Another thing to worry about: Bird Flu

    "Since 2003, 50% of humans infected with H5N1 Influenza have died. This is a serious disease."

           Mark Frankel, Ph.D.

The year 2025 may be remembered in future decades as the year of the "bird flu crisis." Or not.

That will depend on things out of human control involving how a virus now carried by some birds evolves. It will also depend on things we influence, like how quickly a vaccine can be developed, how widely it is distributed, and whether you and others get vaccinated. 

I encountered this explanation of the bird flu virus because of correspondence with a physician and college classmate who was in communication with Mark Frankel. Frankel received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. His research at the University of Pennsylvania centered on Viral Immunology with a focus on influenza and herpes and viruses. He has held executive positions at a manufacturing and distribution company, a healthcare consulting firm, an automated pharmaceutical dispensing company, and an energy technology company.

I decided to share his observations with readers. We need to know about this virus.

Guest Post by Mark Frankel

There is quite a lot of media attention on "Bird Flu.” Is it something that we need to worry about? Normally, I would say no, but today I say "yes."

 

In the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, healthy people in their 20s got sick in the morning, and many were dead by the evening.  Vaccines had yet to be discovered. And viruses are not susceptible to drugs like antibiotics (which work only against bacteria, a completely different form of life than viruses). We do have some treatments to reduce fever and treat symptoms, and we do have some very limited-use anti-viral agents like Tamiflu, but we do not have effective pharmaceutical treatments for Influenza.

The current Influenza virus circulating in poultry and cattle in this country, dubbed “bird flu" is an influenza virus characterized as H5N1. This means that the “H” protein comes from a family of “H” proteins, designated “5”. The 5 does not refer to its toxicity, infectivity or strength; it means only that it is similar to other “H” proteins in a group we call “5.” The “N” protein, likewise, is related to other “N” proteins in the group we call “1.”

Since 2003, 50 percent of humans infected with H5N1 Influenza have died. This is a serious disease.

Should we be worried that it will begin to infect humans? Yes. How soon? We can’t be sure, but research suggests that a single mutation could allow human-to-human transmission, and the virus is very infectious. If we do not isolate those points of early transmission, the viral infection will spread rapidly and beyond our ability to contain it.

Would current vaccines help? Yes. Moderately. Should I get the current flu vaccine? Absolutely yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Will there be vaccines for this particular strain? Yes, and you should absolutely get it.

Time Magazine, Jan 2, 2025

When will it be available? There are currently two vaccines for bird flu being tested in limited quantities, but they have not been approved by the FDA. Truly specific vaccines for the human-to-human transmission virus cannot be developed until the infective strain actually emerges and it can be isolated and characterized. However, and I don’t know this to be true, it should be possible to use the National Institute of Health (NIH) studies that have identified the potential mutation that would create a human-to-human pathogen as a model to prepare a potential vaccine in advance of that mutation occurring.

If some people do not get the vaccination, will I still be safe if I am vaccinated? You will be safer than unvaccinated people, but you will still be able to be infected. 

Will current politics affect an epidemic? If the new administration limits vaccines, does not adopt an aggressive vaccination campaign, or chooses to allow the infection to “run its course” and provide “natural immunity,” we will see millions of deaths in this country.

Below is some background information:

First, almost every single “flu” comes from birds. The reservoir of influenza virus circulates in the waterfowl in Northern China. New strains periodically escape that reservoir and infect humans. Sometimes those strains simply infect the local population and do not spread. This is because the virus, although able to infect humans upon direct contact with the infected bird, is not able to be transferred from the infected human to another human. Direct contact with birds can provide large enough amounts of virus to infect a human, but the amount of virus in the sneezes or saliva from those people is insufficient to infect other humans.

What does H5N1 mean? It is the “H” protein that needs to be able to bind to specific proteins on the surface of respiratory cells to allow the virus to infect you. When one protein attaches to another protein, the strength of that attachment is on a spectrum from weak to strong. Right now, the “H” protein on the bird flu virus strongly binds to the cells in birds and cows, but not so well to human cells. A human who gets enough of the virus with the weak “H” protein can still get infected, but the virus shed from that person will not be strong enough to bind to the cells in another person.

But these viruses are constantly mutating. That means that when the virus reproduces, the RNA (the genetic material of the virus), which is duplicated, can contain “errors.” When this happens, one of the beads in the RNA strand gets exchanged for a different bead. Each group of three RNA beads codes for one single amino acid in the protein chain of the “H” protein. So, changing one bead in that three-bead code results in a new “H” protein. Sometimes these new “H” proteins can no longer bind to the proteins on the respiratory cells of the host animal (bird or cow), and the virus simply dies out because it cannot infect. Sometimes the new “H” protein is pretty much the same and nothing changes. But, sometimes, the new “H” protein is different enough that it is able to bind more strongly to a human receptor protein, and the virus shed from the infected human can infect other humans. 

