Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, July 25, 2008
Don’t wait for a pandemic
According to biologists and epidemiologists, a bird flu pandemic is a certainty. A look at the recent www.dailykos.com article will educate skeptics. A look at www.pandemicflu.gov will do the same.
My concern is: What is La Crosse doing about preparing for it? I know there have been some preparations, but what are they? Is there a vaccine for everyone?
There are vaccines in production but they are for the current form of the current H5N1 virus, which will not be the mutated form that will spread human to human. Of the 385 humans who have caught the virus, from infected bird droppings, about 63 percent, 243, have died. Those odds, if the eventual human to human variety is as powerful, are terrifying.
I propose the following: our city leaders should educate themselves on the pandemic subject now, not later. And they should then immediately explore the new vaccine technology of Novavax, Inc. Novavax will produce the strain-appropriate vaccine through its innovative virus-like-particle technology once the new strain comes into existence. Their non-egg manufacturing method is being championed by a partnership with General Electric Healthcare Inc.
Here’s the point. For only $5 million dollars, the Novavax/General Electric people will supply La Crosse (any buyer) with a plant and technology to quickly produce up to 10 million doses of the vaccine, once Novavax has the new strain.
We can’t sit around and wait. With three pandemics worldwide per century, we are overdue.
All stories copyright 2000 - 2006 La Crosse Tribune and other attributed sources.