Speaker 1: In the animal populations around the world. There's a huge
Speaker 1: amount of different flu viruses of sort of all different
Speaker 1: shapes and flavors. It's only a very small percentage of
Speaker 1: those that actually make this leap from beings they are
Speaker 1: duck virus to being a human virus.
Speaker 2: That's doctor Richard Webby. He studies how diseases move from
Speaker 2: animals to humans and then sometimes like coronavirus, from humans
Speaker 2: to humans.
Speaker 1: These viruses typically are host specific, so they've got to change.
Speaker 1: If we're doing specifically now about this Bavian flu. That
Speaker 1: virus is everywhere out there at the moment, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout the Americas, throughout Europe, throughout Asia, so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of exposure of that virus to humans. But right
Speaker 1: now it's not really designed to replicate well in humans.
Speaker 1: It's designed to replicate better and birds. This virus has
Speaker 1: to change for that real threat to occur.
Speaker 2: I'm west Kosova today on the Big Take. How concerns
Speaker 2: should we be about bird flu? The Biden administration has
Speaker 2: officially declared an end to emergency coronavirus measures in the US,
Speaker 2: saying the pandemic is more or less behind us.
Speaker 3: White House is just now saying that the President has
Speaker 3: just signed a bill that will end the national emergency
Speaker 3: declared during the COVID pandemic.
Speaker 2: So that's a relief. But the whole time COVID nineteen
Speaker 2: was racing around the world, scientists who monitor the spread
Speaker 2: of diseases, we're keeping an eye on other viruses, including
Speaker 2: avian flu. People like doctor Webby, and he has more
Speaker 2: to say later in the show about how these viruses
Speaker 2: learn and adapt and whether it's likely or not that
Speaker 2: bird flu may one day begin to spread from person
Speaker 2: to person. First, I want to to Bloomberg reporters Michelle
Speaker 2: Cortes and Susie Ring, who are covering this story. Michelle,
Speaker 2: why would it be so bad if bird flu does
Speaker 2: make that change.
Speaker 3: Scientists and public health officials have been waiting for human
Speaker 3: to human transmission of avian influenza for decades now, and
Speaker 3: it continues to not happen. The fear is that once
Speaker 3: that actually does occur, they won't be able to get
Speaker 3: it under control. The mortality rates are so high with
Speaker 3: avian influenza that the fear is that once it starts
Speaker 3: transmitting easily between people, that there will be mass mortality
Speaker 3: among humans, and that we'll be on the back foot
Speaker 3: and won't be able to get in front of it.
Speaker 3: At this point, with such huge numbers of infections in
Speaker 3: wild and domesticated birds moving into mammals, that's the concern
Speaker 3: that that's what's going to be happening.
Speaker 2: Now, Susie. Is that why even though, as Michelle says,
Speaker 2: scientists have been concerned about this for a long time,
Speaker 2: it's just the scale that there's so much more of
Speaker 2: this flu out there that it increases the chance that
Speaker 2: the flu can get smarter.
Speaker 4: The scale that we've seen in terms of deaths among birds,
Speaker 4: we're seeing millions being cold because this has just become
Speaker 4: a complete epidemic among wild birds and then among poultry.
Speaker 5: Are highly contagious.
Speaker 3: Avian flu is infecting birds all over the globe.
Speaker 1: The world is going through its largest ever recorded outbreak
Speaker 1: of bird flu.
Speaker 4: More than two hundred million birds have died as a
Speaker 4: result of the current avian flu outbreak. And then also
Speaker 4: the concern is it's spreading to mammals as well, so
Speaker 4: we've seen Peruvian seals and bears also catching. This shows
Speaker 4: the virus is mutating, it is jumping between species, which
Speaker 4: then of course raises the question is it going to
Speaker 4: mutate further and then make its way into humans and
Speaker 4: then from there allow for human to human transmition if
Speaker 4: it's mutated in the right way.
Speaker 2: Michelle, what is the risk of avian flu to humans?
Speaker 2: What does it actually do?
