Where's My Tamiflu?
Fox News, via the AP, is reporting today that the first case of the Avian Flu (or Bird Flu) has been detected on one of the Greek Islands, the first case of Bird Flu to have been confirmed in the EU proper, while over the weekend "tests on birds from Romania confirmed the arrival of bird flu in Europe — two days after it was verified on Europe's doorstep in the Asian part of Turkey."
The Financial Times states that Andrew Natsios, the head of the US Agency for International Development, notes that helping Southeast Asian countries battle and contain the H5N1 virus is "a bigger challenge than rebuilding Iraq," and once you take into consideration the seriousness with which the present administration approaches the rebuilding of Iraq, then you might have a clearer understanding of just how big a problem Bird Flu threatens to be.
The US Senate last month voted to expend $3.9 billion in bird flu funds, most of the funds to go toward developing stockpiles of anti-viral drugs and vaccines. Tamiflu is considered one of the only effective medicines against the H5N1 virus at this time, though Relenza, a powder that's snorted through the nose, may also prove essential. Tamiflu and Relenza don't cure influenza infections, but can reduce the severity of the illness if taken within a 48 hour window of when symptoms begin. They may also help prevent infection if taken early, like, say, when a local or regional outbreak has been announced.
The reason that there are such concerns over the Avian Flu is because influenza viruses are prone to genetic mutations, which is why an annual vaccine has to be reformulated every year. Even with the existence of vaccines, medications and a typical human resistance to the average influenza virus, the flu virus "kills 250,000 people at a minimum globally, in an average season." But our existing seasonal flu vaccines provide no protection against the H5N1 avian flu as H5N1 has not yet adapted itself to human to human transmission, but with more than 60 cases of bird to human transmissions being reported across Southeast Asia, it's only a matter of time. Should the H5N1 virus continue to mutate at its present rate, we could be looking at a repeat of the 1918 H1N1 flu pandemic, which killed millions.
Governments across the world are stocking up on Tamiflu, from South Africa to Saudi Arabia to the UK, the United States, Kenya, Canada, Australia and more, with Brazil, the world's largest poultry exporter, enacting emergency measures to prevent an outbreak of the disease within its borders -- not because of the human risk at this point, but because all poultry infected with the virus must be destroyed, and such a move would cripple Brazil's economy (which exported $2.5 billion dollars of poultry in the first nine months of this year alone). Animal health and trade restrictions, as a result of outbreaks of the Avian Flu in the United States and Southeast Asia, have also slowed the growth of America's own poultry industry, causing a 12% drop in poultry exports in 2004, following similar declines in both 2002 and 2003, with a net result that U.S. poultry exports are down 22% from their 2001 record levels.
The cost of being unprepared for the H5N1 virus, in both human and economic terms, is predicted to be staggering (for the U.S. alone, costs are estimated at between $71.3 billion to $166.5 billion). Global agricultural damages caused by an outbreak of the H5N1 virus could reach into the trillions of dollars as nations are forced to isolate themselves in order to contain outbreaks, effectively shutting down all transnational shipping and trade.
"Since it is impossible to predict when and with what magnitude such a pandemic would hit, the only thing that would be fairly certain is that the market would experience increased volatility until the uncertainty of the situation wore off," said Global Forex Trading chief currency dealer Kurt Hoeksema. And while Michael Ryan, who heads the WHO's endemic and pandemic alert response directorate, is playing down the threat posed by the H5N1 virus, he did add that "the disease would remain a problem for the foreseeable future: 'The disease is highly endemic in many bird populations, (so) we will continue to be at risk for a significant period of time. It's going to be a long and exhausting process.'"