Archive for the ‘Public health’ Category
Developing a virus takes more time than rockers
People have beliefs about how things are built. It’s easy to see the time it takes to make a rocking chair, in spite of what Mel Gibson showed us in his movie The Patriot. (Think weeks to make all those rockers he destroyed during a montage, not days.)
We’ve even gotten to the point of understanding the timeline for making an app, or launching a website, or developing a podcast. There are many examples for us to observe for our timelines. We can even measure successful work from skilled developers who have their apps, sites, and podcasts in the world — so we know who to hire.
Then there’s a vaccine for a virus. Cue the spooky, mysterious music. Our world doesn’t build these things often. Rarely, in fact. And unlike the chairs that litter Mel’s workshop, a failed vaccine attempt kills people. Namely, the test subjects who agree to try out the medicine. Perhaps, even millions who use it in a desperate, misguided effort.
Even if you could accept dozens of testing deaths in that noble war, there’s another factor: time. As of today, one study by the WHO identified a top-end of a 24-day period of carrying a coronavirus with no symptoms. It’s called being asymptomatic, and those three-plus weeks would mean there’s something on the order of a month of testing time for every vaccine candidate.
Don’t panic at that. The median period is five days, at the moment.
That’s just the testing. In the computer world, testing represents 30 percent of the development time on a project. The hardest 30 percent, many project leaders say. The other 70 percent is design and construction. So in a worst case, 100 days: Yes, three months and more for an effective vaccine that works on a few dozen test subjects.
You measure the days. In a best-case, hit-the-first hand to win with a 21 in blackjack kind of scenario, 70 days of development plus 30 days of testing gives you three and a half months.
Check in with me here: How many of you gamblers hit on 21 in your first hand? It’s not lottery-win rare. Then you consider how much more complex viral medicine is, compared to 52 cards with a combination of — um, carry the 10s — about 12 cards where you must draw the right three in a row. Be sure to account for the microscopes and RNA examinations of vaccines, instead of face cards you can see from across the table.
The point is that a vaccine will need months of testing, not 30 days, just because we don’t want to make something that makes the virus worse. Failure might be an option, but it’s a deadly one. A vaccine not fully tested might mutate the virus, so it becomes a new devil to slay. None of Mel’s failed rockers killed a village.
Despite what our President would prefer, we’re looking at next year to get a drug to protect us all. The most important thing that accelerates vaccine development is teamwork. It’s going to take a new level of scientific collaboration for the wonder drug that rocks us back into new health.
Photo by Cassandra Ortiz on Unsplash
How to Survive the Next Global Pandemic
In the world of Viral Times, not so far into the future, a global pandemic has changed us all. A virus triggers The New Flu and it evolves to H.I.V.E-5. AIDS Ultra follows. The government rounds up the infected and locks them into Health Camps, quarantined for secret drug testing. It’s only a few years into our future, those viral times. But in our today, Gizmodo is looking at how to survive such a crisis.
Our society is setting itself up for a global-scale disaster. Diseases, particularly those of tropical origin, are spreading faster than ever before, owing to more long-distance travel, urbanization, lack of sanitation, and ineffective mosquito control—not to mention global warming and the spread of tropical diseases outside of traditional equatorial confines. Accordingly, Oxford’s Global Priorities Project has listed a possible future pandemic as one of the worst catastrophic threats currently facing humanity.
And viruses are right at the top of the list of threats in the article. We have no way of defending ourselves with drugs of today. The advice on survival begins with storing away fresh water, and the writer adds, “You should also get the latest seasonal vaccine. It may not protect you against the mutated strain, but then again, it just might.”
Politics play a role in curing an epidemic
For good or for ill, politics can be part of the prescription for stopping an epidemic. Policies can permit a nation’s resources to play a role in the healing. In Viral Times, a battered country permits drug testing to take on a swifter pace, hoping for a cure to HIVE-5. The drug doesn’t emerge, but others do. Fear ensures the loss of civil liberties, more swiftly than pharma research yields a new drug. The government permits those losses, too.
In our current day it appears that politics has at least helped to stem the tide of Ebola. More specifically, the virus has disappeared from our media coverage by this week. One week after the US midterm elections, Ebola stopped scaring us all. Cases are still on the rise in Africa. We’ve created no drugs to stop Ebola. It’s just gone underground, somehow, since nobody in office can profit by calling for more government resources.
Shepard Smith of Fox News (not kidding here) broadcast the best three minutes of news coverage about Ebola during the pandemic panic
. He noted that the party in power during an epidemic needs to be seen taking action, while the party out of power needs to be seen calling for investigations about the lack of virus-protection resource. Now that the GOP controls both houses of the Congress, we’ll watch to see how much more our government can do to protect us in our current viral times.
Corpses Present the Greatest Infection Risk from Ebola
Everybody wants to be sure they know how the Ebola virus infects us. Studies show that skin won’t transfer the virus unless a person’s died of the disease caused by the virus. Casual contact with the Walking Sick — those suffering some of the symptoms such as fever, sore throat, stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea — probably won’t infect you either. You just have to keep your hands to yourself.
A 2007 study from the Journal of Infectious Diseases took samples from saliva, from semen, sweat and bodily fluids of patients infected with the virus. Scientists were looking for specimens viable enough to grow in a petri dish. One in 12 saliva samples carried the virus. None of the skin swabs tested positive. In semen samples, two of the 38 samples tested positive. The one sweat sample? It tested negative.
The researchers concluded that Ebola transmission via casual contact is a low probability event. Keep in mind that Ebola is not an airborne virus yet, either. So how did the latest person, a doctor in New York City, get infected by the virus? Working with infected patients in Africa. Patients who are emitting blood, or feces via diarrhea, are the most virulent. Even dried blood can remain infectious for over a week.