Speaker 3: Avian influenza, in the end, is an influenza, and it
Speaker 3: works the same way as the seasonal flu that we're
Speaker 3: all very familiar you're with, causing anything from you a cough,
Speaker 3: a sore throat, runny nose. It can lead to difficulty breathing,
Speaker 3: high fevers, and of course the most feared outcome is
Speaker 3: a pneumonia, and that is what eventually kills people. The
Speaker 3: difference between avian influenza and seasonal flu is that avian
Speaker 3: influenza is incredibly virulent, killing more than half of all
Speaker 3: of the humans that it's infected. Of Course, the rub
Speaker 3: is is that only about a thousand humans have been infected,
Speaker 3: so the numbers are small, and we don't know as
Speaker 3: the mutations happen if that's going to make it more
Speaker 3: deadly or less deadly, as it makes it easier to transmit,
Speaker 3: if and when that happens. The issue is that you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at Spanish flu If you look at
Speaker 3: nineteen eighteen, the case mortality rate was under two percent.
Speaker 3: So the idea that avian influenza is killing half of
Speaker 3: people that it infects or more, that's a terrifying idea
Speaker 3: if you get something that's going to hit a similar
Speaker 3: number of people. We certainly saw that with COVID, where
Speaker 3: it transmitted so easily that mortality rates weren't anywhere near
Speaker 3: what we've seen with avian influenza, but it infected millions
Speaker 3: and millions and millions of people. If you start getting
Speaker 3: mortality rates that are even double digits, you will have
Speaker 3: a skyrocketing number of deaths, just absolutely overwhelming.
Speaker 4: Avian influenza doesn't discriminate by age in the same way
Speaker 4: as we saw with the COVID dynamics, and that's very different.
Speaker 4: You know, we're seeing this girl in Cambodia died from it.
Speaker 4: She's eleven. So I think when you speak to epidemiologists
Speaker 4: and scientists, the ultimate concern is that an avian influenza
Speaker 4: pandemic could absolutely dwarf the six point eight million deaths
Speaker 4: we saw from COVID nineteen. COVID nineteen was an event
Speaker 4: that has traumatized the world was destructive economically, emotionally on
Speaker 4: every single scale globally, But Avian influenza would be something
Speaker 4: that would be so far beyond COVID nineteen it doesn't
Speaker 4: even bear thinking about.
Speaker 2: Michelle Susie mentioned an eleven year old girl in Cambodia
Speaker 2: who died from bird flu. You went to Cambodia, where
Speaker 2: there is a very big effort to try to contain
Speaker 2: it spread. What did you find there.
Speaker 3: Well, Cambodia has been dealing with bird flu for years.
Speaker 3: At this point, they haven't had any cases since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: The first sign that there was something amiss in Cambodia
Speaker 3: was when some chickens turned up dead on the side
Speaker 3: of the river, and the local villagers just put it
Speaker 3: down to the heat, which is unrelenting in Cambodia. In
Speaker 3: February when this all occurred. A few days after that,
Speaker 3: the eleven year old girl, a sixth grader, asked her
Speaker 3: teacher if she could go home because she wasn't feeling well.
Speaker 3: No one put those two pieces together, and of course
Speaker 3: they did send her home. Her family took care of her.
Speaker 3: Her grandmother and her aunt, who she lived with, tended
Speaker 3: to her and she continued to get worse, so they
Speaker 3: brought her to a local clinic who gave her some treatment,
Speaker 3: and she continued to not get better. At that point,
Speaker 3: the village doctor suggest that her family bring her to
Speaker 3: the main hospital in p Nom Pen. Her father brought
Speaker 3: her there the next morning, and they thought that she
Speaker 3: had seasonal influenza, which is something that is going around.
Speaker 3: They did give her tama flu to treat that infection,
Speaker 3: and they tested her to see what the infection was,
Speaker 3: but they didn't know about the chickens. No one put
Speaker 3: that piece together, so they didn't rush the test. She
Speaker 3: was there overnight. In the morning she had passed away.
Speaker 3: A few hours after that, they got the result that
Speaker 3: it was adian influenza. When they got that result, that's
Speaker 3: when the alarm bell started ringing, and the health authorities
Speaker 3: in that province rushed to the village to set up
Speaker 3: this makeshift testing and to reach out to everyone in
Speaker 3: the vicinity to find out exactly what the risk was.
