Victoria Sponge

On a documentary I watched recently, we are at a great risk of pandemic. (Yes, I know documentaries are largely for entertainment and are obviously exaggerated). But I scare easily. I don't fall for propaganda easily, but this kind of scared me a little.

Are we really at risk of pandemic? I've seen all the cheesy films about modern plague, and 28 Days Later was pretty horrific, but really, I can't believe that with all these threats from wars and disasters and terrorism (okay there is a little OTT publicity about terrorism but lets face it, it could happen, even if it's not as likely as the media makes out), scientists can openly say that pandemic is the biggest thread to society right now?

Also, another thing that creeps me out is AIDS. Thats a killer, and it's hardly contained. So it brings it home even more that pandemic isn't so unbelievable? I don't know. Can someone pat me on the back and reassure me here? I'm starting to have nightmares, (last night for some reason I dreamt I was in Florida but everyone was dead, and I live in UK so that's kind of scary) and I find out I'm alone and everyone else is dead! Happy happy happy. I wish I was a kid again with easy fears like ghosts and being teased.

Roland98

We're always at risk for a pandemic, and there are new infectious diseases that we're discovering on a routine basis. But, this has always been the case. Yes, now that we have practically instant global travel, new diseases can spread faster and into new populations. But again, this is something that happens on a fairly regular basis, and the result is usually a dead-end, infection-wise.

I'm not sure exactly how it works in the UK with your health system, but here in the US anyway, if you're worried, encourage your congressmen and local officials to allocate more funding to public health and basic science research. Staffing at most public health departments has been reduced in recent years, even as we were hit in the U.S. with a bioterrorism attack. Public health is generally our first line of defense; when this breaks down, bad things are able to happen. Otherwise, just do your part to reduce disease transmission; wash your hands frequently, don't sneeze and cough all over people, and if you're prescribed antibiotics, finish them off. Stastically, you're much, much more likely to die in a car crash than due to any kind of pandemic disease; so while infection is something that concerns me as well (so much so that studying it is what I do for a living), I'm also realistic enough to know that the odds of my dying from something like that are fairly small. So don't panic (and above all, don't dream of Florida! )

paradigm9

screw the exotic viruses like ebola, lassa and junin....it's the flu you have to watch out for. another hit like 1918 and yes we could be in for one hell of a pandemic considering globalization and ease of travel between continents.

when i worked with SIV challenged monkeys in BSL3+ we werent worried too much about ebola, but goddamn that herpes b scared the shit out of me. it's always the ones that no one has heard of that are really freakin nasty. and most monkeys are b virus positive...icky, turns your brains to goo in ~48 hours.

actually i recind my first claim...ebola reston was damn scary. an airborne ebola....that sucks

we dodged a bullet on that one since it didnt cause disease in humans.

Plognark

Well, the good thing about those flesh eating diseases is that they tend to kill off their own hosts rather quickly and don't spread all that fast.

Unless the original host who's not negatively impacted by it gets around a lot... :devil1:

Loren Pechtel

Imagine what would have happened had SARS made it into Africa. It wouldn't have been a pandemic as it would have been mostly confined to Africa but the rest of the world would pretty much have had to sit back and let it burn itself out. We got lucky that it didn't make it into any of the areas of the world with poor medical systems but next time we might not be so lucky.

Prester John

Influenza is the scary one as has been mentioned.

In the UK the Health Protection Agency is responsible for coordinating disease prevention and control.

http://www.hpa.org.uk/infections/default.htm

It has all been reorganised in the last couple of years.

Victoria Sponge

Yes, 'flu' really does scare me. And hardly anyone takes the vaccine available because it sometimes gives you quite a bad case of it as well as the fact that it doesn't cover all forms of the virus.
Another thing about that which depresses me is the amount of old folks who die from flu and cold each year at winter over in the UK. That scares me.

I really do dread to think what would happen if SARS went into Africa. Like I said about that film 28 Days Later, when the rest of the world just breaks contact with the UK putting the whole thing into quarantine. I don't think I could cope with that kind of disaster happening in the world.

Well, I think maybe I should stop reading the Medical Encyclopedia for fun...

Roland98

Again, I'm not sure what you're dealing with there in the UK, but here in the US the most common vaccine is a killed virus--it can't give you influenza. The FluMist is a live attenuated vaccine, but it's fairly new and not as widely used as the shots. Additionally, no, it doesn't cover "all forms" of the virus, but the vaccine is designed to what they believe will be the most common strains circulating the following winter. They generally do a good job, but of course it's an inexact science. And generally even if it's not a 100% match, the vaccine will still provide some cross-protection against the viruses.

Plognark

THis actually happened in the US last winter, IIRC....the main strain that went blazing across the country was a new variant that wasn't covered in the vaccinations that people were given.

Oh, and the whole getting the flu from the flu shot myth? it's because people often get a cold at around the same time, it being cold AND flu season, and without thinking automatically associate it with the shot

The shot does nothing to prevent the common cold.

Roland98

Yep. The Fujian strain (which ended up being the main one isolated from cases) was a drift variant of the one included in the vaccine last year (A/Panama/2007/99). But as I mentioned, the outbreak wasn't as bad as predicted, likely due to both natural immunity and to cross-protection from the vaccine strain. When influenza viruses "drift" in sequence, it's generally only a divergence at a few nucleotides or amino acids; what's worrisome is an antigenic shift, in which different influenza viruses recombine to form a new variant, from which the population at large may be vulnerable to infection if there isn't enough pre-existing immunity.