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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Avian Flu: China: 300 Dead: H2H Transmission |
| 2005-11-25 |
| A respected Japanese scientist, who works with the World Health Organization, says 300 people have died of H5N1 bird flu in China, including seven cases caused by human-to-human transmission. He says he was given the information in confidence by Chinese colleagues who have been threatened with arrest if they disclosed the extent of the problem. The allegations, which he revealed at a meeting in Germany, contrast sharply with Chinaâs official position. It reports three confirmed cases of H5N1 in people: a boy in Hunan province who recovered, and two women who died in Anhui province, the latest of which was announced on Thursday. There may be another probable case in Hunan. But Masato Tashiro, head of virology at Tokyoâs National Institute of Infectious Disease â a WHO-collaborating centre for bird flu â told the meeting of virologists in Marburg, Germany, on 19 November that "we have been systematically deceived". His comments were reported in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He told the stunned meeting, called to mark the retirement of a senior German virologist, that there have been âseveral dozenâ outbreaks in people, 300 confirmed deaths and 3000 people placed in isolation with suspected cases. Severe restrictions Tashiro could not be reached for comment today. The newspaper reported that he said the numbers came from sources he trusted, while he was in Hunan province for the WHO, working with Chinese investigators on the recent H5N1 outbreak there. He said five Chinese medical personnel had been arrested for trying to report these cases, according to the paper. China enforced severe restrictions on the investigation and reporting of suspected cases of bird flu in June 2005. "These rumours have been investigated, and weâve been told by the Chinese Ministry of Health that thereâs no foundation to them," Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, told New Scientist. Emergency workers Virologists consider the relative absence of human cases of bird flu in China unusual, given its widespread infection in birds. China has reported poultry outbreaks in twenty counties all across the country since mid-October, the latest being on Thursday. The WHO told the official Chinese news agency Xinhua last week that the virus causing the outbreak in Hunan is the same as the one in Vietnam and Thailand, where H5N1 has caused 113 confirmed human cases and 55 deaths so far. There are other unconfirmed reports of human cases in China. Boxun News, an independent Chinese website, reported this week that 77 workers brought in to help control rampant H5N1 outbreaks in poultry in Liaoning province in November have died of the virus, listing 14 names. Boxun reported the extent of the outbreak in wild birds at Qinghai Lake in central China in May, and alleged then that 120 people had been put in stringent hospital isolation in a nearby town, possibly with bird flu. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #13 at least you'd 4 signs in advance |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-11-25 18:20 |
| #12 The Burma possibility is scary ..... And I call BS on this whole thread. Since China has signed the NPT, one of their client states/tribute kingdoms, North Korea, has gotten the bomb, and Burma (which is another) is trying. As far as I can tell they aren't following the treaty; they're subsidizing their tribute kingdoms' adventures in nuclear science, in much the same way Russia is with Iran. |
| Posted by: Phil 2005-11-25 18:03 |
| #11 The Burma possibility is scary ..... |
| Posted by: lotp 2005-11-25 16:58 |
| #10 Thanks be to God that China no longer is preliferatin. If things had gotten worse it's very likely that Burma (name today here) or Canada would have gotten the Bomb. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-11-25 16:53 |
| #9 Tiananmen Square resulted in one of George HW Bush Sr.'s most important victories, one that few people even know about. After the crackdown happened, the US congress demanded all sorts of punishment to China, but Bush said nothing. They gave him a lot of grief over it. Then, with the passage of time, Bush sent a couple of high-level diplomats there. They were discovered and great harumphing followed about China again. However, they had accomplished their mission, which they never discussed. Later, out of the blue, Bush renewed China's MFN trade status. Congress blew up for a third time, and Bush took the heat. However, two weeks or so later, something very strange happened. China, which had always sworn it would never do so, suddenly signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. Every US President since Nixon would have given his left arm to get them to do this. But Chinese relations with both the US and Russia were at a low point when the treaty was created, so to be contrary, they had made it a point of national pride not to sign on. However, the Chinese could not admit that they had signed on in exchange of keeping their MFN status, because it would have cost them a lethal amount of face. And while they haven't been terribly scrupulous about following the treaty, had they not signed, they could have proliferated nuclear weapons far worse than Pakistan ever did. In a way, I suppose there is irony in all of this. Though the Tiananmen Square protestors didn't get the democracy they wanted, with their lives they made a major contribution to world peace. With the help of George HW Bush, Sr., of course. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-11-25 15:54 |
| #8 WOT * Perhaps a few thousand people died in Tiananmen Square and it was big news. And China was a lot more closed off in 1989 than it is today. I've always wondered what would have happened if they'd waited 10 years. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-11-25 15:04 |
| #7 Elmenter Snineque1852: what I propose is not that a major metro area gets hit at first. The cities and towns most at risk are in rural poultry-producing areas and wild bird routes. They might be fairly large, but not on the well-traveled routes. The Chinese government could easily fabricate some disaster tale, cut off communications in the area, and prevent travel. Beyond a certain size, they couldn't keep it a secret forever, but that is where disinformation comes in. For example, they could claim a major toxic chemical spill with a severe vapor hazard. Piedmont, NM happens. The concept is not so much to keep it a secret forever, but to "information manage" it in whatever way the central government sees fit. First of all, they don't want chaos and panic, and I can't really blame them for that. Second, they don't and can't really have the resources to do as much as they want to--but they don't want criticism for this weakness. They don't want to take a popularity hit while they are trying to get the situation under control. Third, even during the SARS epidemic, all sorts of problems in their health care system, bureaucracy, and government came to light. They have pushed very hard and threatened serious consequences to anyone who tries to conceal an outbreak or other such typical bs. But it is terribly un-Chinese to do so. Their society has some grievous problems and some serious fractures. They don't want it to collapse because of this disease. They have said they intend to close their borders when H2H is confirmed. What excuse they might use to shut down communications in much of the country is anybody's guess. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-11-25 13:53 |