Speaker 2: And even though this girl and her father both contracted
Speaker 2: bird flu, they were able to determine that it wasn't
Speaker 2: a human to human transfer. The daughter didn't give it
Speaker 2: to the father or the other way around, right.
Speaker 3: So the family actually lived in a house that was
Speaker 3: up on stilts. Now a lot of these homes are
Speaker 3: like that because they have hammocks and living space underneath
Speaker 3: the houses because of the shade, and they live very
Speaker 3: close to their animals. So many houses had dogs and
Speaker 3: cows in their yards, and chickens were ubiquitous. What happened
Speaker 3: with this family is that they did have four chickens,
Speaker 3: and two of them had died, and they slept right
Speaker 3: under the girl's room. The thought is that the girl
Speaker 3: actually contracted the virus from the chicken, either before it
Speaker 3: died or shortly after it died. Then her father actually
Speaker 3: took the chicken. And because they do live so closely
Speaker 3: with their poultry and with their animals, and because it
Speaker 3: is so unbelievably hot in Cambodia, sometimes animals do just
Speaker 3: die of heatstroke and they eat those animals. So the
Speaker 3: father did eat the chicken that died. Of course, they
Speaker 3: never did test it for bird flu, but at this
Speaker 3: point the speculation is is that it had been infected. Now,
Speaker 3: doctors point out that eating an infected animal is not
Speaker 3: a problem if you cook it properly. What was probably
Speaker 3: the issue for the father is that he had to
Speaker 3: pluck all of the feathers off of the bird, and
Speaker 3: by doing that he likely aerosolized the virus and contracted
Speaker 3: it that way. If this virus had been able to
Speaker 3: transmit from human to human, she had certainly been in
Speaker 3: contact with many other people during this period of time.
Speaker 3: So that's the piece that officials are still.
Speaker 5: Going to have to be working on.
Speaker 3: Within twenty four hours of doctors getting back the test
Speaker 3: result that she had avian influenza, they had an entire team,
Speaker 3: dozens of public health officials in her tiny village of
Speaker 3: less than two thousand people. They canvassed the village, they
Speaker 3: found her closest contacts, they did testings, they took the swabs,
Speaker 3: they got the results, and they found another infection in
Speaker 3: her father and ruled it out in about another dozen
Speaker 3: of her closest schoolmates, her grandmother, and her aunt. So
Speaker 3: they knew right away that they weren't dealing with a
Speaker 3: big outbreak. And then they continued to stay for another
Speaker 3: three weeks, testing dozens more people who developed flu symptoms,
Speaker 3: any kind of a sniffle, cold, cough, headache. They tested everybody.
Speaker 3: They didn't find anything else, so they were able to
Speaker 3: shut it down and knew that they weren't transmitting. But
Speaker 3: the idea that you can do something like that in
Speaker 3: Cambodia in a place where most people live in a
Speaker 3: pretty simple rural environment, and that they were able to
Speaker 3: get in there and use some of the most advanced
Speaker 3: medical technology that the world has in order to make
Speaker 3: sure that they didn't have a runaway outbreak was amazing.
Speaker 3: And the bottom line is that everywhere in the world
Speaker 3: knows that they do not want to be the next Wuhan,
Speaker 3: and health authorities worldwide are really focused on acting quickly.
Speaker 2: When we come back, how countries around the globe are
Speaker 2: responding to these bird flu outbreaks Susie. In this case,
Speaker 2: we saw a rapid response from Cambodia, but what are
Speaker 2: other countries in Europe and the US other places around
Speaker 2: the world doing to prepare for the possibility that bird
Speaker 2: flu may one day start to spread from person to person.
Speaker 4: So we've seen similar levels of alertness globally. In the UK,
Speaker 4: the government put together a panel around November of experts
Speaker 4: both in zoology but also in human pandemic preparedness epidemiologists.
Speaker 4: We had Neil Ferguson, the famous epidemiologists who advise the
Speaker 4: UK government on its COVID nineteen responses on that panel,
Speaker 4: and all of those experts have been meeting every week
Speaker 4: or so and in smaller groups to discuss developments.
Speaker 5: A number of them are doing research.
