Public Health: Disease, Epidemic & Pandemic Threat (merged thread)

[AdamG]

It’s estimated around 700,000 people die each year because of drug-resistant infections.
The UN Secretary General calls it a “fundamental threat” to global health and security. And a special meeting of the UN General Assembly was recently held to address the issue.
On current trends, the death-toll is expected to rise to around 10 million per year by 2050 unless more is done.#
So how prepared are we for future pandemics? And what measures are being undertaken to ensure we win what Mark Balskovich from the Centre for Superbug Solutions calls an “arms race” with bacteria?

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/...ndemic/7959344

What should companies do to protect its workers and the surrounding community from a pandemic? NIOSH's Lisa Delaney spoke to 2016 National Safety Congress attendees about emergency preparedness.

http://ehstoday.com/health/nsc-2016-...ou-be-prepared

[AdamG]

They are called superspreaders, the minority of people who are responsible for infecting many others during epidemics of infectious diseases. Perhaps the most famous superspreader was Typhoid Mary, presumed to have infected 51 people, three of whom died, between 1900 and 1907.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.27e12c5295da

Applicable advice -> https://youtu.be/vtSmfws0_To

[AdamG]

Tourists with more discretionary income and hubris than brains. Yay.

"Visiting beautiful places like this inspires people to protect tropical ecosystems and the species that live here," Olival says. "At the same time, we need to recognize that there may be potential health risks when people and wildlife come together, and that's why we're working to understand and limit those risks."

"We found 48 new viruses in the surrounding forest," Olival says, "including a virus related to SARS in bats that roost in the cave."

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsand...g-on-your-head

[AdamG]

(CNN)Experts say we are "due" for one. When it happens, they tell us,#it will probably have a greater impact on humanity than anything else currently happening in the world.

And yet, like with most people, it is probably something you haven't spent much time thinking about. After all, it is human nature to avoid being consumed by hypotheticals until they are staring us squarely in the face.
Such is the case with a highly lethal flu pandemic. And when it comes, it will affect every human alive today.

Pandemic flu is apolitical and does not discriminate between rich and poor. Geographical boundaries are meaningless, and it can circle the globe within hours. In terms of potential impact on mankind, the only thing that comes close is climate change. And, like climate change, pandemic flu is so vast, it can be challenging to wrap your head around it.

- Dr Sanjay Gupta
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/07/health...-sanjay-gupta/

[davidbfpo]

Five threads have been merged today, following a review before posting the next article. The thread title has been amended to add Epidemic.

[davidbfpo]

Via The Conversation, an academic site, I found this article; which starts with:

During the fallout from the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people, one of the questions asked of the World Health Organisation (WHO) was why it hadn’t reacted more quickly. The four-month delay in pinning down the cause of the disease that erupted in Guinea’s remote Guéckédou province in December 2013 allowed what might have been a localised event in a single village to turn into the biggest infectious disease crisis of recent times....Ebola was not a West African disease. So why would anybody suspect it had broken out there?

Link:https://theconversation.com/africas-...tbreaks-80301?

[AdamG]

In the past few years, there have been so many "superbugs" appearing in hospitals around the world that we here at Goats and Soda haven't had the time or resources to report on all of them.
But a new type of pneumonia emerging in China seems so important that we dropped what we were doing to write about it.
Doctors in Hangzhou in southeastern China have detected a a type of pneumonia that is both highly drug-resistant and very deadly. It also spreads easily.
The bacterium — a type of Klebsiella pneumoniae — killed five people in an intensive care unit in Hangzhou in 2016, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsand...and-contagious

Thinking music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPnc_RKjd-U

[AdamG]

National Public Radio (US thing) is galvanizing a citizen militia to track this season's flu.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segmen...and-in-health/

[AdamG]

“Influenza pandemics are like earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis: they occur, and some are much worse than others,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “The idea that we would not have another 1918-like event is foolish.”