| #6 Anonymoose: In a nation of 1.3 billion people, how many could they lose and still cover up? 100 million? I would ballpark an outbreak killing 100,000 people spread out across the nation.* A hundred cases in a single hospital would certainly get the klaxons blaring - relatives would certainly spread the word after hearing about all the other patients there or seeing a bunch of armed men at the area hospital. China today is not the hermetically sealed society of yesterday. Every foreigner who showed up in China used to get a personal minder. Now that millions of foreigners are being allowed in annually, there's just not a big enough budget to keep all of them under surveillance. Note also that millions of Chinese tourists, businessmen and officials travel abroad annually, again without minders. And then there's the cheap telecomms factor - the internet is readily available, and English language traffic is pretty much left alone. The internet is readily buggable because text data take up no space, but phone lines in China are not. Did you know that it costs a nickel a minute to call China? How the heck are the Chinese authorities going to bug the millions of international phone calls that occur everyday? How are they going to monitor the millions of interactions between individual Chinese and foreigners, domestically and abroad, every single day? * Perhaps a few thousand people died in Tiananmen Square and it was big news. And China was a lot more closed off in 1989 than it is today. |
| Posted by: Elmenter Snineque1852 2005-11-25 11:43 |
| #5 Elmenter Snineque1852: The Japanese scientist who first made the statement was contradicted by a senior WHO official, who said in essence that, "That information is not an official WHO statistic." Well, of course it isn't. WHO is reliant on countries to submit statistics. Therefore, the "official" WHO statistic is what China reports. And if China is *lying*... So go back to what the Japanese scientist said, that collegues of his who feared severe punishment had given him this information. This raises several problems. First of all, China itself has acknowledged, since the SARS outbreak, that it has a horrible problem with a lack of physician and health department networking. That is, information does not flow between doctors like it must in a public health scenario. That being said, either these Chinese "colleagues" who talked to the Japanese scientist have valid information, or they don't. In that they were mentioned in the plural, I doubt that they all came up with the same speculation on their own. And that's the trouble with being a deceptive and secretive society committed to controlling the free flow of information. If there *is* a major H2H outbreak in China, resulting in a horrific number of casualties in some city, then two things might result. Either the Chinese will broadcast it to the world, which I highly doubt; or they will claim some "other" disaster. A disaster that specifically requires the wearing of protective overgarmets by the Chinese military policing the area. In a nation of 1.3 billion people, how many could they lose and still cover up? 100 million? |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-11-25 10:31 |
| #4 I am reminded of the first Australian rabbit plague. That is, after rabbits were imported to Australia in 1859, they soon covered the country, so a disease found in South American rabbits was imported in the 1950s. It reduced rabbit numbers from an estimated 600 million to 100 million in two years. Though modern humans are far better off than rabbits, I wonder how a billion of the world's, for want of a better word, peasants, would fare? There are several factors that matter. 1) Communicability and virulence. Pulmonary (coughing and sneezing) diseases for which there is no immunity are most efficient in transmission. Virulence cannot be too great or the disease will not spread as well. Optimally, minimum symptoms and maximum communicability for a long time, up to a week or more, followed by acute symptoms and death. 2) Vectors. In order, from most efficient to least efficient, are human, animal, water, and food. They are not exclusive, as flu, for example, is carried by both humans and animals. 3) Carriers. Carrying a disease includes several sub-factors. a. Incubation period of the disease, and time during that period in which a person is contagious. b. Method of travel during contagious period, and likelyhood of infecting other travelers. c. Distance traveled and number of disease-free populations visited during contagious period. d. Interaction with disease-free population on arrival. e. Amount of contagion generated by a carrier. Literally, how much pathogen they are putting out in a way that can spread the disease. 4) Hygiene and quarantine. This strongly matters for both carriers and those who are disease-free. Many disease 'tendrils' can be stopped this way. 5) Public information. An informed public radically reduces disease spread except among the ignorant and stupid. A public somewhat familiar with good hygiene, and thus taking extra precautions, severely hampers the spread of a disease. 6) The disease "clock". Once the incubation period of the disease is known, efforts can be made to interfere with this strict timetable, which in turn breaks the transmission chain. Quarantines; immediately taking duration & severity medicines when first showing symptoms; public "holidays"--informal curfews; and reducing travel can have a significant effect. 7) Vaccines and anti-virals. Issued to medical, at-risk, or probable carrier persons and in outbreak areas. They act as a "fire-break" against the disease. Each of these criteria and probably a few more, can be used to calculate how an area, country, region or continent will do in an epidemic. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-11-25 10:17 |
| #3 This is probably false. East South West North has a follow-up on this topic. |
| Posted by: Elmenter Snineque1852 2005-11-25 09:44 |
| #2 Uh oh. This guy isn't some Chicken (sorry) Little. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-11-25 08:51 |
| #1 Psn't "Independent Chinese" an Oxymoron? |
| Posted by: Thaviter Phumble2744 2005-11-25 08:21 |