North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?

  • From: Michael.Dillon
  • Date: Wed Apr 19 07:41:03 2006 
> According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average
> mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006,
> and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004.
>                   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1

All of this pandemic planning is *NOT* about the H5N1 virus.
Even though H5N1 kills 66% of the people who get it, there is
nothing to worry about. This is a bird disease and the only
way to catch it is to handle sick birds.

The pandemic planning is about an unknown human flu virus
that will arise at some point in the future. They expect that
the H5N1 bird virus will learn how not to kill its human
hosts by joining forces with a human flu virus. The new
virus will have RNA from both predecessors and *WILL* be
contagious among humans. Like other flu viruses, it will
sweep around the world, and if it inherits the worst parts
of the H5N1 then it will create a dangerous pandemic.

There are still a lot of ifs there.

--Michael Dillon