The Pandemic will be with you Shortly!

Are we ready for the next pandemic?
Influenza is an ever-evolving disease, so the work on prevention, preparedness and response has to adapt continuously to keep up with these changes.

WHO and partners are developing a renewed Global Influenza Strategy to be launched this year. This will support countries in developing seasonal influenza prevention and control capacities. These national efforts, in turn, will build greater global preparedness for the next pandemic. The strategy focuses on three priorities, strengthening pandemic preparedness, expanding seasonal influenza prevention and control and research and innovation. Research and innovation includes improved modelling and forecasting of influenza outbreaks, along with the development of new vaccines, including a possible universal influenza vaccine that would work against all influenza virus strains.

However, developing and distributing a vaccine during a pandemic could take up to a year. This means that non-pharmaceutical measures - the same as those needed to stop seasonal flu - will be critical. Some of these are actions that individuals can take, including staying home when sick and washing hands frequently.

Here is a link to previous Clade X exercise

[link to www.contagionlive.com (secure)]

A simulation designed to pinpoint the challenges in preparedness and current policies that need to be addressed in order to prevent a severe pandemic indicates that the United States is far from ready for a widespread pandemic with a novel pathogen

The Clade X simulation was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in May 2018 as an exercise focused on high-level strategies, decisions, and policies that are needed to prevent a pandemic from spiraling out of control. Previous simulation exercises from the center include the “Dark Winter” simulation in 2001, which portrayed a fictional scenario of a smallpox attack on US citizens, and the “Atlantic Storm” simulation in which smallpox was used as a bioterror weapon.

The 2018 fictional scenario is based upon “Clade X,” a novel virus with genetic elements of the Nipah virus that was genetically engineered as a weapon to diminish the population of the world.

The simulation tasked a group of individuals—the Executive Committee (EXCOMM), which represented members of the President’s National Security Council as well as members with expertise in pandemics—with making decisions on how to handle the outbreak of Clade X, which claims the lives of 20% of individuals it infects. As the virus traveled quickly from person-to-person first in Frankfurt, Germany, and Caracas, Venezuela, before making its way to the United States (see Clade X Timeline), the leaders on the security council had to shift from making decisions concerning foreign diplomacy such as travel, monitoring and quarantining of those exposed, to domestic policies as they attempt to determine how to contain the virus and how to navigate the complex public health relationship between the government and private hospitals.

At the conclusion of the scenario, which was set at 20 weeks since the beginning of the first outbreaks, there was no virus; however, 150 million people were dead across the world, including 15 million US citizens.

Lots of talk and preparations have been made. Global leaders and billionaires like Bill Gates are constantly pushing the agenda. Seems like a ticking time bomb just ready to go off.

The 2011 movie contagion is based on the same Nipa h parainfluenza virus. The volume on these reports are getting louder and louder. With the rise of Artificial intelligence and Automation, the need for the current population will no longer exist as jobs will continue to diminish.

It makes perfect sense for TPTB to release such a virus. Even if that is not the case, nature is constantly evolving new viruses. As populations grow and encroach on natural environments, the chances for spill over of a new yet undetected virus increase.

Connected to this thread perhaps?

Thread: Doom Boner: The Economist Magazine World In 2019: Pitch Black

I know this has been discussed in the past, but it is likely that TPTB are waiting for the right time to launch this thing. Waiting for AI and automation to further evolve..

I believe that time is now.

The next pandemic is always around the corner.....prepare accordingly.

Right as always Nawty.

I know we may share some differences in potential origins of the next pandemic. I am not saying for certain TPTB are planning to unleash this. Just my opinion. But as for pandemics in general, nature can do the job well enough on its own.

We saw a small Nipah outbreak just This year in India. Luckily is was in a remote region and transmission was stopped before it got out of hand. The next time, we may not be so lucky. As I mentioned earlier, as humans begin to encroach further into what used to be wildlife habitats, we increase the chances of encounters with bars in particular, but also other disease carrying animals.

