 29 years, and has watched with a mixture of fascination and dread how bacteria once tamed by antibiotics evolve rapidly into forms that practically no drug can treat. "These organisms are very small," he said, "but they are still smarter than we are." Among the most alarming of these is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a bug that used to be confined to vulnerable hospital patients, but now is infecting otherwise healthy people in schools, gymnasiums and the home. Last week, doctors at San Francisco General Hospital reported that a variant of that strain, resistant to six important antibiotics normally used to treat staph, may be transmitted by sexual contact and is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. "We are on the verge of losing control of the situation, particularly in the hospitals," said Dr. Chip Chambers, chief of infectious disease at San Francisco General Hospital. | |
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| from AFP, 01/25/08 India worst bird flu outbreak spreads "KOLKATA, India (AFP) - India's worst outbreak of bird flu spread as health authorities battled on Friday to stop it reaching the densely populated city of Kolkata amid heavy rain that hampered culling efforts. Authorities reported the disease had affected two more districts, bringing the number hit by avian flu to 12 out of West Bengal state's total of 19. "We're afraid bird flu may spread to many areas -- it has already spread to two more districts," said state animal resources minister Anisur Rahaman in Kolkata, which has 13.2 million people, many of whom live in congested slums." | |
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| from Washington Post (US), 01/30/08 Video Reveals Violations of Laws, Abuse of Cows at Slaughterhouse "Video footage being released today shows workers at a California slaughterhouse delivering repeated electric shocks to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own; drivers using forklifts to roll the "downer" cows on the ground in efforts to get them to stand up for inspection; and even a veterinary version of waterboarding in which high-intensity water sprays are shot up animals' noses -- all violations of state and federal laws designed to prevent animal cruelty and to keep unhealthy animals, such as those with mad cow disease, out of the food supply." | |
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| from The Telegraph, 02/12/08 Malaria warning as UK becomes warmer "Following a major consultation with climate change scientists, the Government is issuing official advice to hospitals, care homes and institutions for dealing with rising temperatures, increased flooding, gales and other major weather events. It warns that there is a high likelihood of a major heatwave, leading to as many as 10,000 deaths, hitting the UK by 2012....Hospitals are also warned to prepare for outbreaks of malaria and tick-born viruses, as well as increased levels of skin cancer and deaths from asthma and other breathing conditions." | |
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| from Terra Daily, 02/14/08 Skin disease linked with deforestation "U.S. scientists have determined deforestation and social marginalization increase the risk of acquiring an infectious, tropical skin disease. The University of Michigan researchers examined the incidence of the disease American cutaneous leishmaniasis, or ACL, in Costa Rica. ACL -- characterized by skin lesions caused by an infectious organism carried by sand flies -- most commonly affects workers in forested lowlands, but tourists are increasingly at risk as remote tropical areas become more accessible." | |
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| from Reuters, 02/18/08 Bird flu claims second life in Vietnam "Hanoi - Bird flu has killed a second man in Vietnam this week, infected a child and poultry in two provinces and a health official warned more people would fall sick of the virus, the government and state media said on Saturday. The 27-year-old man died on Thursday night at a Hanoi hospital after he was taken there from the northern province of Ninh Binh on Tuesday with serious pneumonia, the official Vietnam News Agency reported." | |
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| from Nature, 02/21/08 Map pinpoints disease "A detailed map highlighting the world's hotspots for emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) has been released. It uses data spanning 65 years and shows the majority of these new diseases come from wildlife. Scientists say conservation efforts that reduce conflicts between humans and animals could play a key role in limiting future outbreaks." | |
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| from University of Georgia, 02/21/08 Emerging Infectious Diseases On The Rise: Tropical Countries Predicted As Next Hot Spot "It's not just your imagination. Providing the first-ever definitive proof, a team of scientists has shown that emerging infectious diseases such as HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Ebola are indeed on the rise. By analyzing 335 incidents of previous disease emergence beginning in 1940, the study has determined that zoonoses -- diseases that originate in animals -- are the current and most important threat in causing new diseases to emerge. And most of these, including SARS and the Ebola virus, originated in wildlife. Antibiotic drug resistance has been cited as another culprit, leading to diseases such as extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB)." | |
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| from Earth Institute (Columbia), 02/24/08 Growing Threat Seen In Human-Wildlife Conflict, Drug Resistance "An international research team has provided the first scientific evidence that deadly emerging diseases have risen steeply across the world, and has mapped the outbreaks’ main sources. They say new diseases originating from wild animals in poor nations are the greatest threat to humans. Expansion of humans into shrinking pockets of biodiversity and resulting contacts with wildlife are the reason, they say. Meanwhile, richer nations are nursing other outbreaks, including multidrug-resistant pathogen strains, through overuse of antibiotics, centralized food processing and other technologies." | |
