One containment of bird flu is not enough

Here's a link to a scientific article that,
between all the high falutin' language
and charts and graphs -- is terrifying in
its implications:

containing bird flu many times

Boiling it down, it makes a case for something
which I hadn't thought of it -- if A/H5N1 can
mutate or recombine into a highly contagious
form (and there's no reason to think it cannot),
then to prevent a pandemic we will have to "contain"
it not once -- but over and over again.

In fact, we cannot ever stop until A/H5N1 is no
longer found in any birds. And the more it
spreads through the world (now including France
and various parts of Nigeria), the less possible
it will be to stop.

Remember that's the World Health Organization's
basic strategy to protect us all from a bird flu
pandemic is a strategy called "containment."

Pioneering D.A. Henderson during the Eradication of
small from the 1960s to the 1970s, it involves
isolating the virus by vaccinating every possible
person around known infected people.

It's sort of like putting out a forest fire by
bulldozing a "firebreak" of bare ground which
the fire cannot cross. So it burns through all
the trees it cannot consume, then dies down.

Once a highly contagious disease such as bird flu
infects every person it can reach, then it must
die down, as all infected persons either die or
recover.

WHO plans to accomplish this by isolating areas
around all bird flu victims, treating them with
Tamiflu and vaccinating everybody who's not already
infected.

It's already known that this will work only if
the highly contagious form of bird flu is
detected quickly.

That could be tough in areas such as rural Thailand
and rural China, though those regions are now on
the lookous for bird flu.

It would most likely work in Western Europe, but
could still fail in Eastern Europe.

And could be a nightmare in rural Africa, which
has dramatic shortages of medical facilities,
personnell and testing.

But it may still work.

The trouble is, if it does work the first time,
that does not mean it won't happen again. In
fact, as long as A/H5N1 is spreading through
the world, it will almost certainly do so again.

And again.

And again.

Until WHO runs out of Tamiflu or vaccines or
the money and political will to stay alert
for years after the defeat of one outbreak.

It's human nature -- once we think we have
solved a problem, we let down our guard.

Just another way that the virus knows how to
use the laws of probability better than we
know how to counter them.

And all the most reason for learning how to
protect yourself and your family with my
book --

How to Protect Yourself and Your Family From Bird Flu