Nipah virus scares me the most out of all that's out there. Right up there with a highly virulent flu strain... It has a fatality rate between 40-75 percent. It is certainly possible for a para influenza outbreak, with Nipa h involved. Pigs are excellent vessels for viruses to evolve and transmit to humans, due to relatively similar respiratory systems as you know. Nipah has shown to easily infect pigs, and as our insatiable need for pork, especially in Asia continues to rise at staggering levels, our interaction with them will also continue to rise. Most research seems to point to bats as the original source of the virus. Typically bats infect pigs either through pigs eating contaminated fruit from bats, or she to sharing close quarters in certain parts of the world.

We already know of a few variants of the virus so far. It seems there is a Malaysian type, and a Bangladesh type as the most common. They seem to vary slightly in symptoms, but the Bangladesh strain is believed to be highly lethal.

[link to www.who-seajph.org]

During 2001-2011, multidisciplinary teams from the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh(icddr,b) identified sporadic cases and 11 outbreaks of Nipah encephalitis. Three outbreaks were detected through sentinel surveillance; others were identified through event-based surveillance. A total of 196 cases of Nipah encephalitis, in outbreaks, clusters and as isolated cases were detected from 20 districts of Bangladesh; out of them 150 (77%) cases died.

More BullShite propaganda to get the sheep to take their poison needle.

77% is extremely high. Because of the fact that Nipah causes respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and sneezing, it can be more easily spread than other highly fatal diseases such as Ebola, which require close contact with bodily fluids directly.

Respiratory viruses like Nipah, cause tiny aerosol particles to fill the air, as well as the potential for fomites, which are very small, but contain the virus. Vomited exist on surfaces such as doorknobs, windows, shopping carts etc. Basically anywhere an infected person touches.


[link to www.who-seajph.org]

Nipah outbreaks in Bangladesh have presented some features distinctly different than the outbreak in Malaysia. In Bangladesh, a higher proportion of Nipah cases suffered from respiratory symptoms than in Malaysia.[4] Also, the case fatality ratio was higher in Bangladesh, which may be related to the lack of access of Bangladeshi cases to intensive care facilities.[4] Like in other diseases caused by paramyxoviruses, such as measles, mumps, respiratory syncytial virus infection, parainfluenza, person-to-person transmission was a common mode of transmission in Bangladeshi Nipah cases, but this mode of transmission was not common in Nipah encephalitis cases in Malaysia. Therefore, future investigations should focus on exploring the reasons for variable presentation and different modes of transmission of Nipah virus in different settings.[16]

Kodiak, I agree with you on the level of vaccines certainly being not nearly as effective for things such as the flu. I also agree that the ingredients and potential for side effects can be pretty terrible.

I do not think this is merely a plan to push for more vaccine creation to profit on the backs of the people only. History, even recent history has demonstrated that certain virus outbreaks can be disruptive and highly deadly. These things do happen. For the reasons listed in posts above, I created this post because it is a true threat. It will happen again, and preparedness is the best option.

I would be weary of a rushed vaccine as well, but there is certainly a chance that it could work, and the risks of the vaccine would be lower than the virus itself. This is not the same as everyone lining up for seasonal flu vaccine. Every year my company does a free flu shot clinic, people come in droves. I do not participate, for a few reasons, and I have not had the flu, barely even a fever in over 30 years. Proper nutrition, supplements, rest, exercise and hygiene go a long, long way.

[link to medicalxpress.com (secure)]

"Nipah virus is different from Ebola in that it more readily affects the lungs and the brain," says Dr. Sharmistha Mishra an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation and an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at St. Michael's Hospital. "While Ebola attacks the organs and shuts down the body in large part due to fluid loss, Nipah can have severe neurological side effects that vary depending on how the body reacts to the virus."

According to the World Health Organization, the Nipah virus is also considered to be an emerging zoonosis – a disease or infection that is naturally transmissible from animals to humans. Infectious disease epidemiologists are still learning about how these viruses move from animal to human, but the growing trend seems to imply that more of these outbreaks are likely to occur in the future. Humans and wildlife are coming into closer contact, through farming or abattoirs, and, in the case of Nipah, human encroachment on forest territory could be another factor in the virus's spread.

