If you know me in person, you’re probably already aware of my slight obsession with avian flu. I think it’s one of the most important public health crises facing the planet right now, and no amount of media coverage is too much. It was in consistently in the headlines earlier this year, but the story has lost a little steam due to other events like the election cycle and, well, because people aren’t dying yet.
Yesterday, the Daily ran an article, by Arikia Millikan, discussing the steps the University is taking to prepare for a possible pandemic. Because large universities like Michigan create such a large, relatively self-contained community, it’s absolutely critical for a detailed plan to be in place. And as students, we should be as educated as possible about the risks of a pandemic and what to do if one happens. Living in close quarters that may or may not be sanitary, a highly infectious virus would spread like wildfire among college students.
Unfortunately, the Daily article is a little misleading from the beginning:
Years ago, Dean of Students Sue Eklund took an emergency resuscitation class where she learned the Heimlich maneuver and CPR.Maybe she’d never use those skills, she thought at the time, but maybe they’d save a life.
With the threat of an avian influenza pandemic growing as birds migrate south for the winter, every University department is making preparations that could potentially save your life.
Eklund’s sentiments on her CPR skills echo those of administrators involved in the efforts to prepare for an influenza pandemic: You never want to have to use it, but it’s good to know.
While I hate to downplay the threat of an avian flu pandemic, to suggest that the University is at greater risk during a migratory period is simply not true. Currently, there are no confirmed cases of the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 among wild birds in North America. Researchers have found isolated samples of H5N1 in birds in Pennsylvania, but it a different strain than the one ravaging Asian and European bird populations. Additionally, even if there were infected birds in North America, the risk of a pandemic would be increased only marginally during migration. Although there have been several hundred cases of H5N1 in humans, most in Southeast Asia, the virus cannot be transmitted from human to human. Before that can happen, the virus has to undergo a mutation. The threat of mutation is very real indeed, but until it happens, a pandemic is impossible. So increased human contact with infected birds during migration could potentially lead to more cases of avian flu in humans, the risk of a pandemic would increase only by the amount that the likelihood of a mutation increases.
And in today’s age of widespread international travel, the geographic location of an outbreak is almost irrelevant. If not contained immediately, it would spread across the globe immediately, especially to international communities like Ann Arbor. Millikan also offers some scary, but not entirely true facts about the virus.
According to Terry Alexander, executive director of the University’s Occupational Safety and Environmental Health department, the current H5N1 virus has the potential to be even more lethal than the 1918 Spanish strain. Where the 1918 influenza virus killed only 4 to 8 percent of those infected, he said, the current avian flu strain has a mortality rate of about 50 percent.
Still, Alexander doesn’t expect casualties on the level of the 1918 flu.“Since then, there’s been a huge amount of progress in medical technology,” he said. “Perhaps we will have the tools to fight this disease.”
While the mortality rate of 50% is true, there is broad consensus among experts that the mortality rate of a human H5N1 virus would be dramatically lower (but still significant). Because we don’t have truly effective ways of fighting the flu once a person is infected, casualties would have to be controlled by public health measures and emergency management, not modern medical technology.
But what really concerns me about the article is not its accuracy. It’s the apparent absence of any University plans to educate students about what to do in the event of a pandemic. Students need to know specific ways to prevent virus transmission. They need to know how to obtain emergency medical supplies. They need to know how to cope with a sick roommate. An emergency management plan can only be effective if the people being managed are informed.
Today’s New York Times has a column with an answer (my apologies if you’re not a TimesSelect member): buy surgical masks. Lots and lots of them, and give them away if and when a pandemic strikes.
I’ll be the first to admit that my closet is full of clothes instead of a three month supply of respirator, water bottles, and non-perishable food, but it doesn’t hurt to have this stuff in mind, right?
- Zach Shoup
I appreciate that you are also interested in avian flu, and I’m glad that you are also writing to inform students about it. You are correct in that a viral mutation would be the worst case scenario, as I addressed in the first article I wrote on the topic. What you are overlooking, however, is that the migratory patterns of birds might play a role in the opportunity for the virus to mutate. It is my understanding that when birds from all over the world migrate for the Winter, birds from America and Asia alike sometimes come into close contact (the world is round). This would provide an opportunity for the H5N1 strain to be spread from Asian to American waterfowl, and for new mutations to occur as the virus was passed through different species. Fortunately, we have not observed this happening yet. Also, in regards to your comment about medical technology, I think I conveyed clearly that the U has emergency medical plans in place, and the importance of these plans. Medical technology surrounding effecient vaccine development is important as well, and would go hand in hand with smooth emergency management.