Birdflu Mailing List: update on bird flu from NAS

[William Weir (wweir1]

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
at  http://www.pnas.org/content/105/21/7558.full
recently included this update on avian influenze (a/k/a bird flu):

Avian influenza viruses within the H5 and H7 subtype continue to pose a
major public health threat. Since 2004, highly pathogenic avian influenza
(HPAI) H5N1 viruses have resulted in >380 cases of laboratory-confirmed
human infection in 14 countries
(1<http://www.pnas.org/content/105/21/7558.full#ref-1>).
Despite the high virulence of H5N1 viruses observed in humans and mammalian
models (2 <http://www.pnas.org/content/105/21/7558.full#ref-2>),
human-to-human transmission has been only rarely documented.

Which I put together with other data and information to mean,
1> bird flu is still smoldering in 14 other lands (especially Egypt and
Indonesia, according to WHO reports)
2> it is highly virulent (killing over half those who get it),
3> human-to-human transmission has been documented (though rarely)
4> when the virus (probably H5N1, maybe H7N7) re-assorts with a seasonal flu
virus (already with efficient transmissability human to human) in a host
(e.g. a pig or human), unless the public health system (underfunded)
contains it (very difficult but may be possible as it happens again and
again), a pandemic (global human epidemic) is likely.