# 2683
With the caveat that a pandemic could break out just about anytime, and from any place, we really need to take some of the recent headlines offered by the media with a large grain of salt.
I'm sure you've seen them.
Chinese Health Expert Warns of Human Bird Flu Epidemic
227 people under observation in bird flu scare
While none of these headlines are patently false, they are, after all, designed to sell papers.
Editors choose their words carefully and for maximum effect.
Words like `grim', and `epidemic', and even `threat' evoke a visceral response in the reader.
And that is a very effective form of advertising.
The mainstream media generally seems content to ignore the pandemic threat for most of the year, but when January comes around and we see a spike in human cases they `re-discover' the threat, and begin hyping the story.
In reality, while the number of human cases decreases during the summer months, the pandemic threat never completely goes away.
The history with the H5N1 virus has been that the number of human infections goes up every winter.
Cooler weather=more infections.
This chart, from the WHO (World Health Organization), shows this pattern very clearly. Since 2003, each year has seen a peak in human cases between January and March.
Thus far, the number of cases being reported out of China this month pales in comparison to the Turkish outbreak of 2006, or the Vietnamese outbreak of 2005. Maybe that will change.
I'm not in the prognostication business, and so I can't tell you what happens tomorrow.
But as of today, we have (officially) 4 human cases this month in a country of 1.3 billion people.
On a per capita basis, that's not very many.
It's the equivalent of seeing 1 case this month in a country the size of Indonesia.
There's a pretty good chance that the mother of the 2 year-old in critical condition also died of the virus, but that will never be confirmed. Even if we add in the unconfirmed mother, and the two other relatives rumored to be hospitalized, that still falls short of a epidemic crisis.
Worrisome? Yes.
Every human infection is another chance for a dangerous mutation to occur in the virus. And every case is no doubt a tragedy for the families affected.
But with the virus endemic in so many places, sporadic human infections are to be expected.
I would not be surprised to see more human cases reported in China over the next couple of months. We might even see a lot more.
During the upcoming Lunar New Year celebration, hundreds of millions of Chinese will travel home, and that could increase the chances for a wider spread of the virus. Of course, we get that warning every winter as well.
The wildcard in all of this - the one that I worry about most - is the rise of the number of reports of infected, but asymptomatic, chickens over the past year.
How prevalent they really are, and how much virus they shed, is a big unknown. `Stealth chickens' are a growing concern, and quite frankly, could be a game changer.
We'll just have to wait and see if these sporadic cases out of China are a reporting anomaly, perhaps due to better surveillance, or the start of something big.
If we start seeing large clusters, and sustained human-to-human transmission - then I'll start to worry.
For now, my personal alert level remains unchanged. Even though I'm aware that we may not be getting the whole story out of China.
I'm watchful, but not particularly alarmed.
Part of the reason is that I'm already well prepared for a pandemic, or any other crisis, for that matter. That allows me the luxury of not having to jump at every blip on the radar screen.
Since a pandemic, or an earthquake, or a flood, or a tornado can occur at just about anytime, with little or no advance warning, it just makes sense to get prepared, and to stay prepared.
You'll find that you and your family will sleep better if you do the same. Some links to get you started include:
FEMA http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm
READY.GOV http://www.ready.gov/
AMERICAN RED CROSS http://www.redcross.org/
For Pandemic Preparedness Information:
For more in-depth emergency preparedness information I can think of no better resource than GetPandemicReady.Org. Admittedly, as a minor contributor to that site, I'm a little biased.
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