Some recent studies in labs show that it is possible that only one single mutation in the “H” protein may be enough to result in human-to-human transmission.

Gain of function. “Gain-of-function” research is critical to understanding which mutations in a virus can lead to human-human-transmission. We can look for viruses in the population with those changes, and if we find it in some people, we can isolate them and better control the spread of the virus. This is incredibly important research, and at least in my opinion it would be irresponsible to prohibit it. Gain-of-function research in China ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic was critical to find out how a COVID virus could change to make possible human-to-human transmission. It is basic research into understanding viral spread. It is not military research for creating bioweapons.

What should we do to protect ourselves? Get vaccinated. As soon as the industry gears up, there will be a vaccine for this influenza variant.  Although it will not necessarily prevent you from getting infected, it will absolutely reduce symptoms and dramatically reduce the risk of infection that will require hospitalization or kill you. 

Even before specific vaccines are available, get the current vaccine. Protection against the “N” protein will reduce the mortality of infection and give protection against other “H5" proteins. Do not wait for the “best” vaccine. Delaying vaccination can make you susceptible to a dangerous infection.

What else? Avoid raw milk. Pasteurization kills any virus in milk. Dairy cows can pass the virus through their milk.

Avoid contact with dead birds. If you see one, do not try to remove it; contact local services to remove the bird.

Political issues. There is a lot of discussion now concerning vaccination and infection. In my personal opinion vaccines are not dangerous. Nothing is 100 percent safe, but the risk of an adverse event from a vaccine are minuscule compared to the risks associated with the diseases. Vaccines have eliminated smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, etc. Those younger than 90 will not remember the devastation caused by these diseases prior to vaccines.

Vaccination needs to be on a massive scale to prevent large numbers of deaths when it mutates to allow human-to-human transmission. Vaccines are only about 75 percent effective in preventing infection. The more people infected, the more chances for mutation. This is simple mathematics. Viruses are not “smart." They do not “try” to change. But their reproductive engines make mistakes, and at a fixed, measurable rate. A small percentage lead to increased infectivity, and increased infectivity means that it will take over the “market” simply by being faster to infect other people. We slow the mutation rate by lowering the number of people with the virus.

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Democrats are wondering what went wrong

Pronouns and abortion are easier to understand than inflation and corporate tax rates. 

Democrats wonder why voters -- nearly across the board -- moved toward a criminal, corrupt, lying autocrat rather than choose their candidate. And why was the Democratic brand so toxic that good candidates like Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana lost their offices?

Blueprint, a Democratic-aligned polling company, concluded:

The top reasons voters gave for not supporting Harris were that inflation was too high (+24), too many immigrants crossed the border (+23), and that Harris was too focused on cultural issues rather than helping the middle class (+17). 

Inflation, immigration, and cultural issues. Those seem intuitive and reasonable. The inflation issue being first leads Democratic strategists to think that Biden and Harris were simply caught by an international wave, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there is nothing to fix. Same with immigration. It is a devilishly complex problem existing for decades, created by global economic and political problems, confounded by Republican obstruction. Yeah, in hindsight Biden should have got moving earlier, but there were a million constraints, and at the end he got it right. Nothing to fix.

Blueprint has a chart that breaks down subgroups of voters and what issues motivated them:

The issue that stands out as the one that moved swing voters toward Trump is the third one, cultural issues.  

Cultural issues are simple to understand. They reflect whether the politician and the party are "on your wave length." Democrats would like to dismiss cultural issues as simply Republican talking points. Bernie Sanders says that Democrats just need to hammer away against "the billionaires." Ro Khanna urges Democrats message an economic new deal for the middle class. The premise is that economic issues, not cultural ones, are what voters care about.

This is convenient for Democrats, but it is wrong. 

Democrats are considered extreme on a suite of issues under the umbrella of "woke."  Dismissing cultural issues allows identity interest groups in their coalition to stay on board. Spokespeople for those groups stand ready to attack any policy heretic, calling it racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia, age-ism, able-ism or one of the other moral ills that would represent the party backsliding. Fear of intra-party divide is the real reason Biden did not think Democrats could have an open primary fight. The solution was to paper over the divide. Pivot to billionaires and corporate greed. 

"Wokeness" is generally unpopular with a majority of Americans, including ones that had been reliable parts of the Obama coalition. I addressed the "Sunday school" scolding problem when I described Jimmy Carter two days ago. The public is inconsistent here. It wants virtue and rectitude in theory, but it doesn't like a finger pointed at them, not by Carter and not by Democrats. Voters didn't like being shamed when told that the cause of the energy crisis of the 1970s was them, and that they should wear a sweater indoors. Voters didn't like hearing from Barack Obama that they were "clinging" to guns and religion, nor being called deplorable by Hillary Clinton.

