Scott McPherson's Web Presence

The weekend headlines shrieked "Scientists Make Bird Flu Breakthrough!" 

Well, not really a breakthrough on fighting the virus itself; more like a breakthrough on finding ways to more safely handle the H5N1 virus without accidentally triggering the next Stephen King novel.  If you search this Blogsite for my ongoing series "When Labs Attack," you will read horror story after horror story regarding how lab accidents can, and frequently do infect people, animals and the environment. 

One example: Just a few months ago, CSIRO workers in Australia were exposed to H5N1 when they all forgot to properly configure their canisters of air.  They are all fine, thanks for asking, but still the incident could have introduced the virus into the Australian nation. 

In this weekend's story,  Professor Mark von Itzstein and his team at the Institute for Glycomics at Australia's Griffith University worked with the very capable Professor Malik Peiris and his team at Hong Kong University's Institut Pasteur.  Peiris, for the uninitiated, is a protege of Dr. Robert Webster, the Pope of Influenza.   Besides his work on H5N1, he is also very well-known for his work in containing the SARS virus. 

The report that these seasoned viral researchers had discovered a way to slip the H5N1 virus into a protective envelope of a "virus-like particle" for safer examination is welcome news.

But I think the real message of that story was contained in the concluding paragraphs of the story which I found at: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23149404-1702,00.html . From the news.com.au story:

Prof von Itzstein, who helped to develop the influenza drug Relenza, said it was hoped the breakthrough could help to "crack the code" of the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus.

OK, now here comes the most important part of the entire story:

The professor said the H5N1 virus had evolved to the stage where it could be transmitted from birds to humans, with evidence mounting that limited human-to-human transmission could also occur.

My friend Dr. Mike Osterholm was in Bangkok at that bird flu confab in late January, trying valiantly to convince the global press corps to stop writing about Beckham and Britney and start writing about something that will eventually happen, has happened with historical certainty ever since the Chinese domesticated ducks some 4,000+ years ago, and will absolutely keep happening, no matter how arrogant we are about our "superiority" over bugs. And that something is an influenza pandemic in the Just-in-Time 21st Century.

Professor von Itzstein is a man whose work has created the only antiviral that has not (yet) developed resistance in Influenza A.  He has studied H5N1 as much as any other scientist, perhaps including those intrepid people who work with Webster, Peiris and Oxford.  And he is telling us the "evidence is mounting" that the H5N1 virus is evolving, or adapting, or mutating, or whatever you want to call it.  Whatever you call it, it is heading for Humanity.  Slouching toward Bethlehem to be born, if you prefer Yeats.  And considering Bethlehem's strategic location and proximity to human and avian H5N1 cases, perhaps eerily prophetic.

Are we listening? 

My favorite punching bag, OIE's head Bernard Vallat, has been conspicuously silent since things went to Hell in a handbasket regarding the global spread of H5N1 a few weeks ago.  Maybe he has been reading his own organization's daily reports of the culling of what is now more than a million Indian chickens.  Or maybe he has been reading about the collapse of the West Bengal poultry industry.  Or maybe he has read the words of prominent virologists who said Vallat's statements were "naive and dangerous -- and widely acknowledged as such among vaccinologists."

That should also serve notice to Dr. Paul Offit, who recently boasted to New York Times' correspondent Donald G. McNeil that, in essence, H5N1 would never go pandemic.  In McNeil's recent fair and balanced article, titled "A Pandemic That Wasn't But Might Be," 

Dr. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine specialist at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, was one of those who, he jokes, “dared to be stupid” by bucking the alarmist trend in 2005.

“H5 viruses have been around for 100 years and never caused a pandemic and probably never will,” he said.

But Dr. Offit said he backed all preparedness efforts because he expected another pandemic from an H1, H2 or H3, the subtypes responsible for six previous epidemics, including the catastrophic one in 1918.