"It spread from bats to pigs that were being farmed, and from pigs to their human farmers," says Mishra.

The virus has since continued to resurface, often in India and surrounding regions like Bangladesh. Following a 2004 outbreak in the country, researchers worked to find out more about how the virus was spread from human-to-human.

"Person-to-person transmission in the case of Nipah is largely through respiratory secretions, like saliva and sputum (phlegm),

[link to www.researchgate.net (secure)]

Clinical features After an incubation period of 5 to 14 days, patients present with fever and headache followed by drowsiness, disorientation and mental confusion. It can progress to coma within 24-48 hours. Some patients may have respiratory illness during the early part of infection.17 The symptoms observed in patients during Siliguri outbreak were fever, headache, myalgia, vomiting, altered sensorium, respiratory symptoms (tachycardia to acute respiratory distress) and involuntary movements or convulsions.

Long term squeal includes persistent convulsions and personality changes. Latent infection with subsequent reactivation of Nipah virus and deaths.

I know many of you may have never heard of this virus, or know only a little about it. Yet it poses a very real threat. Our immune systems in most of the world, outside India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore and other countries in that region will likely have no idea what to do with the virus. Not will HCW, the only real treatments available are intensive care, fluifs , etc.

India, Malaysia, Bangladesh are all facing rapid growth, economic development, speedy urbanization associated with massive deforestation, overcrowding of cities, movement of migrant workers all leading to more outbreaks to come. The same goes for most neighboring countries.

[link to med.stanford.edu (secure)]

5 Questions: Luby on virus with potential to cause global pandemic
Stephen Luby discusses risk factors and potential interventions for Nipah virus, a disease with no vaccine and a mortality rate of up to 70 percent.

Q: How might Nipah adapt to more efficient human-to-human transmission and thereby become a global pandemic threat?

Luby: It is conceivable that there is currently a strain of Nipah virus circulating among bats that, if it infected people, would efficiently transmit from person to person. So far, we have not identified such a strain.

Characteristics that might increase the risk of person-to-person transmission would be a virus that has a stronger tendency to move to the respiratory tract in high numbers. It is conceivable that the virus could acquire a mutation that would enhance this capacity. One concern is that anytime a virus infects a human, it is in an environment that selects for survival in that context.

Q: What role, if any, does land conversion have in altering the epidemiology of infectious diseases, including the emergence of novel infections such as Nipah?

Luby: The natural habitat for Nipah-carrying Pteropus bats is tropical forests. As these forests have been converted into agricultural lands, the bats have sought out other sources of food. In Bangladesh, the virus moves from bats to people because the bats are licking fresh date palm sap and so passing their saliva — which occasionally is infected with Nipah virus — on to people who drink the sap. Because of habitat loss, Pteropus bats in Australia are more likely to stay in suburbs where fruit trees are available, and people and horses are nearby. The bats have halted much of their annual migration because of habitat loss.

Q: Why are emerging diseases such as Nipah important to study?

Luby: Emerging infections have resulted in the most devastating infectious diseases that humanity has ever faced. These include HIV, tuberculosis, measles and smallpox. History has taught us that emerging infections can be major threats.

Anyone want to discuss this? There are serious threats out there that you cannot even see. I understand the media's conditioning over blowing reports up to get ratings, for things that went to pass without global threats, may have most of you considering this is just another one of those threads.

Humans live in conditions so densely populated, in every corner of the world. We also in the past 30-40 years ago embarked on factory farming for the worlds insatiable need for meat. Many viruses swap genetic information within animals before jumping to humans. Most of these thankfully do not cause enough change to easily move from human to human. Each time the genetic dice are rolled, the changes could occur. With overpopulation and factory farming existing in nearly every country, the chances of viruses mutating so they can cause a pandemic get higher.

This above scenario does not include the idea that either rogue states of TPTB could unleash a virus deadly enough to cull the useless eaters...

Food for thought to those who may not understand, we often take a short view of history, but nature does not. There will always be viruses trying to gain the advantage over humans.

I see a few low ratings...but few posts. If you want to give me few stars, that's fine. At least give your opinions about the topic. After all this is a forum for discussion...