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| from New York Times (US), 02/27/08 Drug-Resistant TB Rates Soar in Former Soviet Regions "Drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in parts of the former Soviet Union have reached the highest rates ever recorded globally, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. The rates could soar even higher, spreading the potentially fatal disease elsewhere, a top W.H.O. official said, releasing findings from the largest global survey of the problem." | |
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| from Nhan Dan (Vietnam), 03/03/08 H5N1 outbreaks in 9 Vietnamese provinces "Bird flu outbreaks have been reported in Phu Tho and Ha Nam province, announced the Veterinary Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on March 2. This has brought the number of the epidemic-hit cities and provinces to nine, including Thai Nguyen, Quang Ninh, Hai Duong, Nam Dinh, Tuyen Quang and Ninh Binh in the north and Vinh Long in the south." | |
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| from The New Nation (Bangladesh), 03/08/08 Impact of Bird Flu: Bad days for fast food shops in Dhaka Sales in the city's fast food shops have marked a sharp fall as customers continued to ignore chicken items out of bird flu fear, hitting hard the booming fast-food business. "We're passing through a very critical time as our sales have dropped by 50 percent. Even our regular customers hardly visit our shops and those who come are scared of taking chicken items," said Sohel Rana, supervisor of 'Chicken King', a popular fast food shop in Dhanmondi area.... He also blamed the media for spreading the bird flu panic among the people. "Watching chicken culling on television and reading those in newspapers, people get panicked."... Nearly 100,000 poultry farms have been shut down due to the outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus, throwing around 2.5 million people out of jobs. | |
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| from NDTV, 03/17/08 State media reports outbreak of bird flu in China Bird flu has broken out in the south of China, killing more than 100 poultry, state media reported on Sunday, citing the agriculture ministry. The outbreak occurred in a market in Guangzhou, in Guangdong province on Thursday, and was a "highly pathogenic" subtype of the H5N1 influenza virus, which can be deadly to humans, the report said. A further 500 birds were culled and the disease was under control after emergency measures were taken. | |
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| from Contra Costa Times, 03/20/08 UN: Indonesia failing in bird flu fight "JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Efforts to contain bird flu are failing in Indonesia, increasing the possibility that the virus may mutate into a deadlier form, the leading U.N. veterinary health body warned. The H5N1 bird flu virus is entrenched in 31 of the country's 33 provinces and will cause more human deaths, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement released late Tuesday. "I am deeply concerned that the high level of virus circulation in birds in the country could create conditions for the virus to mutate and to finally cause a human influenza pandemic," FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech said. " | |
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| from Globe and Mail/AP (Canada), 03/21/08 Dengue epidemic hits Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro: An outburst of dengue has killed at least 47 people -- and perhaps twice that -- in Rio de Janeiro state this year, officials said Thursday, announcing a hot spot in a hemispheric outbreak that sickened nearly 1 million people in 2007. State officials said 51 cases are being reported every hour as the outbreak strains public hospitals' capacity... Brazil had more than half of the 900,782 cases of dengue in the Americas last year, according to the Pan American Health Organization. Of the hemisphere's 317 deaths, 158 came in Brazil, including 31 in Rio state. | |
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| from Fox News (US), 03/24/08 Viruses Found Transmitting Genes Among Bacteria "We've found previously that the viruses can move between biomes [ecological communities] pretty easily," Rohwer told LiveScience. "So in theory they should be able to move things from one part of the world to another."... That means genes that would confer environmental protection or some other adaptive tool could trek long distances via viruses from bacteria in one part of the world to another region.... "We're finding those genes in the viruses, which suggests that the viruses, when they're doing infection, they're actually manipulating the behavior of the bacteria when they're in them," Rohwer said.... In fish farms, the researchers found the viruses delivered "eating" genes to bacteria. | |
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| from Reuters, 03/26/08 Warming seen having immunological consequences "The first two bee sting-related deaths were reported in Fairbanks, Alaska in the summer of 2006, which researchers suspect was a consequence of global warming; and they predict that this is just the beginning. Honeybees and yellow jackets were rare in the area until the past few years...There has been a 50-percent increase in sting-related emergencies and, now, the first reports of anaphylactic reactions to bee stings." | |
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| from Toronto Globe and Mail, 03/27/08 Superbug MRSA spreading fast, report warns "A staggering 29,000 Canadian hospital patients acquired the superbug MRSA in a one-year period, including an estimated 2,300 whose deaths were partly attributed to the pernicious bacteria, federal figures released today show. The increase in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus translates into 12,000 new infections plus 17,000 patients who became colonized, said Andrew Simor, co-chairman of the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program. (Being colonized with MRSA means the patients are carriers who are not infected and show no symptoms.)" | |
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