Re: West Nile Virus Help ???

["Tyrone Genade" <Tgenade at sun_ac.za>]

On 5 Aug 2002, at 21:11, Wayne Morrow wrote:

> >
> >Excuse me........it seems there is a vaccine to inoculate horses and
> >none for humans ?
> 
> Perhaps different researchers work on human and equine disease.
> One imagines that the chemistry of horses and people differ, hence the
> need for vets and physicians. Wayne

The reason for vets and physicians is more to do with anatomy than 
biochemistry.

If there is a vaccine for horses then there should be one for people 
too. The vaccine may need to be attenuated as horse immune systems 
are stronger than human ones (hence their use for snake bite 
antiserum production, as well as the fact that you can get large 
volumes of blood from one animals with high antibody titers).

The main reason why no human vaccine is yet available is because of 
the low risk of the disease. Even if the offending mosquito is a 
carrier there is a less than 1% chance of infection 
(http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/q&a.htm#transmission). In 
2001 in NY state only 60 people came down with the disease. How many 
million people live in NY state?

In Sierra Leone (spelling!) and Nigeria Lassa fever has an incidence 
of about 15% of all hospital admittance and a fatality rate of only 
15-
20%.(http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/lassaf.htm)

If you accept that NY state has a population of 19,011,378 
(http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html) and only 60 
infections that meens you have an insidence rate of 3.15 x 10^-6
0.0000315% of which 11% die.:-(. Looking at West africa of with an 
estimated population of say 40 million there are 100 to 300 000 cases 
per year. This translates to 0.25 to 0.75% incidence of which 15 to 
20% die.

These are simplified stats but the point is that West Nile Virus is 
hardly a problem. There are greater things to worry about like the 
next wave of influenze which will take out more elderly people in one 
year than WNV will.

In short, don't worry. You should be more concerned about the chicken 
you are cooking for dinner.

Regards

Tyrone Genade
tgenade at sun_ac.za
http://www.tyronegenade.0catch.com
cell#: 084-3354-977

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