[link to www.dvidshub.net (secure)]

As flu season approaches, Naval Support Activity (NSA) Naples continues to be mission-ready. Last week, 90 percent of the active duty population received their influenza vaccine during the mass immunization exercise. The week-long drill was meant to simulate a public health crisis that would require rapid inoculation of military personnel.

“In the event of a public health emergency, our team would need to distribute medicine and supplies as quickly as possible. The annual flu vaccine allows us to practice such a scenario,” says Commander Misty Scheel, Director of Public Health. “Our goal is always to maintain a medically-ready force and a ready medical force.”

Similar to how we cannot predict when a pandemic will occur, the arrival of the flu vaccine is also a bit of a moving target,” says Scheel. “The fall season is always busy but if anything that helps us stress our capabilities and practice how we would respond to a real pandemic.”

[link to www.washingtonpost.com (secure)]

The fictional outbreak kept getting worse. It had a 10 percent fatality rate, about the same as the SARS virus that traveled around the world in 2002-2003. Because the virus in the drill was new, no one had previous immunity to it, and it spread quickly in large cities. As it killed more than 100 million people globally, health-care systems collapsed, panic spread, the U.S. stock market crashed, and the president, members of Congress and the Supreme Court were incapacitated.

“We didn’t want to have a Disney ending,” Inglesby said. “We wanted to have a plausible scenario. We did know it would be jarring.”

As panic spread and riots took place, Brooks, the Indiana congresswoman, said: “We have to have someone working on this day in and day out. ... I have advocacy groups lining up and coming in one after another. They want vaccines to be prioritized. ... They do not understand what’s going on.”

The Johns Hopkins pandemic exercise, as some of the audience members noted, took place one week after the top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic left the administration and the global health security team he oversaw was disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton.

By the end of the exercise, failure to develop a vaccine within 20 months had led to 150 million deaths globally, or about 2 percent of the world’s population. Players underscored the need for the United States to “go from bug to drug" faster, said Jim Talent, a former Republican senator from Missouri who played the defense secretary.

Yet another exercise, this time held by World Bank, as well as one from Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

[link to www.washingtonpost.com (secure)]

The government ministers were facing a new infectious disease outbreak. The mysterious virus was sickening and killing people with alarming speed. Some patients had to be placed on ventilators to help them breathe. The new virus seemed resistant to antiviral medicine.

Within a week, officials had closed a major hospital and schools and quarantined thousands of people. Fear and panic spread quickly as people in neighboring countries became infected and died.

That scenario was part of a pandemic simulation held during the World Bank’s annual meeting in Washington this month. It’s not the kind of event that people would typically associate with the World Bank. But it’s the fourth such exercise the bank has helped organize in the past year, reflecting what experts say is the growing awareness outside the traditional global health sector of the increasing threat and economic disruption posed by a global pandemic.e

Discussions during the 90-minute session were off the record. ( WHY???) But in interviews after the event, organizers said the step-by-step scenario made the theoretical possibility seem very real for participants. In particular, it drove home the need for speedy, accurate information-sharing and strong coordination within and across governments and institutions.

The World Bank conducted its first pandemic simulation for finance ministers at its annual meeting last year. In January, the bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted another simulation for chief executives of major companies at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January. In July, they worked with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to conduct a pandemic simulation for health ministers at the G-20 governments meeting, which traditionally focus on finance and economics.

And one more, again all within the past year.

[link to newsroom.unsw.edu.au (secure)]

A hypothetical outbreak of smallpox originating in Fiji was the focus of the scenario. The exercise was designed by Professor Raina MacIntyre from the Kirby Institute who is the head of the Centre for Research Excellence in Integrated Systems for Epidemic Response (ISER), with Associate Professor David Heslop from UNSW Medicine’s School of Public Health and Community Medicine and in conjunction with the Fiji Ministry of Health. The smallpox simulation incorporated lessons from real outbreaks and was based on previous UNSW research, but adapted to Fiji and the Pacific.

