Pandemic unlikely

[Guest guest]

1.) there are several strains of H5N1 now with different properties, the strain in China is only one of these2.) since H5N1 is new and humans have no antibodies to it, "immune deficiency" is not assumed to be a special factor. Also, China hasn't documented the cases and the immune deficiency in a public,scientific paper and it is assumed that China is hiding cases. This "immune deficiency" was not reported in other parts of the world.3.) even if it were yet unclear why these were infected in China the reason of infection had been investigated in other countries. It was usually through contact with infected poultry, but also through human contact. (h2h)4.) the virus _is_ suspectable to humans in general. No human genetic property has been found so far to exclude suspectability.5.) the conclusion that the virus is not airborne, just because so few people are infected is not rational. Studies showed, that the virus doesn't well bind to human a2-6 cells (yet). It is suspected that the virus _is_ airborne. We had h2h, tiger-to-tiger and cat-to-cat cases in experiments. The virus goes preferrably into the lungs of mammals and maybe even in the intestine, but this is doubted. The low number of infected humans could be due to difficulties of the virus binding to human cells or reproducing there. This is supported by the presence of H5N1 in the respiratory system but being asymptomatic in some cases. It is clearly no argument against airborne transmission.

so, no new argument was given why the virus should be less likelyto mutate into a more transmissable form.Yet, they conclude that a pandemic is unlikely and they adaptthe facts so to support the argument.It is apparent that they first had the conclusion : "pandemic is unlikely"and then adapted the "arguments" to support that conclusion.The reason is assumedly to avoid panicing in the population.

[Guest guest]

check out this article:

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/4/6/asia/13881819 & sec=asia