Speaker 4: I spoke to one who at the Perbright Institute, which
Speaker 4: is just outside London specifically focuses on animal diseases and
Speaker 4: they are doing a lot of testing to monitor if
Speaker 4: the virus is mutating and if the virus is able
Speaker 4: to jump to human cells, and then feeding that research.
Speaker 5: Back into that panel to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 4: Other things they have put in place include kind of
Speaker 4: risk based assessments, so they have alert levels for certain
Speaker 4: signs of the virus evolving or changing, because we have
Speaker 4: already seen mutations hence the jump from birds to mammalian species. Globally,
Speaker 4: when it comes to controlling the virus, we've seen a
Speaker 4: number of countries in the EU and the UK introducing
Speaker 4: housing measures that basically means that farmers are forced to
Speaker 4: keep their birds inside for the time being to make
Speaker 4: sure that they're kept away from contact as far as
Speaker 4: possible with wild birds that.
Speaker 5: May be carrying the virus. In the UK.
Speaker 4: That measure came in November and has actually just recently
Speaker 4: been lifted. Some countries are also now actually changing their
Speaker 4: stance around vaccination of birds as well.
Speaker 2: The Buying Administration is considering vaccinations for chickens an option
Speaker 2: to address concerns about a bird flu pandemic.
Speaker 4: To date, that has been something countries have been hesitant
Speaker 4: to do because of a fear of masking the virus
Speaker 4: and just allowing it to pervade with asymptomatic symptoms. But
Speaker 4: we've seen France has now asked a number of companies
Speaker 4: to create vaccines for its birds. Netherlands similarly because they've
Speaker 4: decided that it is actually going to be a better
Speaker 4: way to control the virus overall in the long term.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is absolutely an issue worldwide. Brazil, which is
Speaker 3: the largest exporter of chickens, hasn't had any Alian influenza
Speaker 3: cases yet, and they are now surrounded by them from
Speaker 3: their neighboring countries and they are really starting to worry
Speaker 3: about it. They're tracking birds, they're tracking wild birds, they're
Speaker 3: looking for the virus, trying to keep it out as
Speaker 3: best they can. Although as su As you said, earlier.
Speaker 5: It's a very difficult thing to do.
Speaker 3: Countries like the US, major manufacturers like Tyson's Food are
Speaker 3: really taking it very seriously, but it's very, very difficult
Speaker 3: to stop something that literally flies through the air and
Speaker 3: is carried by animals that are wild Asia. Avian influenza
Speaker 3: has been here for years at this point. Hundreds of
Speaker 3: people have gotten infected, hundreds have died from avian influenza.
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons that Cambodia was able to
Speaker 3: respond so quickly when they did have a case. It
Speaker 3: wasn't something that was unfamiliar to them. But just as
Speaker 3: Cambodia is focusing in on this, everyone else in Asia
Speaker 3: is as well. The other thing, of course, is that
Speaker 3: influenzas do tend to pop up in Asia first and
Speaker 3: then circulate through the rest of the world. And because
Speaker 3: there is so much interaction between animals and people in
Speaker 3: this region, for whatever reason, we do seem to see
Speaker 3: a lot of spillover from animals to humans here happening first.
Speaker 3: A lot of the brand new novel viruses that are
Speaker 3: emerging come out of Asia. Of course, it's a significant
Speaker 3: issue for China, which is where COVID first was identified,
Speaker 3: and we have seen a case of avian influenza in
Speaker 3: China and a death this serial read, so it is
Speaker 3: something that is known and they are tracking it very closely.
Speaker 4: I think the problem with this disease as well is
Speaker 4: that you can do a certain amount to protect farm
Speaker 4: animals and to protect poultry because they are in the
Speaker 4: control of humans who are operating those farms and who
Speaker 4: are producing eggs. So they can do what a number
Speaker 4: of countries have done, which is keep birds inside, make
Speaker 4: sure that they're not outside, to raise kind of levels
Speaker 4: of security coming in and out of farms, making sure
Speaker 4: people are having contact with the birds are doing so
Speaker 4: in a cleanly or sterile way. But what you can't
Speaker 4: control as wildbirds and the contact between wildbirds and domesticated birds.
