[lit-ideas] Re: The Shape of Fear
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:16:51 -0800
David Ritchie wrote:
There are reasons to fear any pandemic: people die, social order comes
under great stress, the society that emerges when the pandemic fades is
not the same society.
[snip, perhaps unfairly]
It may seem to people
on this list that we're currently in a differently shaped tale, a
Chicken Little tale. Fair enough. We may be. Bush, Blair, other
western leaders currently have good reasons to distract the public's
attention. But pandemics, like revolutions, change the way people
live, and they are both cruel beyond belief. I'm for an ounce or three
of preparation in hope of avoiding the plague narrative altogether.
I, at least, have nowhere said that the attention being paid to the
(as it is advertised) imminent avian flu pandemic was hype from the
Administration. I've questioned the plausibility of its imminence.
Indeed, those who see it as the next world crisis have been critical
of governments here and elsewhere for not acting quickly enough to
forestall it or to deal with it if it happens. This wouldn't seem to be
a matter of Bushian distraction from other problems.
What is the case for a pandemic of a human-to-human avian flu pandemic?
That avian flu is increasing in the Far East, and has spread to Europe;
that there have been cases in which this strain of influenza, HN51, has
crossed the species barrier and infected humans, some of whom have died;
that influenza virus strains mutate continually (so, it is argued, it is
'only a matter of time,' before this ubiquitous virus becomes
human-to-human transmissible); and, in any event, the world is
unprepared for a major flu pandemic.
All of these things could be true, i.e., the present avian flu could
mutate into a human-to-human transmissible form, etc., and there
nevertheless be no serious flu pandemic. That a viral strain is
human-to-human transmissible does not eo ipso make it a virulent (highly
pathogenic) strain. That is one consideration. Another is, that as a
virus mutates towards (not purposively, but randomly) human/human
transmissibility, its virulence must diminish if it is to spread widely
and rapidly: a virus has to walk a fine line between killing an infected
organism quickly (thus making it unlikely that the organism will infect
other organisms) and just occupying a few cells here and there. The
ideal virus is one that makes its host sick, yet leaves it mobile.
We will all see what this one will do. What it won't do, I'll bet my
hat, is give us a re-run of 1918.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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