some new Tamiflu links

Tamiflu® World has collected a number of new links leading to articles dealing with the stockpiling of Tamiflu as a way of addressing the threat of a global pandemic of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza ("bird flu"). Here they are:

Laurie Garrett's recommendations

"A $3.9-billion first strike," in which Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, talks, in her usual tone of visionary practicality, about the pending legislation in the U.S. Congress that would mostly be used to buy a lot of Tamiflu, saying:

"That means that instead of spending most of the appropriation on Tamiflu, we should demand that the pharmaceutical industry rev up flu vaccine production and then use some of the $3.9 billion to pull genuine innovations out of the lab and into quick mass production. Further, a hefty percentage of that money should be spent on helping Los Angeles and other cities and states prepare: Where will they put all the patients? The bodies? How will they feed house-bound millions? How can they keep the economies and machineries of their jurisdictions running while a deadly pandemic holds them in its grip for more than a year?"

Ms. Garrett's remarks include a refutation of President Bush's suggestion of using (unvaccinated) military personal to impose an ineffectual "quarantine" against the H5N1 virus. She writes:

"the president suggested [on October 4, 2005] we might need to quarantine sections of the nation, adding, 'and who best to be able to effect a quarantine? One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move.'

"But hold on, Mr. President: Even your own top flu experts at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control will tell you that human influenzas are so contagious there is little, if any, evidence that quarantine helps. Further, your top military leaders have told me that there is no Defense Department plan in place for the protection of active-duty personnel, much less one aimed at putting the armed forces in charge of domestic epidemic management."

You can read the President's remarks at his October 4, 2005 press conference about a possible global H5N1 avian influenza/bird flu pandemic and how the U.S. federal government might respond to or try to prevent it by clicking here

two recommendations in favor of personal stockpiling of Tamiflu

"How to Survive H5N1 Avian or Bird Flu," in which the author, while professing to have "no medical qualifications," makes the case for personally stockpiling the anti-viral medication Tamiflu immediately.

The same recommendation is made on the blog Marginal Revolution," in an entry entitled "Should you stockpile Tamiflu?," in which the author says:

"your stockpiling behavior, in the meantime, bids up the price, runs down stocks, and encourages more production."

and a recommendation from Scotland AGAINST personal stockpiling

In an August 13, 2005, blog entry entitled "'Don't buy Tamiflu,'" the poster characterizes as "insanity" these statements by Professor Hugh Pennington, president of the Society for General Microbiology and emeritus professor at Aberdeen University:

"'People are buying it because there has been so much alarm about this, which is no doubt justified. If the virus is able to go from person to person - as has been suggested - and if it is as nasty as the few cases infected by birds were, we are in deep, deep trouble.

"'The worst-case scenario is something worse than the 1918 worldwide pandemic - which killed 40 million people. So you can understand why people are taking precautions.'

"But Prof Pennington was confident the government's contingency plans were adequate, and advised against buying the drug online. He said: 'My position would be that you should not take it without medical advice.'

"Tamiflu costs up to GBP 6.50 for a 12-hour dose, but Prof Pennington warned that people could be wasting their money. He said the drug would only work if taken at the right time.

"'If you give it out like sweeties a lot of people will take it unnecessarily,' he said."

big orders for Tamiflu and the diminishing effectiveness of earlier anti-virals

To access a September 22, 2005, article in the New York Times entitled "Studies Find Flu Vaccine and Antiviral Drugs Fall Far Short, by Elizabeth Rosenthal, which mentions that :

"In terms of antiviral drugs, 30 countries have placed huge orders for Tamiflu, the most popular newer more expensive antiviral medicine, said Martina Rupp, a spokesman for Roche, the Swiss company that makes it. The Dutch Health Ministry has ordered five million doses, enough to treat one-third of the population. Britain has ordered supplies to treat 15 million."

While pointing out that:

"Researchers speculate that one reason resistance rates to the older, cheaper antiviral drugs jumped so much starting in 2000 -- and skyrocketed after 2002 -- is that doctors in Asia started prescribing the drugs far more widely after the advent of bird flu in 1997 and sudden acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2002."

click here.

 

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