After the tsunami, a spectre of bird flu

The devastation caused by the earthquakes in Asia sets up an ominous foreground for the explosion of a lethal new mutation of avian influenza. Environmental disruptions such as earthquakes, floods or droughts are portents that precede the great plagues of history. Populations of natural plague carriers such as rats are dislodged by disturbance and invade human settlements in search of food. Disasters (including war) create an ideal setting for the spread of disease: poor sanitation, refugees crammed together with animals in make-shift dwellings, contaminated food and water.

In 1918, the deadliest flu virus ever known killed as many as 100 million people worldwide in a single year. Victims drowning in their own fluids turned blue from cyanosis and haemorrhaged blood from their noses and ears. John M. Barry’s book The Great Influenza provides a stunning account of the devastation: mass graves in Philadelphia , deserted streets in New York , total terror in the population. Although medicine has come a long way since, a lethal new virus today can ‘go global’ in a matter of hours. A wave of bird flu in Australia could kill a minimum of 45,000 people. Most of those who died in the Spanish flu were between 24 and 40 years old and they did not live in developing countries. While the 1918 pandemic holds the record as the deadliest plague in history, it is about to get some serious competition.

An article appeared in The New Yorker recently warning of a lethal animal virus, spreading through Asia , which has made an evolutionary leap and passed into humans. The virus has apparently shown a terrifying ability to mutate, moving from one species to another, and an ominous ‘kill rate’. The pathogen in Michael Specter’s article is avian influenza, known also as ‘bird flu’, a deceptively harmless tag. The article warns that the virus could infect twenty-five to thirty-five percent of the world’s population. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has calculated a potential global death toll of hundred and eighty million people. No terrorist group has that destructive potential.

If the Boxing Day tsunami was a reminder of the fragility of our technologically-connected world, a global pandemic would kick us into a developmental corner: we would see a complete unravelling of the communications web that structures the 21 st century globe. Borders would close, planes would be grounded, trade would screech to a halt, services would fall apart. This is not a problem that will be confined to the developing world. While bio-terrorism rates high on government threat lists, the WHO projections show that a naturally occurring pandemic of the same pathogen would be infinitely more devastating. The potential effect has been compared to a worldwide nuclear holocaust. It is also much more likely to happen.

The chances of Islamic militants being able to buy a functioning biological weapon in the back streets of Kandahar or Karachi are small; the possibility of their being able to isolate a deadly pathogen, camped in Mindanao or the Sudan, to deliver it alive and with maximum efficiency, miniscule. (The deadliest bio-weapons attack to date was that on the Tokyo subway system by Aum Shinriko with Sarin gas that killed 12 people.) A naturally occurring pandemic on the other hand is waiting in the wings.

In 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) threatened to become a global pandemic. Ruthless response saw it contained and possibly eliminated entirely. However an influenza virus could not be controlled as SARS was. It is much more contagious. SARS requires close contact to infect and symptoms alert authorities to sick people while they are at their most contagious. Influenza spreads before people know they are ill. Airlines that were not overly concerned about SARS are very worried about the bird flu.

The Australian government is aware of the potential plague, but unfortunately plans are certain to be overwhelmed. The problem is too big, it cuts across so many government departments: it is a health issue, a security issue, a customs issue, a policing issue, a transportation and sanitation problem. Difficult ethical decisions will have to be made about immigration, quarantine, vaccination. And who will pay for it all? This matter, more than any other, screams for a whole-of-government approach. Talk of seamless co-ordination needs to take on substance. Contingency plans and risk assessments need a joint discipline approach, with scientists working alongside disaster crews, health officials talking to the public and to service departments. Fortunately, preparations for the effects of both an intentional infection and a naturally occurring one are similar; the issue is one of scale. While attention needs to be paid to terror and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, armed ideologues are not the only danger. It seems that the deadliest threat is not the terrorist with a suitcase bomb, but the traveller with a lethal pathogen that presents as a cold.

Miranda Darling is a Research Associate at The Centre for Independent Studies.