Word: viruses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last time a new influenza virus reached pandemic levels was in 1968, but the episode was not significantly deadlier than a typical bad flu season. Few people who lived through it even knew it occurred. Still, it killed 34,000 Americans. The 1918 pandemic was far more lethal. It killed 675,000 Americans at a time when the U.S. population was 100 million. Fifty million to 100 million people perished worldwide in the 1918 pandemic, according to Nobel laureate F. Macfarlane Burnet. The flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years. The difference...
What will happen during the next pandemic? No one can predict, but even a virus as mild as the 1968 strain would kill many tens of thousands in the U.S. alone. Since 1968, demographic changes have made influenza a greater, not a lesser, threat. Our population now includes more elderly and more people with a weakened immune system. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that influenza kills 36,000 Americans in an average year. The CDC also calculates that a pandemic caused by a virus comparable to that of 1968 would kill between...
Even the mildest virus would slam the economy harder now than at any time in the past. That's because businesses--and hospitals--have improved efficiency to minimize slack. When absenteeism prevents one plant from shipping a part, or when a surge of patients overwhelms a hospital already understaffed because of sickness, massive disruptions result...
...voted last week to add $4 billion to a defense-spending bill to prepare for a bird-flu epidemic, three-fourths of the money was earmarked for Tamiflu and other antiviral medications. But a dilemma looms. It's difficult to predict when--or if--the current strain of the virus, which is known to have killed just 60 people worldwide, will mutate into something more easily spread among humans. Makers of flu vaccines can't simultaneously produce both bird-flu and regular-flu varieties in sufficient quantity. Shift gears too early, and it could be a false alarm, and millions...
...health authorities in the U.S. and many other countries, you're counting on the anti-viral drug Tamiflu (generic name oseltamivir) to save you should bird flu become pandemic, you may have to think again. A Hong Kong expert told Reuters on Friday that a strain of the H5N1 virus isolated in northern Vietnam this year is resistant to Tamiflu. More common human flu viruses have also recently been shown to be developing a resistance to another set of antivirals called adamantine drugs...