Terrific pandemic flu post from Revere (updated)

at Effect Measure. Whether avian influenza is being ignored by the media, or there’s a human cluster and hacks suddenly predict the sky falling on our heads, EM is a place to go for sober professional analysis (his atheosplenetic Freethinker Sunday Sermonettes are worth a visit, too). Here is a case in point: Pandemic influenza subtypes: end of year round up.

It contains some good science about flu viruses, pandemics and their -ology. You don’t need a degree, it is lucid informative writing that doesn’t scare and does inform. And at the end it puts in a plea for good public health provision and a strengthening of society’s structures:

Because perseveration is a characteristic and privilege of the aged, we will repeat again in this last bird flu post of 2007 what we have been saying here since late 2004. The best way to prepare for an influenza pandemic is to do those things which make for a robust community, especially building and strengthening the public health and social service infrastructure. This is like repairing the roof on your dwelling. It will help protect against heat, cold, rain, sleet or snow. It won’t keep you safe from an asteroid or a nuclear attack. A strong public health system also won’t protect you from a pandemic with a 30% attack rate and 60% CFR. But it will help with a hell of a lot of other things, including many of the most plausible candidate influenza pandemic viruses.

Update: another flublog of note  H5N1 (does what it says on the tin) has a Thoughts on 2008 roundup piece which is also really worth a read.  A couple of points: H5N1 does not have to infect humans to have a major impact:

When scores of millions of people make their livings from poultry, H5N1 becomes a political issue. When hundreds of millions depend on poultry for much of their protein, H5N1 becomes a major political issue.

He also paints a possible and desirable world picture:

With all my heart, I hope 2008 will see a further drop in the number of cases. Sixty would be good. Forty would be better. Maybe H5N1, in its patient efforts to mutate into something deadlier, could mutate itself into total failure, make itself a viral has-been.

And makes a plea for Homo to be just that bit more sapiens in case H5N1 does not become a viral has-been.

But at this point it still has the power to frighten not just us, but our governments. If it frightens them enough, they might stop buying so goddam many fighter planes and ICBMs and stealth bombers, and start spending on public-health measures for the people the weapons are supposed to protect.

A robustly healthy population will survive the worst pandemic in better shape than the best-prepared individual household, with its basement full of canned soup and toilet paper. If flu bloggers can help to prod governments into realizing this, before the pandemic hits, then we will have done a service worth doing.

And so say all of us.