How will we know when human-to-human bird flu transmission starts happening?

8 points by seuraughty 2 years ago | 4 comments

I’ve been looking for an official game plan from the CDC or NIAID with technical benchmarks, decision trees and contingency plans - basically, how will we know when it starts, what are our pre-planned responses for a variety of scenarios? I assume this would be publicly available, if such a plan exists. All I can find is very broad and general statements, and I am looking for a comprehensive plan akin to FEMA’s “Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation” or the like.

something with technical benchmarks

unsupp0rted 2 years ago |

You'll know when human-to-human transmission starts the same way we knew at the end of 2019 when a "novel respiratory virus" started spreading: random comments on Hacker News.

Then 3 months later the media will start commenting on it.

And 3 months after that the CDC or whoever will acknowledge that it is not a silly fear/hoax.

seuraughty 2 years ago | |

Yeah that’s about what I figured based on the info I’ve been finding. But of course no one official wants to say that, so it’s just quotes like “we are monitoring dairy workers but it’s voluntary.” And a bunch of academic virologists saying “I’m concerned we should be doing more.”

The only preparations I’ve seen so far are 5 million H5N1 vaccines being made, and they seem to be pretty good about cataloging variants in case they’re needed for future vaccine production.

At a minimum I thought at least some dedicated officials would have an up-to-date detailed crash plan (which I will post here if I ever find it), even if they’re not actually putting resources to the problem.

Once this thing gets into pigs or some dairy worker contracts it and gets a seasonal flu strain at the same time, it sounds like we will be in big trouble. Former CDC director Rob Redfield is already saying he expects it to cross over and have significant mortality.

pwg 2 years ago |

Look to the level of preparedness that happened for the prior pandemic.

The level of preparedness at CDC/NIAID now is likely about as /good/ as their level was then.

I.e., they will likely be caught out flatfooted yet again, and bungle their way through, just like they did the last time, having learned little to nothing from the process last time.

seuraughty 2 years ago | |

I wonder if it’s a funding issue or cultural organization problem or something else. The federal government has been mediocre at disaster management historically, and I don’t envy any other countries response & results, but I’m disappointed how much they seem to be dropping the ball again.