But when that will happen, he continues, is impossible to predict: “For all we know, it could be starting as we speak.” It’s also impossible to predict exactly how things will play out when a Spanish flu-like strain does reemerge – but we can make some educated guesses.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2018...roke-out-today

[AdamG]

Attacks by armed groups happen on a daily basis across Congo's North Kivu province, where the Ebola virus has been spreading since August, infecting almost 500 people and killing more than 270. It is now the second-biggest outbreak ever, after the vast epidemic that swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016.

The constant insecurity in North Kivu has proved an enormous obstacle, thwarting attempts to the contain the virus. By WHO's estimate, the outbreak will go on for at least another six months.

This is the first Ebola outbreak during which health workers have had to regularly don bulletproof helmets and vests. To reach at least 20 percent of Ebola-affected areas, health workers need armed police or U.N. escorts, said Michel Yao, WHO's response coordinator in Beni.

The U.S. government withdrew its only personnel in the region in late August and has no plans to redeploy them. The WHO has 300 specialists from around the world in North Kivu. Those on the ground describe a chaotic effort to either negotiate with or simply avoid the region's various militias.

"It turns into a cat-and-mouse game - we are the mouse trying to evade the armed groups," said Anoko, who is from Cameroon. But Anoko, whose job entails conducting extensive interviews with locals, cautioned against the assumption that health workers are being targeted for their work. "There's been decades of war, it cannot be so simply understood," she said.

https://www.lmtonline.com/news/artic...n-13449195.php

[AdamG]

Interesting collection of observations

1. http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/...stics.html?m=1

2. http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/...tions.html?m=1

3. http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/...ng-to.html?m=1

4. http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/...tmare.html?m=1

[AdamG]

LAST SPRING, AS it does every year, the World Health Organization released a list of infectious diseases that its experts think are especially high-risk—ones that could blow up into epidemics and for which there are no treatments or vaccines.

The list has been created every year since 2014, when the Ebola epidemic in West Africa took the world by surprise. This year’s specimen included the pathogens that public health people consider the usual deadly suspects: Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers, MERS and SARS, and mosquito-borne Zika and Rift Valley Fever. But there was also a novel entry: Disease X.

“Disease X” doesn’t actually exist. The WHO wasn’t warning against a specific pathogen; it was reminding public health and medicine how important it is to be ready for any new illness—especially since existing tests and might not be precise enough to detect a new disease that has epidemic potential, and treatments may not be potent enough to stop it.

In the four years that the list has been published, no emerging infection has been serious enough to rise to the level of Disease X: a pathogen that could sweep the world before science catches up. But a new syndrome, acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, is providing the first proof of the need for that warning. As perplexing to diagnose as it is to treat, AFM is demonstrating how difficult it can be to understand and predict any new disease. And the challenge of tracking an uncommon illness is giving us a glimpse of how our surveillance systems will struggle to counter the world-spanning epidemic that Disease X may turn out to be.

https://www.wired.com/story/new-dise...obal-epidemic/

[AdamG]

Century After the 1918 Flu Pandemic: Why Are We Still Concerned Today?
Source: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Health and Medicine Division (HMD)
Date Published: 11/26/2018
Format: Video or Multimedia
Annotation: A century after the 1918 flu pandemic wiped out more than 50 million people worldwide, this event from the National Academy of Medicine and the Forum on Microbial Threats discusses how to prepare for the next flu pandemic and prevent a global catastrophe. Speakers highlight progress in science, public health, global governance, and cross-sectoral alliances for pandemic flu preparedness. [less]
URL: https://nam.edu/event/a-century-afte...ncerned-today/
Authors: Dzau, Victor; Fukada, Keiji; Garrett, Laurie; Fauci, Anthony S.; Fidler, David P.; et al.
Type: Conference/Meeting Material
Access Notes: Link to nine videos from the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeF-...2d8-lq&index=1