new bird flu strain detected, page-26

sabre

the media hype stories that come and go are like large irrational spikes and troughs in the share market.

However, independant and public minded leading scientists have been concerned about the possibility of a pandemic for many years. Frustrated, they lobbied governments to increase funding and research to no avail.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/315/7102/204
As we can see from this link, they have been lobbying hard since 1997.

Finally, when avian influenza emerged with frightening mortality rates they had their "cause celebre" in the media. Finally, pandemic preparedness became a priority. As it should be. As we learn more and more we can prevent or mitigate more potential disasters.

I certainly do not hope for a pandemic or even one death from bird flu to put "a few cents" on the BTA sp. Any increase in this way is transitory. Would someone investing in wind farms hope for more towns destroyed by hurricanes to increase the SP of wind farm companies?

However, once you see the potential disaster you would very much hope that maximum efforts would be put into mitigating or preventing such a disaster. The political will is finally here for pandemic preparedness (which is very multifaceted) and this is a good thing.

I would be delighted if IV Relenza started being used in bird flu endemic countries and prevented most if not all deaths from bird flu. I would be delighted if less money was spent killing people in Iraq and more was spent defending against pandemic threats.

The whole point about BTA's products is to help in the effort to mitigate or even prevent completely another pandemic. This will not be achieved by BTA's products alone. But due to the robustness of the Relenza molecule to resistance, it's versatility against multiple influenza threats, and it's long experience in clinical use, as Prof Arnold Monto said personally to me, "Relenza has an important use."

I really have no interest in bird flu hype. But I have a deep interest in pandemic preparedness facts. They sometimes interlink, and the media hype has been useful in building political will. And as Sabre pointed out, bird flu hype may even have political uses for the Paedopublicans, sorry Republicans under siege in the US.

But watch and see, I doubt that in the near term there will be anywhere near as much hype as last year, even though in truth we are much closer to a possible influenza pandemic than we were last year.