Speaker 4: So it would just take one infected wild bird flying
Speaker 4: over a flock of domesticated poultry defecating and there you
Speaker 4: have the outbreak, and there's little that farmers can do
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 2: And if that happens, it can decimate an entire flog.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's right, because it's hugely transmissible. And also once
Speaker 4: the infection's been discovered, then a mass coll often has
Speaker 4: to happen because you need to make sure that that
Speaker 4: doesn't then get transferred over into humans. So to illustrate
Speaker 4: how difficult this virus is to control, we actually spoke
Speaker 4: to one duck farmer outside the city of Seattle, and
Speaker 4: she had, just before Christmas, decided to adopt some really
Speaker 4: strict biosecurity measures, no visitors, specific shoes, specific jackets, a
Speaker 4: guard dog, to make sure that wild birds were scared
Speaker 4: away from the farm, every measure she possibly could to
Speaker 4: protect her flock and ensure that avilamitwinsa didn't get in.
Speaker 5: However, right before Christmas, she was forced to.
Speaker 4: Call more than one hundred and seventy ducks and four geese,
Speaker 4: And that could have just been simply because one bird
Speaker 4: flew over her flock and defecated. And that's something that
Speaker 4: she just can't control, no matter how many biosecurity business she.
Speaker 5: Puts in place.
Speaker 2: Susie, the avian flu isn't just having this impact on
Speaker 2: birds and people in terms of becoming sick, but it's
Speaker 2: also having really big economic effects. How has this outbreak
Speaker 2: effected businesses and consumers?
Speaker 4: So the economic impact of this has already been huge
Speaker 4: despite not being a pandemic in humans, despite still being
Speaker 4: limited to the animal population. The USSDA estimates the burfy
Speaker 4: outbreak has cost the US economy two billion dollars in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: The average price for a dozen of eggs has more
Speaker 5: than a double.
Speaker 2: Eggs has been skyrock The prices of eggs won't stop climbing.
Speaker 5: Because we've had these mass coals.
Speaker 4: That means you've got less birds producing eggs, but also
Speaker 4: it's a huge blow to the farming industry. By culling
Speaker 4: all these birds, you're significantly impacting those industries and their
Speaker 4: usual revenue generating means both selling and buying birds, but
Speaker 4: also the products.
Speaker 5: The eggs, which has had a huge impact globally. That's
Speaker 5: not just limited to the US, of course.
Speaker 4: We've seen huge coals in China, in the UK, in Europe.
Speaker 3: And it goes beyond even the animals themselves. Many of
Speaker 3: the products that are made using these ingredients, right mayonnaise,
Speaker 3: think about it, there's been a shortage of eggs that
Speaker 3: you need to make mayonnaise in other places. In Japan,
Speaker 3: for example, some McDonald stopped making certain products because they
Speaker 3: needed to use ingredients that included eggs and they couldn't
Speaker 3: get enough of them to actually offer those products. So
Speaker 3: we did see a huge impact over the course of
Speaker 3: the early parts of this year from the mass calling
Speaker 3: and the lack of animal meat and eggs.
Speaker 2: Susie, given everything we've been talking about today and the
Speaker 2: levels of preparation needed to combat what may be coming,
Speaker 2: what are you watching for as you're reporting this story?
Speaker 2: What do you think comes next?
Speaker 5: I think the key things are that human to human transmission.
Speaker 4: We have experts who are monitoring this constantly, and governments
Speaker 4: are clearly on high alert for this, and at the
Speaker 4: moment it's not seeming like scientists are overly concerned about
Speaker 4: that happening. However, you just can't say never with these diseases.
Speaker 4: But I think the bigger question that it also raises
Speaker 4: is while we have seen a good level of preparedness
Speaker 4: with avian influenza, it's also a disease that we know
Speaker 4: a lot about and scientists have been researching it for decades.
Speaker 4: We have influenza vaccines, albeit not bespoke ones to avian
Speaker 4: influenza of a strain that will transmit between humans at
Speaker 4: this point, but we have templates. What we don't have
Speaker 4: for a number of other invectious diseases is much for
Speaker 4: such at all. There's a whole list of infectious diseases
Speaker 4: that the WHO has that have very little known about them.
