Re: H5N1 affects the under 40's?

On Feb 13, 4:26 pm, "Jill" <m...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Older people may be immune to bird fluhttp://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhealth/story.html?id=f9f769e0-b18...
Helen Branswell, Canadian Press
Published: Monday, February 12, 2007
Nearly 90 per cent of the people who've been diagnosed so far with H5N1
avian flu were under age 40, a new analysis from the World Health
Organization shows.
And two British scientists suggest that as yet unexplained phenomenon could
be a clue that widespread immunity to infection with this virus may exist in
people aged 35 and older.
In a letter to the March issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases,
Matthew Smallman-Raynor of the University of Nottingham and Andrew Cliff of
the University of Cambridge note that the age distribution of H5N1 human
cases is "consistent with a biological model of geographically widespread
immunity to avian influenza A (H5N1) in persons born before 1969."
"Such a model would account for the similar rates of disease activity in
younger age categories, the sudden and pronounced reduction of cases in
patients over 30-35 years of age, and the age skew that transcends the
sociocultural and demographic contexts of countries and continents," wrote
Smallman-Raylor and Cliff, who teach analytical and theoretical geography
respectively.
It is not known why H5N1 seems to prefer the young and rarely infects the
elderly, the age group hardest hit by seasonal flu.
Suggested theories have included that children and young people may have
closer exposure to poultry in countries where outbreaks are occurring.
Another possibility could be that older people are actually being infected
but suffer such mild illness that they don't come to the attention of health
authorities. The few studies that have looked for mildly symptomatic or
asymptomatic cases don't support this idea, but experts believe larger
studies need to be done before it could be ruled out.
The two British scientists looked at ages of reported cases and compared
them to population figures for countries reporting human infections, looking
to see if the demographic compositions of those countries provide some
clues.
Their analysis showed that the imbalanced distribution of cases is seen in
both genders, throughout the duration of the ongoing H5N1 outbreak (which
began in late 2003) and across all countries which have had enough human
cases so that statistics could be crunched.
That suggests that the trend probably isn't due to local cultural or
geographic factors, argued Smallman-Raynor and Cliff, who said the idea
needs further study.
"If an element of immunity to avian influenza A (H5N1) does exist in older
populations, its possible association with geographically widespread
(intercontinental) influenza A events before the late 1960s merits further
investigation," they said.
The WHO analysis, published in the agency's online journal the Weekly
Epidemiological Review, also argues that the higher proportion of cases in
younger age groups probably isn't just due to the fact that young people
make up a big part of the age structures of affected countries.
The report, which covers the 256 laboratory confirmed cases that occurred
between Nov. 25, 2003 and Nov. 24, 2006, showed that the median age of cases
was 18 years old.
Fifty-two per cent of cases were younger than 20 years old and 89 per cent
were under age 40. Men and women made up virtually an equal number of cases.
The death rate was highest among cases aged 10 to 19; 76 per cent of cases
in that group died. Cases aged 50 and over had the lowest death rate (40 per
cent) followed by children under age five (44 per cent) and children aged
five to nine (49 per cent).
The total case fatality rate was 60 per cent.
Cases have increased over time, the unnamed authors reported, with the cases
in the second year of the three-year period twice as high as those recorded
in the first year. From year 2 to year 3, the number of cases rose by about
25 per cent.
A graph of cases showed that while there are definitely seasonal peaks and
troughs in human infections, there have been cases recorded every month
since November 2004.

Dear Jill....Well, then I'm safe. Never was worried, because its been
anothr British bull-shit propaganda issue for how many years now?

The latest on Bernard Matthews is that they processed their own cull.

Now that's gall. By virtue of market control of the commodity, ie,
processed turkey, BM apparently decided to call in the dogs to help
them cull their own turkeys to process in their own processing plant
to move the product on out to an essentially unaware public, but with
the blessings of someone at Weybridge who said they were infected with
H5N1, then when the job's been done, BM gets a double .....paid for
compensation for destruction, then sells its own processing add-ons,
to some other gullible turkey-eater in Europe.

Oh, well, I don't have BM's kind of cash flow, contacts or influence,
nor income.

Ask yourself this question, Jill. How many documented lorry loads of
BM destroyed turkeys were delivered to Pointon's Rendering?

Show me that documentation, and I might buy what you are saying.

For now, I don't buy it.

Burkie in Kansas



















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