There is a *Perfect Storm* scenario brewing that is a catastrophically dangerous concoction of politics, economics, biology, sociology, and natural causality.
First of all the impact of poverty on the issue of bird flu is vital to appreciate. Let's all please look at facts (not hype) and do so broadly enough enough to appreciate the global scope of the dilemma.
Currently the disease (IF UNCHECKED) has a 50% mortality rate, however as Mind & Brian suggest IT CAN BE CHECKED, the critical issue is how much will be spent to do so?
And as importantly; where and when?
After the pandemic firestorm has already started, thereby creating the need and potential profits?
The Front Lines in the Battle Against Avian Flu Are Running Short of Money
That would be as ethically corrupt as a laid off fireman becoming an arsonist to promote job security. It is invalid to anticipate as yet nonexistent and thus unprofitable need as the only legitimate reason for investment. This is part of the problem of depending only on necessity (demand) to drive market produced supply. Supply can be rationally anticipated for conditions such as we face but there are no recognized economic strategies that can make them profitable before a crisis that do not depend upon a central authority to fund such programs. Without the ability to anticipate profits business only sectors would rightly consider this expropriation to be forced at their own expense to create the means necessary to prepare for pandemic.
If the appropriate initial investment to prevent pandemic is made then there could not even be a pandemic. The dilemma to those interested in viewing this ONLY in terms of the Free Market is that by preventing the problem by principally investing great sums only in responding one is committing economic suicide. That is why without a central funding authority predicated on public welfare, i.e. government there is all too little incentive to prevent disease, invest in vaccine technology or anticipate and prevent calamity. Ironically the worst thing is that when successful at preventing calamity more often than not those who contribute to preventing the calamity by sounding the early warning are ridiculed as *Chicken-little*. No my friends the sky is not falling could that be the ground rushing up to meet it?
Second, the requirements of prevention tend to be anathema to the Neo Con nut-jobs that are opting to do everything in a reactionary mode of late except war monger, and war also increases the likelihood of pandemic. The Neo-Cons as I have repeatedly pointed out are inept at *Nation Building*. They are not merely incompetent in this regard but so criminally negligent perhaps they should be relabeled *Nero-Cons* since they seem best at blithely ignoring the needs of the many and also great con artists at convincing Americans to drink their Kool Aide.
So we have a double edge political crisis contributing to an economic one that is global in scope because the areas that provides the conditions for this disease to incubate long enough within human hosts so as to complete the mutations necessary are mostly (but not exclusively) in the third world; especially third world regions overrun by war, ravaged by poverty and incapable of responding adequately.
Going tsk tsk and saying too bad for them is not sufficient because once the natural mutations have been achieved the level of virulence and threat rises to tsunami proportions and our current safeguards are less adequate than the New Orleans levees. They have no cake to eat *mon Reine*. [wis]
For example when Clinton inherited the problem of loose nukes after the collapse of the Soviet Union he opted to do something that many thought at first irrational, he bought them for dismantling and properly disposing and securing the weapons grade nuclear fuel. It happens to have worked better than most plans to keep the dangerous nuclear fuels out of the hands of terrorists and the real costs are far less than most other strategies.
If the levees in New Orleans had been invested in (regardless of what group one wants to fix the most blame on) at a pittance of the current cost of rebuilding then much of the destruction might have been prevented.
Much of the problem with bird flu is similar.
A lot of what is entailed involves a variety of preventive measures, including more research but also developing vaccines and stockpiling them, developing antivirals like tamilfu and most of all dealing with outbreaks in a somewhat draconian fashion where they occur.
The last should be first and it is what has already failed. The reason is the economic impact of the groups involved.
When (not if) this disease goes pandemic our economy will respond along with the Europeans and some Asian countries but the areas that cannot respond will be overrun. We are *capable* of responding and we will but many areas of the world will receive no real help till their plagues have run their course. This is another example of how the private sector cannot be be expected to meet this kind of threat as it cannot profit before the fact when market exists ONLY through subsidy. We already see this with respect to how the major pharmaceuticals have generally abandoned vaccine development not merely production in the same manner they abandon *orphaned drugs* once a market is unable to support their production.