Speaker 4: And having spoken to scientists in recent months about this,
Speaker 4: there is a sense that governments have slightly kind of
Speaker 4: vacated this space. You know, we're living in a cost
Speaker 4: of living crisis, we have the a Russia Ukrainian War,
Speaker 4: there are so many other things that governments are having
Speaker 4: to contend with at this point, and also a certain
Speaker 4: amount of pandemic fatigue. People want to move on from
Speaker 4: COVID nineteen. They don't want it to be ever present
Speaker 4: in their lives, but there is a reality to which
Speaker 4: we will have another pandemic at point. It might not
Speaker 4: be tomorrow, but it will happen. So if we are
Speaker 4: not careful, we will find ourselves in a position that
Speaker 4: could be far far worse than COVID, with a.
Speaker 5: Disease that we know very little about.
Speaker 4: So I think it's just important at the moment that
Speaker 4: we keep that front of mine, and scientists are very
Speaker 4: much rallying governments to keep that front of mine right now.
Speaker 2: Michelle Susie, thanks so much for speaking.
Speaker 6: With me today.
Speaker 5: Thanks guys, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: After the break. How do these viruses work and how
Speaker 2: far are we from a bird flu vaccine? Now, let's
Speaker 2: hear from someone who studies exactly how bird flu and
Speaker 2: other viruses make that leap from animals to humans and
Speaker 2: then sometimes humans to humans. Doctor Richard Webbe is an
Speaker 2: infectious diseases expert at Saint Jude's Hospital in Memphis and
Speaker 2: director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Studies
Speaker 2: on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and birds.
Speaker 1: There's three sort of major categories of change the avian
Speaker 1: flu virus has to make to successfully make that next leap,
Speaker 1: so it goes.
Speaker 6: Human to human, to human to human and then sort
Speaker 6: of it's all over.
Speaker 1: One of those is the way in which this virus
Speaker 1: interacts with the host's cell. These viruses buying to sugars
Speaker 1: on the surface of a cell. Those sugars are different
Speaker 1: in avian hosts and now in human so as virus
Speaker 1: has got now change to recognize the human sugar a
Speaker 1: bit better, that allows it to get into the human cell.
Speaker 1: There's another category of change which stabilizes it makes it
Speaker 1: a little bit more stable in the environment. And the
Speaker 1: third category is the machinery that when this virus gets
Speaker 1: into a cell essentially tells that cell to make more
Speaker 1: copies of that virus. And the way it does it
Speaker 1: is slightly different in an avian cell to human cell,
Speaker 1: So it's got to make a few mutations in its
Speaker 1: own genes to allow that to happen as well.
Speaker 2: Now that we've seen avian flu make the first leap
Speaker 2: from birds into humans, is it just a matter of
Speaker 2: time that it will learn to adapt and spread from
Speaker 2: human to humans? Is this just an inevitable thing or
Speaker 2: could it just never happen?
Speaker 1: There is a possibility could never happen. If you think
Speaker 1: of all of the flu viruses that are in the
Speaker 1: wild bird wild duck populations, only three major groups. Some
Speaker 1: are very successfully actually made that leap from being a
Speaker 1: duck virus to being a human virus. This bird flu
Speaker 1: virus that we have circulating now, we have never seen
Speaker 1: it as a virus that successfully transmits in humans before,
Speaker 1: and some people interpret that as saying, well, it doesn't actually.
Speaker 6: Have a threat.
Speaker 1: Now I read the Telly's a little bit different. I
Speaker 1: read that as saying, you know, this is a virus
Speaker 1: that does have the capacity to transmit between humans, and
Speaker 1: there's some experimental data that suggests that's the case, but
Speaker 1: it just has a few more hurdles to get over
Speaker 1: to make that switch.
Speaker 2: You and other scientists who are studying this problem are
Speaker 2: of something the alarmed to say, we need to have
Speaker 2: preparations in place for the day that it might happen.
Speaker 6: Exactly how do you prepare for that? We really have
Speaker 6: to prepare for it. So and the question what can
Speaker 6: we do.
Speaker 1: We can at least go down that pipeline of getting
Speaker 1: vaccines ready to go for some of these viruses.
Speaker 6: You know, this virus will continue.
