Pandemic, Schmandemic... Is it coming or not? Aug. 22, 2010

First, some housekeeping...

Tropical Storm Danielle has formed in the Atlantic. If the track and predictions hold, she will escalate to hurricane strength by Wednesday, and may affect the mid-Atlantic region by early next week. Plenty of time to set aside a little extra water, food, lights, and generator fuel.

Our Facebook page is up to 41 "likes" - I am truly excited! Please keep spreading the word and please give me some feedback so I can keep this relevant and interesting. You can also become a "follower" of the blog and help promote it that way. I'm thinking I need to get ready for some sort of appreciation give-a-way. Some sort of prep item or book, once we reach a certain number of likers or followers. I'll think on it and make an announcement soon.

Now on to today's topic...


Pandemic Disease: What is it and what can we do?

As many of us learned about a year ago, a pandemic is when a communicable disease has begun to spread easily from person to person and has affected countries around the world. It is more widespread than an epidemic. If you are about my age or younger, you never experienced a pandemic before, although we had three influenza pandemics in the 20th Century. The Spanish Flu of 1918-19 killed over 50 million around the world, including nearly 700,000 in the US. It was an H1N1 virus related to the most recent pandemic. The Asian Flu of 1957-58 killed about 2 million globally and 70,000 in the US. In 1968-69, the Hong Kong Flu killed over 1 million in the world and 34,000 in the US. The H1N1 flu pandemic of the past year was declared over just last week.

Pandemics of plague, typhus, yellow fever, and other diseases have killed 100s upon 100s of millions of people throughout history. There are concerns about new outbreaks either of existing diseases, or mutations that society is not prepared for with vaccines or treatments.

Viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Lassa or Ebola, are one concern. Lassa makes occasional appearances in the desert Southwest, and is spread through the inhalation of infected mouse feces. Ebola, usually found in Africa, has a terribly high mortality rate, but is actually fairly difficult to catch if basic precautions are taken against contact with infected bodily fluids. Ebola Reston is one mutation that infected a primate importation facility in Reston, Virginia several years ago. While that particular version was not a danger to humans, it showed that the Ebola virus can mutate to be spread through the air and ventilation systems. If Ebola that kills humans mutates that way, movies like Outbreak (Outbreak (Snap Case) ) could become reality.

Diseases such as Tuberculosis and Staph Infection (MRSA) are becoming "superbugs" in that they are resistant to established treatment and antibiotics. If they mutate to the point of being more virulent and easily transmittable, the results could be disastrous.

The last thing I want to bring up is some of the diseases that are typically spread by insect vectors, not human to human, but that may be more widespread because of a lack of natural prevention. Malaria, West Nile Virus, and Eastern Equine Encephalitis are just a few diseases spread by mosquitoes to humans. EEE has a 35% mortality rate in humans, and has recently shown up in humans in Michigan, Florida, and other locations. Why are these becoming more prevalent? I think it has to do with White Nose Syndrome, a deadly fungus that is destroying bat populations. It was first seen a few years ago in the Northeast, but is rapidly spreading around the country. Its mortality rate is over 90% in the caves that it has been found in. I saw something today that said that the little brown bat may be extinct by 2014 at its current death rate. With that many bats dying off the mosquitoes are losing a natural predator that is allowing them to be more prolific.

Once again, this is running long. I'll talk about what we can do in a couple of days.