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The post-mortem (forgive the expression) for H5N1 around the world in 2007 shows, by any yardstick, an improved situation.  There were fewer reported human cases; fewer nations experienced the disease; and fewer human deaths.

Poultry, however, did not fare so well.  The numbers of poultry culled were in the tens of millions of birds.  There may be no real way to measure how many ducks, geese, swans, turkeys and chickens gave their lives for the eradication of H5N1.  Well, most of them were going to give their lives sooner or later, anyway.  Some 600,000 birds were culled in Russia in one week in late 2007. 

It reminds me of the 1976 swine flu scare, when it was revealed to President Ford how many eggs were going to have to be laid in order to produce enough vaccine for every American.  Ford called in the ever-jovial Earl Butz, whose joviality eventually cost him his job as Secretary of Agriculture.  When Ford queried him about the sheer volume of eggs required for 200 million-plus doses of vaccine, Butz replied in deadpan:

"Mr. President, the roosters of America are prepared to do their duty!"

The economic impact of H5N1 was especially felt hard in Britain this year.  Roughly two hundred thousand British turkeys, geese and chickens in total were culled in February, November and December of 2007.  Holiday fowl had to be imported from as far away as Brazil.  And Britons were shelling out as much as $200 for a holiday bird! 

Britons Buy $200 Turkeys as Bird Flu Shrinks Christmas Supplies
By Brian Lysaght

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The 1,800 turkeys on Sheepdrove Farm in Britain's Berkshire Downs spent the summer and autumn feasting on grubs and wheat and roaming through meadows.

This month, these Norfolk Bronze birds with dark plumes and scarlet beaks were being slaughtered, hand-plucked and hung for 14 days on the 2,500-acre organic farm 60 miles west of London. It's the end of their rural idyll and the first step toward a hallowed British holiday tradition -- Christmas Day lunch.

Organic farms such as Sheepdrove are flourishing after one of the toughest-ever years for Britain's poultry industry. Nearly 200,000 birds were culled after outbreaks of a deadly form of bird flu and feed prices surged on higher wheat costs. That's pushed up holiday bird prices by as much as 38 percent and increased demand for organic turkeys, which cost as much as 100 pounds ($205).

Although Sheepdrove Farm stopped taking orders on Dec. 10, ``we've had about 100 calls since we sold out,'' said Michael Benson, the farm sales manager. He plans to raise 2,500 turkeys next year.

Sales of organic turkeys, which must be free ranging and raised on additive-free feed, will jump 46 percent this year, the British Retail Consortium predicts. That compares with a 7 percent increase the industry group forecasts for total turkey sales.

Consumers say the organic birds are safer and tastier.

Helen Day, a 36-year-old administrative assistant in London, said she'll splash out on a free-range turkey for Christmas. ``The flavor's better, and it's worth the money,'' she said.

A Better Bird

Richard Corrigan, chef at the Michelin-starred Lindsay House restaurant in central London, isn't balking at paying 15 percent more this year for organic birds to be served in his festive turkey salads as part of the restaurant's 55 pound tasting menu.

``The food I put in my mouth has to have lived a certain life,'' Corrigan said. ``Who wants to have hundreds and hundreds of birds in a shed?''

England had its first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu last February at a turkey farm operated by Bernard Matthews Holdings Ltd., Europe's largest factory poultry producer. More than 150,000 turkeys were killed to control the virus.

In November, another outbreak forced the slaughter of 15,500 turkeys, ducks and geese on two farms in Suffolk, eastern England. That may have been caused by wild birds mixing with free-range farm poultry, the U.K. government said in a report on Nov. 29.

Waitrose Ban

Premium supermarket chain Waitrose said Dec. 7 it won't stock organic Christmas turkeys this year because the farms where the disease was found, Redgrave Park Farm and Hill Meadow Farm in Suffolk, were suppliers.

The cancellation will probably further boost independent organic farmers, according to Anna Bassett, a poultry specialist with Britain's Soil Association. The group advises farmers about organic methods, which include rules about crop rotation, natural fertilizer and additive-free animal feeds.

In addition to the aftermath of the bird-flu outbreaks, farmers also face higher feed prices because of rising commodity costs. Wheat traded in Chicago rose above $10 a bushel for the first time on Dec. 17. The grain's price has more than doubled in the last year as drought reduced output from Canada to Australia.

Tom Copas, who raised 50,000 free-range and organic birds at his farm in Cookham, England, boosted his prices by 10 percent.  A medium-size organic Copas turkey is 13 pounds a kilo (2.2 pounds) with free-range, non-organic birds costing 9 pounds a kilo.

