Flu lobbying
Flu lobbying
"On reading," by Simon Wain-Hobson, is a weekly discussion of scientific papers and news articles around gain of function research in virology.
Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.
Coming from one of the authors of the papers that sparked the DURC (ex-GOF) controversy more than a decade ago, the focus of attention is once again… H5N1 bird flu virus. Note that the present paper was published in April 2023 and so predates H5N1 infections of cows in the US. By paragraph two the stage is set for a body count. Between 2003 and 2022, H5 HPAI virus infections were reported in 950 people, of whom 489 died. It’s been a regular opening gambit of many infectious disease papers for decades as though a body count will garner attention, as though my virus is more deadly than yours.
As mentioned in a previous essay rabies virus kills over 50,000 per year (Skyfall). As the authors note, so far H5N1 kills around 25 people per year on average, less than the annual number of deaths from hornet, wasp, and bee stings over the period 2011-21 which range from 59 (2012) to 89 (2017). The fear is that one day H5N1 will transmit efficiently between humans and spark a pandemic. As we do know what human flu pandemics look like, it’s wise to be careful. And be prepared. Like so much in life, it’s a question of anticipation, preparation and waiting.
That said, fearmongering is never a good guide.
For the first time, in 2021, the virus remained present year-round in wild birds in Europe, spread to North America, and spread onwards to South America in 2022. …H5 virus infections were reported in more than 30 wild animal species that often exhibited both severe respiratory and neurological disease. To this list can now be added cows and goats although the disease seems to be mild illustrating the variability of disease in different hosts.
Jumping species with a change in pathogenicity is not new as readers know. Lassa fever is endemic in some strains of mice in West Africa but provokes severe disease and death in humans. There are more examples, such as herpes B virus infection of macaques.
We learn that Pandemics are notoriously difficult to predict, but influenza viruses have been highest on the list of potential pandemic threats. This is glorious coming from Dr. Fouchier who, a decade ago, claimed his work would predict the next flu pandemic strain. And while it was obvious to some at the time, it is good that he’s come round albeit more than a decade later. Better late than never.
Yet reread the sentence. This admission is followed by a ‘but’. What do the words downstream mean? That we’ll have a flu pandemic sooner or later? But nobody in their right mind doubts that.
Natural flu pandemics occurred starting 1918, 1957, 1968, 1977 and 2009. Although Russian flu of 1977 resulted from some sort of lab leak, we’ll keep it in as it could happen again. The period between human flu pandemics is therefore 39, 11, 9 and 32 years. Albeit, with just five data points On reading predicts the next flu pandemic to occur between 2018 and 2048. Howzat!
Common knowledge you say. Exactly!
The reasoning is OK we can’t predict the next flu pandemic but don’t forget flu. Nobody had, nobody would. Mere lobbying.
Where have we seen this before? In the Fauci and Collins OpEd in the Washington Post. Here the considerable unknowns surrounding the Fouchier and Kawaoka’s studies were brushed aside by a ‘nonetheless’ (Chilled virology).
Back to the present paper. There follows a series of suggestions as to what can be done such as the reduction of poultry farm sizes and density, and avoidance of areas rich in water birds as a location for poultry farms. Excellent, prosaic, and miles away from bench virology.
So-called what if scenario exercises are needed to assess level of preparedness. Agreed, especially as we have heard that most nations were underprepared for the COVID pandemic, despite epidemiologists talking about pandemic preparedness since HIV/AIDS more than 40 years ago. For example, while there has been discussion of the six-foot social distancing rule in recent US congressional hearings, in France the distance was one meter (just over three feet). Go figure.
These exercises include reviewing what would be needed in terms of consumables, including personal protection equipment, diagnostics, and medicines, and assessing the capacity and scalability of the public health sector and hospitals, including personnel levels. No problem with this except that it’s not lab virology. More public health measures.
WHO has selected virus strains for vaccines… but the time needed to generate sufficient pandemic vaccines for global use is a concern. It would have been good to have been told whether these strains take care of genetic changes in the virus and protect against the current circulating strain, the sorts of considerations we see with the annual flu vaccine. A recent paper discusses this.
In the face of an exploding pandemic time has always been an issue and always will be. It’s a race against death. By the time you know what to do with the novel virus, it could well be too late. That’s really hard on public health people. The use of RNA vaccines will no doubt help, but we need to know whether they provide good immunity to flu.
Finally, it is crucial to include the community. Effective measures against new pandemics can be thwarted by lack of public and political cooperation. It is vital to be open about what is known and what is unknown, communicate about risks, and be a trustworthy partner in discussions. Don’t know where to start? By any metric a mea culpa even though the first and last authors were not on Fouchier’s H5N1 paper.
The first two sentences are obvious although virologists backed the DURC (ex-GOF) work to the hilt even though it couldn’t deliver. And yes, the public needs trustworthy partners. But before that, trust is necessary among fellow scientists. You must know your colleagues are not distorting the arguments, making ridiculous claims that are not sustained by current knowledge, milking emotion for attention and grant monies. Wish lists are fine but they must be distinguishable from facts. And while we’re at it, hypothesis breaking, which can be fun, has to be part and parcel of hypothesis making, which is great fun. You can’t take the latter and leave hypothesis breaking to fellow virologists. That’s cherry picking; aka bad science.
Then the reader runs into the disturbing sentence Intentional disinformation needs to be countered. First, Fouchier and colleagues peddled a hypothesis that was obviously flawed from the get-go. If you are asking for humility on the part of others, set an example. We saw with COVID that the lab leak hypothesis was dismissed out of hand by a small coterie of scientists without data. Still is. There was even pressure on Facebook/Meta to take down stories on COVID including the lab leak. Thanks to a small number of people who persisted, notably DRASTIC and USRTK to mention but two groups, the lab leak is now considered to be credible according to Drs. Fauci & Collins even though they and most virologists still favor a zoonosis. Even though there are gaping holes in this hypothesis in terms of evidence.
The web is full of conspiracy theories and will probably stay this way. When necessary, all scientists need to say is ‘it’s just BS’. Simply point out the lack of data, contradictions and distinguish fact from science fiction, and stop. In public of course, in as simple language as possible without dumbing down and answer questions from anyone.
Oh, and by the way, do you really believe that reason can quash internet conspiracy theories? Seriously?
The least efficient is when self-anointed virologists or establishment bosses, come down from some cloud with writings resembling Proximal Origins or the Lancet paper on COVID origins. These sad pieces made no sense for there was next to no data out there in February 2020 to make a call either way. Arguments from high don’t work today. Never did.
The piece finishes with Let lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic guide our preparations for the next pandemic, which might develop from this avian influenza virus. Let us translate our knowledge into action. As an old HIV/AIDS hand On reading has heard variants of this before. Indeed, they are variants of the ‘never again’ sentiment that followed World War I. Why is it so hard to learn from the past? The authors couldn’t resist a self-serving reminder of their own research area in virology, H5N1 flu. At least their former GOF colleague-in-arms, Dr. Kawaoka, served up a list of potential pandemic pathogens.
As to the last sentence, what knowledge? The preparative public health measures described above, surely. When it comes to virology, continued surveillance is essential as the authors write, and attempts to cut back on this would be a big mistake. As to the rest Pandemics are notoriously difficult to predict. Why couldn’t you have said this 12 years ago? It would have spared us a huge amount of wasted time - scientific articles by virologists saying otherwise, newspaper articles and unnecessary tension in virology.
The paper is simply talking up H5N1 flu research, aka lobbying.
