Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Possible global pandemic averted!!!

phew!!! man, what a shocker. I first heard of H2N2 this morning. My daughter, Lindsay asked me if i'd heard about the 'almost' potential pandemic. I hadn't at that point - but on watching CTV News tonight.. *Hey, remember that South Park movie song "Blame Canada" the one that Robin Williams sang on the Oscars a few years back?! Well, that tune was going around in my head just now as i watched the late night news. . and the words were slightly different: THANK CANADA! * Yes, a Canadian lab saved 18 countries and 4000 laboratories in those 18 countries from distributing a deadly Asian flu virus. Here's a link for you, http://www.ctvnews.ca Have a read and wipe your brow and thank God that He helped a Canadian lab to discover this dreadful and potentially hugely fatal mistake. When you read the article, some seem to downplay the 'deadliness' potential here.. .yet the headline alarms us " . . Killer virus"! Well, which is it?! threat or no threat? Maybe a moot point now, but we will never know what might have been, will we?

They say that anyone born after 1968 would likely have little immunity against H2N2. I would have been safe, so would Rob. . .possibly not so for several of you who are reading this blog. That's a sobering thought. It seems that the CDC in Atlanta http://www.cdc.gov was involved in this, as I suspected. I'd seen a documentary several years ago on the work done at the CDC; they really do such important work there. .among other things, predicting flu trends and formulating vaccines. Indeed, I think it was from there that these 'test kit' shipments were shipped world wide. Of the 20 Canadian labs that received the deadly stuff, all samples have been destroyed - by superheating.

It must have been a shock for the techs to identify a virus from 1957!!!! Apparently these boxes that went around the world were not labeled!!! ???? Of course the reporter brought up the bioterrorism fears that lurk in our minds when it comes to a mistake of that magnitude. How exactly did this happen? I'm not sure if they've really determined that. I'll have to do some more reading, see what else is being discovered. Quite the world wake up call! and now i'm gonna sign off. .i'm getting a call, a 'sleep now' call!!! weird. . . i slept well last night, completely ignorant of the several months of work that went into averting this disaster - a time line reveals investigation, backtracking, pinpointing what and to which source. . and i'll sleep well tonight, again unaware of other narrow misses and potential disasters averted somewhere else by someone else! ignorance really is bliss??

1 comment:

kathryn said...

its weird, eh? last case in 68? wow, i was in grade 1 then!! the reporter mentioned 1957 - which might have been the date of origin of the virus? scary stuff . . .i should have linked to the WHO (World Health Organization)