Speaker 1: To evolve in birds and as it sort of jumps
Speaker 1: into different hosts, so it will change. But there's some
Speaker 1: things we can do now that if there is a
Speaker 1: response needed to this virus in terms of vaccine, you know,
Speaker 1: we're a little ways already down that path. We can
Speaker 1: make sure that our diagnostic cassays that we have to
Speaker 1: detect this virus are robust and they're widely distributed, make
Speaker 1: people aware of the fact that this is a virus
Speaker 1: that's out there in the environment.
Speaker 2: So those are all things that can be done. What
Speaker 2: is being done? What are the World Health Organization and
Speaker 2: other government bodies doing to try to get ready.
Speaker 1: In terms of the World Health Organization, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things that they do do. One, follow the evolution
Speaker 1: of this particular virus, and if it looks like has
Speaker 1: changed a little bit, there will update some of what
Speaker 1: we call vaccine viruses, and these are the viruses that
Speaker 1: would go to manufacturers to make vaccine. Typically takes around
Speaker 1: about four to six weeks to make these, so if
Speaker 1: we make those in advance, then that takes that amount
Speaker 1: of time off a response. So this is a continual process.
Speaker 1: Quite a lot of risk assessment that's been done, sort
Speaker 1: of going over the data that's available on these viruses.
Speaker 1: There's anything changing in terms of risk to humans. From
Speaker 1: a more governmental national perspective, the US government has put
Speaker 1: a lot of resources into making some stockpoles against the
Speaker 1: H five, which is the avian flu that we're talking
Speaker 1: about now. Some of those are a little bit older now,
Speaker 1: so it's a little unclear as to how useful they'll
Speaker 1: be with the current strain. But as manufacturers get these viruses,
Speaker 1: they grow, then they put there in a facility. We
Speaker 1: do small clinical trials, we learn how to make manufacture,
Speaker 1: distribute these vaccines. So there is quite a bit of
Speaker 1: experience in terms of making at least small scale vaccines
Speaker 1: against this virus, and that's been a process that's been
Speaker 1: going on for a couple of decades.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: Has it been difficult to communicate the sense of urgency
Speaker 2: to governments and even just citizens who may be kind
Speaker 2: of fatigued after COVID and not wanting to think about
Speaker 2: another pandemic.
Speaker 1: I think we're all sick of hear hanging about viruses.
Speaker 1: This H five bird flu virus has been around in
Speaker 1: various forms for a lot of time. The alarm bells
Speaker 1: have been ringing on this one since really nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven when it first crossed over to humans in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: So it's not just even the COVID pandemic with this,
Speaker 1: it's look out, this virus coming.
Speaker 6: Look out, this virus is coming. And you know, so
Speaker 6: far it hasn't.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's really hard in that environment, and then
Speaker 1: with the COVID fatigue on top of it to get
Speaker 1: too many people sort of excited and interested and just
Speaker 1: to really understand the threat that this virus poses.
Speaker 2: If it should come to pass, that it is able
Speaker 2: to transmit human to human. Are you optimistic that we're ready?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we're not going to be ready in terms of
Speaker 1: if we're thinking, well, we're ready tomorrow, we're going to
Speaker 1: have vaccine in our arms. We're going to be able
Speaker 1: to stop the spread of this virus. That's not going
Speaker 1: to happen. Having said that, we're going to compare what
Speaker 1: our response to a flu pandemic might be to sort
Speaker 1: of what our response to the COVID nineteen pandemic was.
Speaker 1: There's are some advantages of flu one. We're preparing for
Speaker 1: it now. We've been preparing for a flu pandemic.
Speaker 6: For a long time.
Speaker 1: That wasn't necessarily the case for COVID. They came a
Speaker 1: little bit out of left field. We know how to
Speaker 1: make flu vaccines that work. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: experience with that. There's a lot of capacity to diagnose
Speaker 1: and fluenza out there. So rather than almost starting from
Speaker 1: zero to sixty, we had to go with the COVID response.
Speaker 1: You know, we're almost sort of cruising along at thirty
Speaker 1: mile an hour here, so I've just got to go
Speaker 1: thirty to sixty with a flu pandemic.
Speaker 2: Doctor Richard Webby, thanks for speaking with me today.
Speaker 6: It's a pleasure waste. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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