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

[AdamG]

Virologists will attempt to identify every virus in the world that has the potential to jump from animals to humans, in the hope that collecting such information with give health workers a head start in dealing with a future outbreak.

Scientists believe the ambitious 'virus hunter' project will not only find and - hopefully neutralise - 'disease X' before it strikes but also unearth viruses 'Y' and 'Z' . Others, however, remain unconvinced the approach is a good use of funds.

Most of the big disease outbreaks of the last 100 years have originated in animals – from Ebola which came from bats to HIV that came from chimps to the 1918 Spanish Flu which jumped from birds to humans.

Now scientists have set up the Global Virome Project, with backing from USAID, which has the ambitious target of identifying all the viruses in the world that could one day jump from animals to humans.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...iseases-x-y-z/

[AdamG]

A PATHOGEN THAT resists almost all of the drugs developed to treat or kill it is moving rapidly across the world, and public health experts are stymied how to stop it.

By now, that’s a familiar scenario, the central narrative in the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But this particular pathogen isn’t a bacterium. It’s a yeast, a new variety of an organism so common that it’s used as one of the basic tools of lab science, transformed into an infection so disturbing that one lead researcher called it “more infectious than Ebola” at an international conference last week.

The name of the yeast is Candida auris. It’s been on the radar of epidemiologists only since 2009, but it’s grown into a potent microbial threat, found in 27 countries thus far. Science can’t yet say where it came from or how to control its spread, and hospitals are being forced back into old hygiene practices—putting patients into isolation, swabbing rooms with bleach—to try to control it.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-stra...uperbug-yeast/

[AdamG]

CDC Main Page for Candida auris
https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/candida-auris/index.html

[AdamG]

For over a year, the Chinese government has withheld lab samples of a rapidly evolving influenza virus from the United States — specimens needed to develop vaccines and treatments, according to federal health officials. Despite persistent requests from government officials and research institutions, China has not provided samples of the dangerous virus, a type of bird flu called H7N9. In the past, such exchanges have been mostly routine under rules established by the World Health Organization. Now, as the United States and China spar over trade, some scientists worry that the vital exchange of medical supplies and information could slow, hampering preparedness for the next biological threat.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world...rus/ar-BBMwyrr

[AdamG]

Food for thought, Ebola wise.
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/...on-coming.html

[AdamG]

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza (flu) pandemic that swept the globe in what is still one of the deadliest disease outbreaks in recorded history.

In September 1918, the second wave of pandemic flu emerged at Camp Devens, a U.S. Army training camp just outside of Boston, and at a naval facility in Boston. This wave was brutal and peaked in the U.S. from September through November. More than 100,000 Americans died during October alone. The third and final wave began in early 1919 and ran through spring, causing yet more illness and death. While serious, this wave was not as lethal as the second wave. The flu pandemic in the U.S. finally subsided in the summer of 1919, leaving decimated families and communities to pick up the pieces. Scientists now know this pandemic was caused by an H1N1 virus, which continued to circulate as a seasonal virus worldwide for the next 38 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/features/1918-fl...mic/index.html

[AdamG]

In the summer of 1918, as the Great War raged and American doughboys fell on Europe’s killing fields, the City of Brotherly Love organized a grand spectacle. To bolster morale and support the war effort, a procession for the ages brought together marching bands, Boy Scouts, women’s auxiliaries, and uniformed troops to promote Liberty Loans –government bonds issued to pay for the war. The day would be capped off with a concert led by the “March King” himself –John Philip Sousa.

Within 72 hours of the parade, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hospitals was filled. In the week ending October 5, some 2,600 people in Philadelphia had died from the flu or its complications. A week later, that number rose to more than 4,500. With many of the city’s health professionals pressed into military service, Philadelphia was unprepared for this deluge of death.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...flu-180970372/