“The modelled death rate for smallpox may be as high as 45% if it emerged today,” said Professor MacIntyre. “Even though the world successfully eradicated smallpox in 1980, the disease has been on the radar again since scientists used mail order DNA to create a virus very similar to smallpox in a lab in 2017.

“Smallpox is spread through the air, and is more than twice as infectious as influenza or Ebola. In the case of a biowarfare event, our modelling shows that without a rapid and coordinated response, the epidemic would quickly spiral out of control and become a pandemic.

“There is very little immunity to smallpox in today’s population, so anyone who came into contact with smallpox would need to be vaccinated within three to four days of contact to reduce the risk of serious infection and death,” said Professor MacIntyre. “Our coordinated regional response should start within seven days of identifying the first case to ensure the best possible outcome and early termination of the epidemic.”

This workshop was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Centre for Research Excellence, Integrated Systems for Epidemic Response (ISER), along with Emergent Biosolutions and Bavarian Nordic. It was supported by Global Security PLuS.

It was attended by a number of key representatives from Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Fiji and other Pacific countries.

Keep your head in the sand if you'd like...Just be prepped is all I have to say. And by prepped, I mean ready for a year or more, because that is essentially what you would face.

Pin please lots of info, and a nice break from the left/right paradigm news, many of you are controlled by.

This info is neither, but up there with global war. Hundreds of millions of deaths, economic breakdown, societal breakdown etc. The implications of the next global pandemic are rarely understood. The impact, would be the largest in several hundred of not a few thousand years, given our advances since then.

Just don't get the lack of discussion...

369 views, and two responses...Really people, I don't care if you agree, although there are mountains of exercises and evidence that seem to warrant we are very close.

When the GLP postings go up in the first case reports caused by a novel virus, it will be too late. We just entered into the beginning of the flu season. When in flu season, it will be very difficult to weed out the "seasonal flu" from something novel and much more deadly.

[link to jamanetwork.com (secure)]

September 28, 2018
Vulnerability to Pandemic Flu Could Be Greater Today Than a Century Ago

JAMA:Since the 1918 pandemic that killed millions of people we've had vaccine development, sanitation, and less crowded living conditions in some parts of the world. Do these improvements mean that we can avoid another pandemic like the one in 1918?

Dr Osterholm:Let's be clear that we don't understand why influenza pandemics do what they do—why are some much more severe than others? What is it that we can do about those pandemics in terms of both prevention and treatment? I would say that we are much more vulnerable today to a catastrophic influenza pandemic than we were in 1918. That may seem counterintuitive, but today there are about 7.6 billion people on Earth, more than 3 times the population in 1918. When we talk about less crowded living conditions today, that is true for part of the world. But for the vast majority of the world it's worse. In the slums of low- and middle-income countries today, the population far exceeds what it was in 1918.


Finally, we are extremely vulnerable today to any disruption in international trade in lifesaving medicines and medical devices. Look no further than what happened last fall when a Category 5 hurricane hit Puerto Rico, an island where about 80% of IV (intravenous) bag manufacturing
worldwide was concentrated. When that electrical grid system went down, we saw overnight a major shortage of IV bags around the world. Today the vast majority of drugs that we use in this country come from China. Even those that are not manufactured in China, the essential compounds that those drugs are based on come from China. Those are very fragile supply chains; there are no stockpiles anywhere. If China were plunged into an influenza pandemic and the fast freighters that bring those products around the world can't move because of the pandemic, the collateral damage from people dying of all kinds of medical conditions will far exceed even the first months’ mortality associated with the flu itself. When you add that up, I'd have to say we’re much more vulnerable today than they were in 1918.

Dr Osterholm:When an influenza pandemic occurs, the whole world will be involved simultaneously. If anything causes a disruption in drugs and medical devices that come here from around the world, it doesn’t matter how modern our health care system is if we don't have basic drugs or equipment like mechanical ventilators that have circuits that are almost all made outside the United States. That's where we're going to have some real challenges. The second piece is that we're going to have a lot of health care workers that are going to be put at risk for influenza by going to work. We will run out of N95 respirators very quickly. We will not have vaccine available in a timely manner in our hospitals. We won't have anywhere near enough antiviral drugs. I think we've not really tested our system yet.