There is a reason Trump and other Republicans campaigned with images of trans people and accusations that pro-choice women want abortions up to the time a healthy baby is delivered. These are easy-to-understand issues. Democrats thought that "childless cat ladies" was a phrase that hurt the Trump/Vance campaign, and among some Democrats it did. But it addressed a cultural point that Democrats are anti-motherhood, and that they have contempt for women who want to stay at home with their infants. Many women want exactly that, and many men want that for their wives.

Democrats cannot finesse this with messaging that pivots from unpopular policies. I watched Kamala Harris repeatedly refuse to say that she disapproved of abortions at the moment a baby is delivered.  She said it was rare. She said it was a GOP accusation. She said it wasn't what women wanted. All true. But she would not say clearly and flatly that no, of course it was wrong and should be illegal. Voters noticed. Republicans saw to that.

Democrats cannot win the trust of working people on issues of economics if they seem slippery and untrustworthy on issues people can understand simply. They need to do the uncomfortable work of deciding if they want to be virtuous, as defined by their well-educated policy advocates, or if they want to be popular with voters.

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Auld Lang Syne

I don't like raw pineapple. It is too acidy. 

That is why every New Year I resolve not to eat it, even when it is available.

It gets my resolutions off to a fast start.  

It is my expectation, not a resolution, to broaden the scope of this blog a little in the year ahead. Less politics, more other stuff. We will see how well I do.

Each turning of the year puts me in a mood to reflect on absence. Things I didn't do. People who died. Jack Mullen sent me this reflection yesterday, and it fits this mood. Jack and I grew up in the same place, thinned pears on the same crew, and worked for the same U.S. representative, Jim Weaver. Jack will be watching this afternoon's Duck football game with his wife Jennifer in their home in Washington, D.C.

Guest Post by Jack Mullen            

I feel lucky to have experienced heady times when Oregon’s May presidential primary, coming shortly before California's, placed my home state in the nation’s limelight. Every four years from 1960 to 1976, Oregon played a crucial role in either party’s nomination process.

If I hadn't been a participant in the 1960 Rogue Valley Pear Blossom Festival as a trombone player in the Hedrick Junior High marching band, I never would have listened to John Kennedy’s campaign speech in Hawthorne Park when he said, “I may never become president of the United States, but at least I can say I was the grand marshall of the Rogue Valley Pear Blossom Festival.”

As the candidate walked from one end of Hawthorne Park to the other, I shook hands with the next president of the United States. He looked me straight in the eye with that famous Kennedy stare that made you feel important. 

Every four years since, I made it a point to listen and observe the candidates as they slogged through Oregon. I saw Nelson Rockefeller at the Medford airport on his quick stop in 1964. In 1968, I attended speeches by Richard Nixon, Eugene McCarthy, and Robert Kennedy at the University of Oregon.

My political interest paid off in 1976 when I worked in the Eugene office of Congressman Jim Weaver, just as slew of Presidential candidates came to town. I was able to meet and greet Morris Udall, Frank Church, Jerry Brown, Birch Bayh and Fred Harris. However, I never felt the warmth of a candidate that I had for JKF until I heard Jimmy Carter speak at Eugene’s City Center. After years of Richard Nixon, his promise not to lie to the American people spoke volumes. 

Jimmy Carter was different from the other candidates. His promised unorthodox approach to the presidency resonated with me, but may have been his political downfall. Once in office, he ignored special interests, be it the oil and gas industry, or pet Congressional boondoggles. The latter caused an uneasy relationship with Congress and split the Democratic party, as many Democrats turned to Ted Kennedy in the 1980 primary, leading the way for a Ronald Reagan win. 

Jimmy Carter made the mistake of being a man ahead of his time. Although his legislative achievements rank him high among modern presidents, most have been turned back by succeeding administrations. His energy conservation programs fell flat in the Reagan Administration. His major post-Watergate ethical reforms are being chipped away. His successes in the fields of education and consumer protection are often overlooked and are now fading away.

Once the Iranian crisis exploded, his accomplishments in foreign affairs became minimized. History, however, does give him credit on how he ended the five wars between Israel and Egypt with the Camp David peace accords. I like the fact that he put human rights at the forefront of his foreign policy, which led to a resurgence of democracy in Latin America and Africa, as he did not kowtow to brutal dictators. He diplomatically combined soft and hard power on both the Soviet Union and China better than any modern president. The nuclear arms race lessened during his presidency.

Jimmy Carter was more than a just a man of faith and a decent human being. He spoke to the country and the world about America’s decency as reflected in his policies and life he lived. Unfortunately, at the time and again now, not enough people cared. I did.

 

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