American Import

``Orders are coming in very well,'' said Copas, whose family has raised turkeys for 50 years and said most of the birds have been sold.

Turkeys first arrived in Britain in 1526, brought by Yorkshireman William Strickland, who acquired six birds from American Indian traders, according to the British Turkey Association. The tradition of eating turkey at Christmas dates from the 19th century, when it began to replace goose and more exotic fare such as swan and peacock. Last year, Britons bought 10 million Christmas turkeys.

Wholesale prices for turkeys have risen as much as 38 percent, according to a Nov. 30 survey by the U.K. government. Birds of up to 9 kilos are selling for 2.60 pounds a kilo compared with 1.88 pounds a year earlier, the survey said.

Last year, retail sales of organic products in the U.K. rose 22 percent to 1.94 billion pounds, the Soil Association said. The country's market for organic goods has grown 27 percent annually on average over the last decade. It's still a relatively small market, with organic making up 3 percent of all meat, poultry and fish sales, the group estimates.

Farmers say they believe the crisis will continue to drive sales.

``Our customers have the money to spend, they want the best for their families and are willing to pay the price,'' said Sheepdrove's Benson.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aohK8JhZoZLo&refer=europe with a hat-tip to Shannon of FluTrackers.

So why was 2007 more moderate for H5N1 than 2006?  I would give the following reasons:

Climate.  The year 2007 was, on balance, a much milder year than 2006. http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/nebraska/winter-2007-global.html  The effects of climate on Influenza A are still not clearly understood, but the rule of thumb has been the milder the winter, the milder the virus.

Surveillance.  Surveillance has dramatically improved since 2003.  The world is, for the most part, operating solidly when it comes to surveillance.  There are far too many surveillance holes for us to become even remotely comfortable, but it is a much more favorable situation than in 2003.

Education.  People in remote areas have learned to better handle sick, dying and dead wildfowl, and to practice better hygiene.  People are also learning how to fully cook the virus out of their food. Word travels fast, even in remote areas of the planet, when death and disease are concerned.

Payments.  Compensation to farmers is becoming more equitable, and farmers are thus more apt to report when their flocks are infected.  This is not the rule everywhere, sadly.  It needs to become more prevalent.

Culling.  While difficult to track all culling operations, indications are that more poultry were culled in 2007 than in 2006.  This equates to fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate.  Also, culling technology and science is improving, as information and knowledge passes in ones and zeros, in real-time over the Internet.

Fewer nations reported the virus.  The FAO reports that 2007 saw initial emergence of H5N1 in five new nations, which is bad.  But the number of nations reporting H5N1 in poultry and in humans declined over the same period in 2006. http://www.fao.org/docs/eims/upload//237149/ah693e.pdf

While we all can light cigars and celebrate this collective series of improvements, we also must recognize the flip side: 

Indonesia continues to worry us.  Sub-Saharan Africa is a powderkeg when it comes to -- well, when it comes to everything, including H5N1.  The new cluster cases in Pakistan and Egypt show us the virus is continuing to confound the experts. 

And finally, the sobering conclusion from the FAO:

Happy New Year.  Keep watching.

Welcome back, everyone. 

Apparently H5N1 decided to stage an unsettling comeback in the final month of 2007 -- and nowhere is that news more disconcerting than in Egypt.  In no less than six days' time, five Egyptians were reported to have officially contracted the H5N1 virus -- and four of those cases were dead.

All the latest fatalities have been women.

I am just back at the keyboard from a few days of downtime, so I am still sorting through all the various media and blog/posting reports.  The number of confirmed human cases stands at five, but the number of suspected human cases currently rests at 27 or 28.  There may be one or more family clusters.  But from what I can gather, these human infections are not in an isolated location -- that are coming from all over the upper Nile Delta.  Furthermore, the numbers of dead relative to the number of cases is especially troublesome.  A Google Earth map, found on the FluTrackers Website and maintained by Dr. Henry Niman,  shows us the confirmed and suspected human cases.  It is at this link:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.000442accf347f22ad5d4&ll=30.575268,31.117401&spn=4.123611,7.976074&t=h&z=7&om=0

If all these cases had come from one geographic area, that might be considered (in some perverse way) good news.  But the fact the confirmed cases are in such a widespread area could (and I cautiously use the word "could") potentially signify the emergence of a more easily transmitted bird-to-human (B2H) strain of H5N1.  It would be otherwise difficult to explain this sudden explosion of H5N1 all over the region simultaneously.