This then introduces the third critical component of the coming storm, class strife coincident with global terrorism. The outbreak will feed the growing global strife like fuel to the flames.
This is not 1918, we have tools and methods to fight this scourge, we are not helpless but we have already made the cost of doing so vastly greater by ignoring prevention. It will become a matter of cost and those that can afford to cope will survive and those that can't will die by the numbers as a global society will spread this disease even faster than 1918. By ignoring the prevention possible due to economic policy we will be seen as negligent leaders again and a threat to global health that will be interpreted as grotesque. This will become another example of class war superimposed on a cultural one driven by racism to boot. Those that will be the initial victims of this scourge will be people of color, poor and principally in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Willfully ignoring that obvious fact now will help to validate the claims of racist genocidal intent later even if much of the truth is mere stupidity, greed and negligence.
So fourth lets discuss biology, the disease we are facing is not cross contagious to humans *yet* but H5N1 is getting dangerously close to what they have learned about the 1918 flu virus in characteristics (five of ten critical mutations) and that disease required no intermediary host and was a million times more infectious than current strains.
It has already infected large scale population of migratory birds, not just domestic populations where draconian measures offer some limited protection. The biology of the spread for this disease is also about the demographics of human migrations. In a society significantly more global than in 1918 (the sheer numbers of people moving, the speed at which they do so, and the increased number of crossed paths and destinations) it will be impossible to contain the disease in the third world even if that were such a culpable intent.
So we have the biology of the disease, combined with the biology of migrant populations creating a kind of synergistic impact with another natural causality, catastrophe and climate.
Yesterday a devastating earthquake occurred at what should be considered the onset of flu season near *ground zero* for this potential storm. It will increase the likelihood of the disease not merely spreading through that region but having more opportunity to incubate in human populations even as the infrastructure to respond has also been decimated. Oh and it also happens to be ground zero for some of the political issues I have already mentioned. Once this firestorm starts putting it out will be nigh on impossible, containment will be draconian as this administration is already considering using the army to quarantine whole sections of the country and economy. Of course we forget that much of the need ed resources to even enact such an Executive Order are already abroad, committed, and with no small irony at or near ground zero for the potential pandemic.
To impose martial law in America in response to pandemic is logical but it would be catastrophic if the forces involved were inadequate to the task. Our military is untrained, ill equipped and unprepared to carry out such an order even if it were given in *good faith,* which frankly if it were to coincide with elections for example will never be believed.
So why is climate a factor?
(no this is not another dig about global warming for the most part)
)Winter is coming in the northern hemisphere, the flu season comes with it as I already mentioned but it is still hurricane season and we even have regions of this country still in the midst of significantly crippled infrastructures that are incapable of responding adequately to minor injuries (i.e. only one hospital is operating in NOLA at the moment) let alone a pandemic once it starts. These areas along the Gulf Coast also happen to be perfect climates along with populations (incubators) for the disease to mutate in domestically.
We are also facing the devastation of entire regions due to storms among the poorer populations in Central America and the Caribbean; two regions that have direct impact on the US due to immigration (legal and undocumented) as well as seasonal travel for tourists to and from this country. More storms and more devastation will increase poverty and increase the probability of mutation and pandemic by exposing greater populations with higher susceptibility to infection and less ability to respond in a timely and adequate manner.
While I don't want to debate the causality of global warming here desertification is a fact across many parts of the world, principally some the poorest. That combined with horrible local politics contributes to the existing famine we already witness as well as regional conflict. Once combined with diminished immunity from the spread of AIDS to many of these same populations it will make the rate of contagion (virulence) far greater for the disease *if* (more likely when) it mutates sufficiently to vector through perhaps even the 1918 pandemic. The impact on a global scale could be far more devastating than WWII and would rival anything imaginable in terms of global conflict. It will also most likely be brutal in victimizing any in the path not just *them* over there. We are looking a factors that are not merely contributory but increase the risks from this problem by significant orders of magnitude. The disease biology of the disease itself appears to be significantly more infectious and we have and are continuing to create conditions that make humanity considerably MORE vulnerable to the spread of the disease.