“What I worry is that this has been a ‘boy who cried wolf’ phenomenon,” he said. “When the next pandemic comes, people will say, ‘Yeah, yeah, we heard that last time.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/science/22flu.html

Now, I am not personally aware of any record of H5 viruses being typed at all prior to 1959's Scotland discovery.  And if scientists are still divided about what caused the 1890 pandemic --was it an H2 or H3 virus, or something completely different? -- then I don't think Offit can flatly state that H5 has been circulating over the past hundred years.  Don't get me wrong:  I respect Offit, and am currently reading a copy of his book Vaccinated, which chronicles the amazing life of Dr.Maurice Hilleman (see my post, titled Will H2N3 reassortant prove Maurice Hilleman correct? ).

But I respect Dr. Gregory Poland more.  Dr. Poland (pictured) is one of the world's leading vaccinologists -- a peer of Offit's -- and basically runs the vaccine program at the Mayo Clinic.  He is also a world-class expert on the emergence of the H5N1 virus, and is deeply concerned with emerging world events.  You might also recognize Dr. Poland from his appearance on this past summer's BBC docu-drama "Pandemic."  Believe me, he had some choice words for Monsieur Vallat's recent comments about H5N1 being "stable" and H5N1 pandemic fears being "overblown"!! 

I wish someone would ask Dr. Poland for his opinion of Dr. Offit's claim that H5 has been around for a hundred years and will never go pandemic.  Maybe H5 has been around for a thousand years!  How long a virus has been festering in the intestines of flying birds is irrelevant.  It is how long the virus has shown a proclivity for human tracheas and lungs -- that is the question.  And for humanity, H5 in humans -- as far as anyone knows for certain -- has only been around for eleven years.  Not a hundred.  And not a thousand. 

It is like saying that the SARS virus has been hanging around in the blood of civet cats for a hundred years, so why worry?  let's ask the 8,000 people who caught SARS in 2003 -- minus the 800 or so who died -- ask them if it mattered that SARS was no biggie for 99 of those 100 years.

I also appreciated the remarks of Dr. Mike Osterholm, standard bearer in the fight against what he has coined "Pandemic Fatigue." Osterholm, also in the NYT article, "noted that the H3N8 flu found in horses in the 1960s took 40 years to adapt to dogs, but that since 2004 it has spread to kennels all over the country."

Influenza smoulders.  It finds its own way, and on its own timetable. 

Offit belongs to that group of people who believe that only H1, H2 and H3 viruses will ever cause a pandemic -- the theory of recycled pandemic strains of influenza.  Personally, as I mentioned earlier, I am not sure if anyone can say with any degree of certainty that H1, H2 and H3 have caused any more pandemics than the three that have been positively typed by researchers.  After all, influenza has only been typed with certainty in the past fifty years or so.  How anyone can say that these three strains were responsible for 1832, even 1847 or 1890, without supporting genetic material, is a stretch.

Offit's claim in the book about Hilleman is that Hilleman was able to find H2 antibodies in elderly people who lived through the 1890 pandemic.  Therefore, Hilleman claimed (and Offit parrots), the 1890 pandemic must have been an H2 strain.  The 1900 outbreak was an H3, reckoning by the 68-year clock Hilleman/Offit claimed exists (I can find no evidence of a 1900 pandemic, bu the way).  Using that 68-year calculation mechanism, the pandemic of 1847-48 would have been H1.

But wait!  Adding 68 to 1847 equals 1915.  Close enough; let's run with it. And if we know that the 1918 pandemic was an avian flu that jumped straight to humans (we do), as Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger of the US Armed Forces Pathology Lab genetically proved (with an assist by Dr, Johan Hultin, one of the Unsung Heroes of influenza research), then wasn't that a novel virus?  Wasn't that something that had never been seen before?  Unless that jump had happened before then as well.

So what does this do to the Hilleman/Offit theory if it turns out that this adaptive mutation route is really the cause of the more lethal pandemics, and reassortment , while being a pandemic incubator as well, actually is the more prevalent yet the less likely to kill?  I'll tell you what it does.  It kills it Black Flag Dead.

Not that I really miss the 1960s.  I was fat, had a crew cut, and was a geek.  Today I am overweight, do not have much hair left, and I am a geek.  But those intervening decades were wonderful!  And I make a handsome living being a geekmeister.

