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Medical Forum / General / General / September 2005World has slim chance to stop flu pandemic: epidemiology
Why aren't countries closing down their borders to stop the spread of this possible disease, at least until it is under control, or everybody has a vaccine? Tired of just reading about it, don't like it, seems more should be happening to prevent this possible pandemic. F > Why aren't countries closing down their borders to stop the spread > of this possible disease, at least until it is under control, or [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > F What country has ever shut down its borders completely? Can you identify one country that could do it successfully (no one going in or out)? Perhaps you should call your local airport and ask them why they don't shut down completely. > > Why aren't countries closing down their borders to stop the spread > > of this possible disease, at least until it is under control, or [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > Perhaps you should call your local airport and ask them why they don't shut > down completely. I spoze they'll have to confiscate the tiny little passports of all the migrating birds, too. ;) ...>> Perhaps you should call your local airport and ask them why they don't > shut >> down completely. > > I spoze they'll have to confiscate the tiny little passports of all the > migrating birds, too. ;) LOL (I did try to say something witty along that line... but I couldn't, thanks for coming through) >Why aren't countries closing down their borders to stop the spread >of this possible disease, at least until it is under control, or >everybody has a vaccine? > >Tired of just reading about it, don't like it, seems more should be >happening to prevent this possible pandemic. For how many decades do you suppose the world should shutter itself into a bunch of little kingdoms, all of them in economic depression, in order to avoid one little virus that will probably find them anyway? What should be happening is whenever there is a country, region, experiencing human death by transmission of an identifiable virus, that country should shut down and correct its problem, not so much for the civilized countries but for their own sake, and for the other countries that may not have the resources to cope and stop this problem before it's too late. This is going on two years now, spreading all over Asia, and all you ever read is "people can't do anything to stop this; just a matter of time; can't be stopped." This may happen, may not happen, I just don't like thinking that not enough is being done to have this not happen. And yeah, putting people out of work, for awhile never good, so what. >What should be happening is whenever there is a country, region, >experiencing [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] >happen. And yeah, putting people out of work, for awhile never good, so >what. The problem with highly-contagious diseases like influenza is they're usually widely dispersed in the community before an outbreak is even recognized. At that point, closing borders is almost certainly futile because enough infected people have already traveled abroad to ensure the disease's spread to other countries. Even in 1918 with the limited travel available then, influenza popped up almost simultaneously in far flung places. By the time anyone realized how wide-spread it was, it was far too late to stop it. Now imagine the same scenario today when you can cross the Atlantic in hours rather than a week and millions of people travel abroad daily. And closing borders results in a lot more than people being out of work for a while. You're talking about halting all import/export, which in many cases would mean disastrous food and fuel shortages, and even economic collapse if the stoppage went on too long. Look at Japan, for example, which imports a large percentage of its food. Is starving to death better than dying of influenza? Not in my book it's not. The solution is vaccination, not isolation. At this point, the way I understand it from reading news reports, is that disease is only common with animal/birds that are kept in captivity/farms, with some cases of it being found in migratory birds. And as of the passed two years, the disease has been passed from infected bird to human but not yet from human to human. There might be a possibilty that it is also being spread from human to bird, considering how fast it spread all over Asia. Seems as long as there is a reservoir for this disease to spread, multiply, and live, there will be more opportunities for it to mutate and adapt to another enviroment, us. (You're talking about halting all import/export, which in many cases would mean disastrous food and fuel shortages, and even economic collapse if the stoppage went on too long.) I'm talking about shutting down countries for awhile until they can eradicate or control the reservior, if that takes acouple of months, then its going to take acouple of months, but it should take that long, maybe only a week or so. No one is going to starve. F Per bmutun: >At this point, the way I understand it from reading news reports, is >that disease is only common with animal/birds that are kept in >captivity/farms, with some cases of it being found in migratory birds. >And as of the passed two years, the disease has been passed from >infected bird to human but not yet from human to human. All true... but the guy I saw interviewed on PBS (who seemed to have some cred...) said something to the effect of "It's not a matter of *if* the virus will mutate to a human-to-human-transmittable form, only *when*."  SignaturePeteCresswell >I'm talking about shutting down countries for awhile until they can >eradicate or control the reservior, if that takes acouple of months, >then its going to take acouple of months, but it should take that long, >maybe only a week or so. No one is going to starve. I recommend that you read more on the history of influenza and how modern economies work. Months of border closures would result in devastating economic damage to almost any country, and it will be far longer than a "week or so" before an influenza epidemic burns itself out, even just on a local scale. And you conveniently ignored my point that closing the borders would be ineffectual in stopping influenza in the first place, which renders your entire (antiquated) idea rather moot. Yes, there are situations where isolation will truly stop the spread of disease and halt an epidemic in the making. This just doesn't happen to be one of them. |
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