Byline: Hosted by Joel Achenbach

Scientists like Jeffery Taubenberger aren't just sitting there waitingfor a pandemic. They're gearing up for the war between bugs and humans.

Joel Achenbach, whose article about the scientific quest to understand thegenetic mysteries of the avian flu appeared in the Dec. 11 issue of Washington Post Magazine , was online to field questions and comments.

Joel Achenbach is a Magazine staff writer.

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Joel Achenbach: Let's roll! I hope you had a chance to read the Avian Flu story that ran yesterday. I just had a nice chicken caesar, and last night we roasted an entire turkey. So it's birds everywhere you look. I will try to answer your questions as bestest as I can, but will use my adult prerogative to express uncertainty on matters that are beyond my very limited expertise.

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San Antonio, Tex.: Joel, you mention in your article that the host for the 1918 flu pandemic is perhaps a strange bird--or perhaps mystery mammal--perhaps never studied by virologists. You call this mystery beast "an odd duck."

Given that Taubenberger is studying a number of viruses--human, pig, horse--is Taubenberger even remotely close to making an educated guess about which bird or mammal is the vector for the 1918 flu pandemic?

Also, did Taubenberger give you any probabilities about how likely it is that A/H5N1 will mutate to the point that is is transmissible human-to-human?

Joel Achenbach: Great questions.

Taubenberger -- let's call him JT -- says that 1918, though a "bird flu," just didn't look like other bird flus down at the codon level. Meaning, on very close scrutiny, there's something odd about the genetics of the virus. So he postulates that it evolved, at least part of the time, in a bird that hasn't been sampled (most bird flu samples come from very obvious critters -- chickens, ducks, geese -- in what might be called Streetlight Science, where you look for your lost car keys under the streetlight), or in a mammal such as a horse.

Taubenberger doesn't know the odds of H5N1 becoming contagious among humans -- he is struck that it hasn't so far, and wonders if that's because there's a roadblock. But like most scientists he agrees it's a potential major threat and ought to be studied carefully -- it DOES kill people.

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Miami, Fla.: Do you think that the fears being raised are not a bit overblown? Remember Y2K?

Joel Achenbach: We do tend to overblow fears, as a society. On the other hand, we have political leaders who, in some cases, barely even believe in the future. Like many issues this is one in which you needs grown-ups to make grown-up choices that take cost and risk into account. Personally I am not hugely worried YET about this particular strand of flu -- H5N1 -- simply because we don't know what its virulence would be if it mutated or reassorted into a human flu. More broadly, I think it's the government's job to anticipate problems that can't be addressed by the private industries, and that means helping rebuild the vaccine production capacity of the country and having hospitals and local authorities ready for the Big One when it does happen.

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McLean, Va.: Joel... why do you suppose the 1918 flu was so quickly erased from the world's collective memory? My mom only knew that her dad had suffered from a serious flu at Ft. Meade and had nearly died (ten years before she was born) but knew nothing of the scope of the pandemic.

I mean, come on... Bodies were piled up in major US cities and it was never even mentioned in school history classes during the rest of the century?

Joel Achenbach: The Forgotten Plague. I think that a pandemic striking in September 1918 was inevitably going to be overshadowed by the events of World War I, which was still happening. Moreover, authorities played down the crisis and there wasn't the kind of news media then to play it up. And maybe the ultimate reason is that disease -- sudden, lethal -- was much more a part of ordinary life pre-antibiotics.

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bc in Mt. Airy, Md.: Joel-

Has researching and writing this Pulitzer-prizeworthy article changed the way you're (as a husband and father) thinking about or preparing for the possibility of a pandemic?

By the way, "alpha nerd" and "...the human face of the future will be covered with a mask." are some nice turns of phrase.

bc

Joel Achenbach: I'm surprised they haven't just called off the Pulitzer competition already and declared me the winner.

My stepfather yesterday gave us all Christmas presents: surgical masks. Real top-notch HEPA-filter types. We're safe now.

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Rockville, Md. (Clinical Research Statistician): The sole driver-variable to avian flu is the proliferation of factory-farming and related mass-slaughter of captive flocks. One exposure and it's all over. If the practices associated with factory-farming and mass-slaughter were abolished, the risk would be reduced nearly immediately; poultry would be more expensive, but not much.

So who's resisting? The poultry industry, that's who. The same people who are now - today - lobbying for avian-flu related subsidies. It's like robbing a liquor store, then demanding a line-item for convicted liquor-store-robbers - and actually getting it.

So why no press coverage? This is all public-record.

Joel Achenbach: I do think we need a story on who exactly stands to benefit from the billions proposed in Avian Flu spending. The Post ran an advertisement today on the Fed Page saying "How Bad Will the Pandemic Flu Be? As Bad As 500 Katrinas." That's very much the worst case scenario. The groups sponsoring the ad include some public sector and medical associations, so it doesn't look like poultry industry money to me. About factory farming: I'm concerned that there are 18 billion chickens on the planet right now. I'm concerned that the vast majority come from a dwindling number of species -- everyone wants the big-breasted types in order to have more white meat for chicken nuggets. But so far the outbreaks have occurred not on factory farms but in relatively impoverished areas of the developing world -- Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Thailand.

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Chicago, Ill.: Greetings,Will my holiday turkey be safer from avian flu if I use my industrial pressure cooker or my deep fryer?

Or should I just order carry out Chinese food?

washingtonpost.com: Joel, if you need cooking tips to share, please call upon your producer, who knows a thing or two in the kitchen...

Joel Achenbach: At the moment the biggest threat posed by turkey is that you might choke on it.

Kim, do share tips on how to cook a turkey. My Mom and I cooked one yesterday and we darn sure killed anything alive in that bird.

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Seattle, Wash.: Is anyone aware that Homeopathic treatment cut the death rate from 1918 flu pandemic as much as 90?

Joel Achenbach: I hadn't heard that. If I get the Avian Flu I will ask for the strongest drugs known to Man.

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Washington, DC: I read the article with great interest, particularly the part about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. One of the things that was not mentioned is the role of the gas attacks during WWI. Mustard gas (and other gasses) often left men permanently debilitated due to respiratory problems. Perhaps these men were the thousands of petri dishes for the creation of the Spanish flu variation.

Joel Achenbach: But a lot of the sickened soldiers were in military bases far from the front lines. I've heard it suggested (and maybe someone out there can clarify this point) that the odd mortality of the 1918 bug was due to the virus's ability to trigger a hyperimmune response -- a cytokine storm, as they say. And thus a lot of very healthy people with healthy immune systems died as their antibodies ravaged the lung cells containing the virus.

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Washington, D.C.: I actually consider the re-created 1918 flu virus to be a greater threat than the Avian flu. If it escapes the confines of the CDC labs in which it is now being studied, there would be no immunity against it and it would kill millions (as it did in 1918). Why isn't a vaccine being manufactured for this virus?

Joel Achenbach: You're mistaken. There's an H1 flu bug currently in circulation that is the descendant of the 1918 virus, and anyone who has been exposed to that bug (most of us, probably) has some immunity to the 1918 virus. Moreover, although flu CAN escape from a lab -- one of the three strains in circulation is apparently an escapee from a Soviet lab in the 1970s -- the CDC has multiple layers of security to keep that from happening. Keep in mind that this is not a mouse than can scamper out of the building.

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