So I was so happy to see this article on MSNBC.com today.  It brought back many happy memories.

Dozens in Texas town report seeing UFO

Large silent object with bright lights was flying low and fast

STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.

Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."

While federal officials insist there's a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.

Machinist Ricky Sorrells (pictured) said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.

"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."

Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.

Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting.

Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.

"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."

Officials at the region's two Air Force bases — Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls — also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs.

One man has offered a reward for a photograph or videotape of the mysterious object.

About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to go to the 17,000-resident town of Stephenville to investigate.

Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO.

Coincidentially, today also marked Sony's release of the classic film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers on digitally remastered DVD, with Dolby 5.1 surround (!) and in color as well as black and white.  Now before you condemn the senseless colorization of classic B&W, keep these points in mind:

Ray Harryhausen himself advocated and supervised the colorization process.  Harryhausen is the effects genius who learned his craft by watching Willis O'Brien do such films as King Kong. 

The remastering was, I am sure, in anticipation of a future Blu-Ray release.  Sony has already done this with 20 Million Miles to Earth, another Harryhausen effects classic, which on Blu-Ray looks almost like it was made yesterday .

You can toggle back and forth between the two versions:  Remastered color or remastered B&W.

The extras on the DVD are superb.

Another old Columbia Pictures classic, It Came From Beneath the Sea (starring my personal favorite, the late Kenneth Tobey) also came out today in a 2-disc, remastered set. 

Yes, life is good.

Computerworld magazine does a fine job of keeping pandemic preparedness on the minds of Chief Information Officers (that's Head Geek of corporate and government IT-dom), as well as decision-makers and IT personnel.

Anyway, in their latest issue appears this gem of a story:

Eight-day IT outage would cripple most companies

Gartner survey finds business continuity plans lack ability to withstand longer outages

January 10, 2008 (Computerworld) -- A Gartner Inc. poll of information security and risk management professionals released today shows that most business continuity plans could not withstand a regional disaster because they are built to overcome severe outages lasting only up to seven days.

Gartner analyst Roberta Witty said that the results of the poll show that organizations must "mature" their business continuity and disaster recovery strategies to enable IT operations and staffers to endure outages of at least 30 days. Such efforts would require additional IT budget spending and collaboration across enterprise business units at most corporations, she noted.

Gartner surveyed 359 IT professionals from the U.S., U.K. and Canada during 2007 on their business continuity efforts, and nearly 60% said that their business continuity plans are limited to outages of seven days or less.

Further, results showed most companies focus on rebounding from internal IT disruptions, not from regional disasters that could also damage facilities. A very shortsighted tactic, remarked Witty, considering damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as well as potential harm from outages, terrorist attacks, pandemics, service provider outages, civil unrest or other unpredictable event.

"If you start looking at some of the events we've [experienced] over the last few years, companies must plan for events that actually take much longer to recover from," Witty said. "This is an issue [businesses] have to deal with -- it's in front of everyone's face right now." 

The survey found that 77% of companies have come up with a business continuity plan covering power outages caused by fire, while 72% have a plan to get up and running after a natural disaster. Only 50% of companies are prepared to rebound from terrorism-related IT outages.

Witty did say that companies are starting to take pandemic concerns more seriously than in the past. The survey showed that 29% of organizations now have pandemic recovery measures in place, up from just 8% in 2005.

To withstand an outage of up to 30 days, companies must improve cross-training efforts and streamline emergency management, notification and incident management techniques for quicker response, she added. "That's what [business continuity] is about. If you don't have people to manage it, a data center is useless," Witty remarked.

I lectured on pandemic preparedness at Gartner's international conference in Orlando in 2006, and I know Ken McGee of Gartner, who (along with yours truly, of course) is one of the few recognized bona fide IT pandemic experts on the planet.  So Gartner is extremely well-focused on this topic.  Their research on this, and other topics, is first-rate.  It's "take it to the bank"-type material.

So when Gartner says sixty percent of American corporate and government organizations cannot sustain disaster recovery services beyond seven days, believe it.  And that is extremely bad news for any calamity, be it caused by a virus or a match.