In all of 2006, Egypt reported 18 cases, with 10 deaths. This year, prior to Christmas, Egypt confirmed a total of 21 human cases of H5N1, and 6 deaths.  But in just one week in late 2007/early 2008, Egypt has reported reported 5 additional cases and 4 additional deaths. 

And if we look at a chart prepared by fluposter Laidback Al, we can expect to see the situation worsen in the coming months.  Laidback Al took all the suspected cases and overlaid the actual cases.  What he found was a peaking of the 2007 H5N1 cases in April of 2007.  So we can assume (though the data is admittedly sketchy, for Egypt didn't even have a human H5N1 case until 2006), that the 2007/08 holiday sledgehammer return of H5N1 to the Upper Nile, coupled with a particularly nasty proclivity of the current virus to infect -- and  kill -- younger women, distributed over such a wide geographic area, means trouble for 2008.

Robyn of Montana, a veteran reader of this blog and a medicinal blogger herself, sent me a link to an MSNBC story regarding the use of honey to fight infections.  I also noticed it posted to FluTrackers.com by veteran poster Shannon.

It's really self-explanatory, so I will just bow out and let you read the story.  Battle-tested in Iraq and here in the good old US of A, it sounds like a honey of an idea to me!

Sorry about that, Chief. I could use a few days off......

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22398921/

To the leadership of the nation of Indonesia:

Today, as you know, marks the third anniversary of the terrible tsunami that ravaged your nation of 18,000 islands.  The world grieves today, as it did the day after Christmas, 2004.  And we continue to grieve at your loss of life, as we grieve today for the deaths due to the mudslides that have hit your nation and killed scores of your citizens.

So long as the human race has any modicum of compassion left in it, the world will rush aid to your people.  May we never let you down on that score.

But the world also works on a principle of reciprocity.  The ying and the yang, if you will.  Quid pro quo.  And there is a way the nation of Indonesia can help repay the world for its ongoing compassion.

And that is by showing some compassion back.  Simply put:  Please share all of your H5N1 human, swine and avian samples with the world community -- beginning today.

You believe you have some sort of stake in the game with your samples.  You believe you have some currency.  And it is understandable that you would want to try and leverage the little you have on behalf of your people. 

However, the world's next pandemic may not start at your door.  Your versions of bird flu may not even start the next pandemic.  And then again, perhaps your nation is indeed at the eye of the viral typhoon to come.  Only God/Allah knows the answer to that question -- and He ain't giving the answer away easily.

There is an army of scientists -- legions of them, on every continent on Earth save Antarctica -- that are prepared to work with you on this issue.  These men and women can help decipher the clues to the next mutation that might turn H5N1 into the most efficient, ruthless killer of human life ever seen on this planet. 

To withhold this viral information in the hope that you can somehow get into line first among equals is simply not right.  Remember that a vaccine is probably eight months away from a pandemic's start, in the best of circumstances.  Time and again the world has shown it is ready to fly antivirals into your nation in the hope that the Next Pandemic can be stopped at the rural village level, before it has the chance to mutate and enter your largest cities.  And that is where the First Wave will be fought.  With antivirals, possibly at your front door.  Not with vaccine.

Your contract with America's Baxter Pharmaceuticals is understandable.  Your desire to begin injecting your citizens with prepandemic vaccine underscores your nation's obvious and justified preoccupation with this disease.  And if indeed the Indonesian strain is the trigger of the next pandemic, I am sure the shots and the royalties from Baxter will be most helpful.  As you also know, H5N1 is a mutating wonder.  What guarantees are there that any prepandemic vaccine will even work?  Even if Baxter's formula does work, I do not believe Baxter alone will not be able to manufacture enough vaccine for your entire nation.  Sooner or later, you will be calling upon the collective manufacturing capability of the rest of the world to help you.  And the perception that Indonesia may be putting profits ahead of lives creates global enemies that your nation cannot (literally) afford to have. 

Also heed the lessons of 1976 and Swine Flu H1N1.  Read the history of that debacle before you store vaccine "in people, not in warehouses."  Learn from the mistakes the US made in 1976 and 1977. 

Above all, practice proper diplomacy.  The world has a long memory.  If indeed the next pandemic comes from an Indonesian strain, and your government was withholding the strain's viral molecular information in order to obtain financial and/or vaccine guarantees, and the world determines that Indonesia could have saved countless millions of lives by sharing virus samples now and deliberately chose not to:  Know that the world's compassion has limits. 

Choose wisely.. 

It appears that the potential family cluster surrounding an Islamic school in Serang, Indonesia, is just that -- potential.  Tests show that all of the first six potential infected are negative for H5N1.

That is a holiday present, and we are thankful for that news.