Friday, January 3, 2025

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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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Elections have consequences! Trump’s choice of RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services bodes poorly for a robust response to any pandemic or emerging health issue, let alone fulfilling the mission of the agency he will lead.

Peter C. said...

Someone should send this to Kennedy. Smarten him up. When I was 9 years old, I got the first polio shot in my city up in Maine. A picture was taken and it made the front page of the local newspaper. It was a big deal. Polio scared everyone. Polio is a "good" virus, as it doesn't mutate. Once you get the shot, you're protected. Covid and the flu do mutate, which is why it's hard to control. Whenever you mix politics and science, it never turns out well. I'll be first in line again whenever the new vaccine is released. Thanks to the read today.

Mike Steely said...

Thank you for the valuable information about bird flu. Hopefully, they’ll come out with a vaccine soon, but with an anti-vaxxer in charge of our health department, I’m afraid a lot more people will have to die of stupidity before vaccines come back into vogue. In fact, Republicans are champing at the bit to bring criminal charges against the primary proponent of vaccination against COVID-19, Dr. Fauci, who was known to occasionally contradict their liar-in-chief with facts. Not that they have any evidence of a crime, but when their Supreme Leader begins his retribution campaign in earnest, they must presume that facts won’t matter.

Low Dudgeon said...

“Gain-of-function research in China”…..

……as in Wuhan. China, perchance? If not military weaponry, are negligent lab procedures a likely cause of the COVID pandemic? Should we trust what Dr. Fauci has told Americans to date about the Wuhan lab, gain-of-function research, and his connections thereto? Should we trust China on the subject of COVID, and any successor viruses?

Mike said...

Dr. Fauci is an infectious disease specialist who lived a life of service. So indeed, why trust what he has to say about COVID when we can instead put our trust in a self-serving politician like Rand Paul.

Michael Trigoboff said...

Funny how Covid started in Wuhan, the same place where the research institute was located. And, they were inserting furin cleavage sites into viruses, a unique feature of Covid.

You would have to have virus-laden bats in your belfry to miss the connection.

Coincidence: you weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

Mike said...

If anyone has such convincing evidence that the virus came from the Wuhan lab, they should share it with the scientific community, because they tend to back the theory of natural origin:
https://www.science.org/content/article/virologists-and-epidemiologists-back-natural-origin-covid-19-survey-suggests