Let me take you through the world of telecommuting plans.  They all originate in large data centers -- operations centers with floor tiles raised over twelve inches from the floor to accept conduits full of cables and cooling pipes and to keep equipment high and dry if those pipes burst and water seeps in.  They are also very chilly, so they can keep the multitudes of computers cool and, thus, more efficient.  (Heat is the enemy of computers, which is why you should blow out all computers thoroughly with canned air at least once a year.)  These data centers are also stuffed with what we call remote-access servers.  These servers are powered by UNIX, or Linux, or Microsoft Server products.  They run Windows Terminal Services, or Citrix, or some other emulation software.  And they need lots and lots and lots of bandwidth and processor power and energy.

And the stuff in data centers breaks sometimes.  Computers are machines, too, like the washer. Anything from a poorly-seated accessory card to a botched software patch can render a million dollars' worth of remote access equipment unusable.  That, in turn, requires hands-on work to fix.  You can't fix a physically broken appliance remotely, even if it is a computer.  You occasionally, sometimes frequently, need to take the machine physically down and get into it up to your elbows.  That takes people, people.  And if you are down 30% to 40% on your server team staff, you are in deep trouble.

Now the remote-access packets of data pass through the network; banks of appliances called routers and switches, any of which can break, for the same reasons as above.  Then after this leaves your organization's firewall (another appliance), you have to rely upon the Internet, and the same dynamics apply to all the equipment that runs the Internet.  Finally, you get to your PC or laptop, maybe in a hotel in Burbank, or your home in Tuscaloosa.  So if your cable/DSL modem is working properly, AND if you can get to the Internet, AND you can get back to your hosting data center, AND that remote equipment is running, AND you can log in to your validation server:  Well, that's a huge bunch of "ifs", even on a good day.  The fact this stuff even works most of the time is a huge testament to IT everywhere.  So hug a geek today!

This applies to all the participants in the work-at-home food chain:  The organization, the IT service provider, the telecommunications provider, all the way to the electric company.  If any of these links fails (and it will in a pandemic), the entire chain is worthless.  That is why corporations and governments alike must prepare to make the calls to bring people back into their offices when the Internet becomes unreliable.

That is also why these same organizations must undertake measures NOW to acquire masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes.  But that is a lesson left for another day.

The biggest concern after staff shortages and broken stuff is the issue of supply chain failures.  The Just-in-time supply chain, as we all know and preach, is lethally exposed during a pandemic.  During the runup to Y2K, we drilled incessantly in Florida for supply chain failures.  We even went so far as to have the National Guard ready to escort convoys of Winn-Dixie food from warehouses in Alabama to their distribution points within Florida's Panhandle. 

In a pandemic, everything will be constrained and in short supply.  This especially means spare parts and replacement equipment for IT, since so much of it comes from overseas (Asia).  It is difficult to get some networking equipment delivered quickly on a good day, let alone in the middle of an influenza pandemic.  In fact, Michael Dell told me personally in 2006 that the SARS experience has fueled Dell's initiative to try and develop a Singapore-to-Ireland revolving door of manufacturing during a pandemic.  The theory is that while one area is savaged, the other might be on the path to recovery.  The company is making the best assumption it can; namely, that it must find a way to continue operations, or perish.  Dell will also try and maintain larger inventories of certain parts, although those components change so quickly that it is an egregious violation of Dell's own business model to store anything in too much quantity for too long.

It might surprise some to know that Dell has taken such a proactive approach to pandemic planning.  But I know Dell to be a forward-thinking and forward-leaning corporation, so it is not surprising to see them adopt such an approach.  The problem is that Dell is so alone when it comes to such planning.  And this is reinforced by Gartner's latest study, which again reinforces the limitless, ignorant arrogance of people -- including IT people and their superiors, regrettably -- to think a calamity will never happen to them.

Lower Manhattan and New Orleans professionals know the tremendous impact an extended calamity can cause.  That is why companies such as Merrill Lynch are global Best Practices at disaster recovery.  There's nothing like experience to help shape attitudes. 

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/