Where on your body do you get infected? Cuts in your skin, mouth, nose, or eyes. Soft tissue openings always offer a pathway to any virus or bacteria. If someone with active Ebola is still alive, and those pathways of yours are protected, you should be safe. But once a person has died, even their skin carries the virus. Dead bodies, African healthcare duties — there are the elements that contribute to an Ebola infection.
That Journal study was conducted seven years ago. Viruses do mutate, and quickly.
Panic and Fear Drive Ebola Virus Responses
The world’s most deadly virus is infecting our populace with two dangerous diseases: fear and misunderstanding. First comes the misunderstanding. Ebola is not contagious until a person shows symptoms. One of those symptoms is fever, but fever can precede a more commonplace flu.
But people on aircraft who show signs of flu will now be asked to de-board, in some places. Not official policy, just someone being careful. Too much care. Everyone on a flight where an Ebola patient flew — one who had symptoms, but wasn’t detected — will be tested for the virus.
In Texas schools, children who show up with flu have trigged a closing of their schools in the days that follow.
Misunderstanding comes first, and fear follows. Finally, civil rights are removed.
The Ebola virus can only be contracted by contact with bodily fluids. Healthcare workers have elaborate protocols to follow. The CDC is making those protocols more severe. Hospitals don’t have the funding or staff to follow the protocols that are in place. More elaborate protocols will be harder to follow.
Hazmat suits are sold out in major cities in the US. The only people who need a hazmat suit are those in contact with Ebola victims who are fighting the virus. Healthcare workers. But the suits are being purchased by plenty of people who don’t work in healthcare.
Sold out hazmat suits: More evidence of fear, driven by misunderstanding. This is the kind of emotion that drove the Patriot Act, which founded the TSA, which now demands we remove our shoes. Unless the passenger is under 12. Honestly, wouldn’t a dedicated terrorist use a child anyway?
So in response to Ebola fears, airline traffic will decline over the next several months. Smaller airlines, or those in bad financial condition, will struggle when they miss ticket revenues in this busiest of travel seasons. Fear is the most common symptom of a viral infection. It spreads to everyone who does not understand how a virus works, or how to protect ourselves.
Getting a flu shot is more effective than buying a hazmat suit or skipping school or a flight. Last year 52,000 people died in the US due to flu. Ebola has killed one person in the US.
West Nile Virus on the rise in Texas
In my home here in Austin, we’re hearing reports about a rising number of infections from the West Nile Virus. The mosquito population here never carried this disease, at least not until this year. Now there’s been seven reported infections in the Austin area, and at least one death statewide. A few people in my family are scared.
What’s notable is that the warnings and reports include the word epidemic. One doctor said he’d never seen an epidemic like this in Texas. He’s relying on a definition of the word that people who’ve seen Contagion may not understand — but it’s not the right term. An epidemic is a series of infections which are high in number across a geographic area. The number of infections, in total, doesn’t create an epidemic. You need a concentrated geographic area.
He may have been using comparative thinking, but seven infections among a Texas population of more than 15 million — anybody who gets a mosquito bite could be infected — well, that’s not a high number. Not high enough for an epidemic. Under one definition, an epidemic has to spread quickly, too. An epidemic is in a concentrated geographic area. We’re hearing our reports about Travis County. But that’s only seven reports.
Our world endured an H1N1 pandemic over the past two years. That’s an infection across vast geographic areas, though not necessarily high in overall numbers. Despite that official UN health organization’s designation, the 2010-11 infections didn’t change the world’s physical contact between persons, or reshape laws about sanitation and disinfection. Or spark a tremendous business sector devoted to protection. That’s the stuff of Viral Times — although the governments of my novel are not responding evenly, or with enough resources.
Climate changes will increase evolution of new flu strains
A report from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment says changing climate will affect the likelihood of contracting a new deadly strain of the flu. Never mind the heat — it’s the infection that will get you.
Migratory birds play a central role by giving a virus an additional opportunity to evolve
It’s the shifts between El Nino and La Nina weather that will wreak havoc with the bird migration patterns. Birds, migratory birds in particular, play a central role, by either passing a flu strain directly to humans (as in the case of H1N1) or indirectly via an intermediate host, giving the virus an additional opportunity to evolve.
The El Niño-La Niña oscillations cause significant changes in regional rainfall rates and wind patterns, which in turn affect the migration pattern of birds. And these shifts lead to different groups of of bird species coming into contact with each other in a given region, allowing for new strains of influenza to develop that eventually jump to humans.
In Viral Times, birds are an active transmission agent in the spread of the New Flu and other viruses. The dominant breeds of birds, especially starlings and crows, are among the deadliest of these agents.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) refers to the state of the tropical Pacific Ocean as it sloshes back and forth, like water in a huge bathtub, west and east between Asia and the Americas. This movement affects temperatures and weather patterns worldwide.
One means to combat the infection might be to reduce use of fossil fuels. But after generations of burning coal and oil, it might be too late to reverse the Nino-Nina bathtub slosh effects. It’s back to our firewall of protection against viruses: natural immunity.
Bird flu goes airborne after modification
A story in the New York Times reports that scientists are learning that avian flu has acquired airborne transmission ability after it was modified for increased strength. The experiments were part of studies to learn how the virus behaves. Now this virus can survive in the nose of ferrets, mammals whose nostril temperature is 4 degrees C cooler than a bird’s gut, where H5N1 usually grows.
The article points out that there’s a difference in ferret noses and those of us higher order mammals. One point cannot be smoothed out, however. The crossover point of animal to human is a step closer after this discovery. That kind of crossover is a prospect for triggering a pandemic.
Viral Times 