Great. H5N1 bird flu has jumped to pigs. Just in case this gives you a So What? reaction, we are not talking here about the Swine Flu A(H1N1), which was all the rage in 2009, with huge vaccination and public health measures until it turned out to be quite minor, of interest now only to conspiracy theorists who think that it may have been dreamed up by Big Pharma as a measure to boost profits from sale of Tamiflu and vaccines. (My opinion is that the response of the public health authorities was fairly correct, and that we should all count ourselves lucky that it turned out to be so mild).
No, we are talking about H1N1 Avian flu, which kills about 60% of the humans it infects. Luckily, it has great difficulty in spreading from birds to humans, and from human to human. You have to be pretty close to an infected bird or human to catch it. The epidemic of H5N1 in birds has been tailing off in Indonesia since 2007, but it is present in 7% of the pigs. Unfortunately they are mainly symptomless carriers, so we don't even get to identify which ones are infected without a test.Fortunately, it does not yet seem to pass from pig to pig.
So why is it significant that it has found its way into pigs? Pigs are a reservoir for the virus, and in pigs it can shuffle its genes around until it comes up with a winning combination that enables it to spread from pigs to human and between humans. Pigs are closer to humans than birds, physiologically. So far it has not done the transmission trick, and it has been in Indonesian pigs since 2005. It has so far developed the capability of binding to protein in the noses of both pigs and humans.
Maybe we will get lucky again, and by the time the H5N1virus overcomes its transmission problem, it may hopefully have lost the virulence that gave it its 60% mortality rates.
If not, if it gives us another 1918 epidemic, at least we will have someone to blame - the free market fundamentalists.
How so?
Well, take a look here, at this WHO table of human deaths from H5N1.
Compare Indonesia and Vietnam.
Vietnam had a bad problem - the worst in the world - until 2005. Then they cracked it, and Indonesia took over as the main country of infection. The Vietnamese cases since 2005 were mainly from contamination from Indonesia.
How did Vietnam succeed in clearing the infection? Here's How.
After nearly two years of using mainly culling to control the virus, the Communist government last year adopted a combination of mass poultry vaccination, disinfecting, culling, information campaigns and bans on live poultry in cities.
Any rational world health organisation would have tried to replicate Vietnam's success in Indonesia. They did not.
Hans Troedsson, the UN's World Health Organisation representative in Vietnam, said the plan was "technically sound" but could not be copied or used as a blueprint by every country.
The cause of this irrationality, in my opinion, boils down to ideology. Vietnam's solution was deemed socialistic by some influential person within the WHO. Indonesia's sacred free market must not be contaminated with socialism. Instead, it remained contaminated with H5N1, which has passed into the pigs, and may pass thence to us, which may or may not have important consequences for human population numbers.
I am being very careful to remain scientific and objective here.
There is a remedy. Control the Indonesian outbreak with the Vietnamese model. Test all Indonesian pigs for H5N1 and slaughter out all the carriers. It's going to be expensive, far more expensive than applying the Vietnamese solution to the birds, but hey - that's the free market!
I write to you regarding the fresh investigation by the New York Times into illegal phone hacking at the News of the World under the editorship of Andy Coulson.
Andy Coulson and Les Hinton assured the DCMS Select Committee last year that they had no knowledge of phone hacking, which they have always insisted was the isolated action of rogue reporters.
The New York Times investigation, however, found that “the litigation (between victims of phone hacking and News International) is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do. In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.”
The New York Times also suggests direct police collusion with a commercial media organisation, an investigator alleging that a Metropolitan Police press officer attempted to suppress investigation in order to protect the police’s “long-term relationship with News International”.
Please can you confirm that the Independent Police Complaints Commission will investigate this serious allegation from a highly reputable source without delay.
What is more, according to the NYT, “Scotland Yard officials consulted with the Crown Prosecution Service on how broadly to investigate. But the officials didn’t discuss certain evidence with senior prosecutors, including the notes suggesting the involvement of other reporters, according to a senior prosecutor on the case. The prosecutor was stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything. “I would have said we need to see how far this goes” and “whether we have a serious problem of criminality on this news desk,” said the former prosecutor, who declined to speak on the record.
That a Crown prosecutor should go so far – even off the record - as to speculate that the police had not shared everything is remarkable. Even lawyers representing hacking victims have always worked on the assumption that the prosecutors had at least seen everything.
Whereas the testimony given to the NYT is that the police did not share all the relevant information with the CPS. And that if they had done, the CPS would have reached different conclusions.
These are clear grounds for a judicial enquiry. Please can you confirm your intention to recommend one.
I know that you will share the widespread distaste for these disdainful and arrogant assaults on our democracy, and will want to see those responsible brought to criminal justice.
When those in the media who boast of defending our freedoms are in fact subverting them, people will expect their Prime Minister, and Deputy Prime Minister, to be on the side of truth.
Yours &c.,
Andy Coulson and Les Hinton assured the DCMS Select Committee last year that they had no knowledge of phone hacking, which they have always insisted was the isolated action of rogue reporters.
The New York Times investigation, however, found that “the litigation (between victims of phone hacking and News International) is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do. In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.”
The New York Times also suggests direct police collusion with a commercial media organisation, an investigator alleging that a Metropolitan Police press officer attempted to suppress investigation in order to protect the police’s “long-term relationship with News International”.
Please can you confirm that the Independent Police Complaints Commission will investigate this serious allegation from a highly reputable source without delay.
What is more, according to the NYT, “Scotland Yard officials consulted with the Crown Prosecution Service on how broadly to investigate. But the officials didn’t discuss certain evidence with senior prosecutors, including the notes suggesting the involvement of other reporters, according to a senior prosecutor on the case. The prosecutor was stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything. “I would have said we need to see how far this goes” and “whether we have a serious problem of criminality on this news desk,” said the former prosecutor, who declined to speak on the record.
That a Crown prosecutor should go so far – even off the record - as to speculate that the police had not shared everything is remarkable. Even lawyers representing hacking victims have always worked on the assumption that the prosecutors had at least seen everything.
Whereas the testimony given to the NYT is that the police did not share all the relevant information with the CPS. And that if they had done, the CPS would have reached different conclusions.
These are clear grounds for a judicial enquiry. Please can you confirm your intention to recommend one.
I know that you will share the widespread distaste for these disdainful and arrogant assaults on our democracy, and will want to see those responsible brought to criminal justice.
When those in the media who boast of defending our freedoms are in fact subverting them, people will expect their Prime Minister, and Deputy Prime Minister, to be on the side of truth.
Yours &c.,
