Checks into bird flu cluster reassuring: CDC (Day-Trader Delights)

[Guest guest]

What a concept. Just whisper "human to human" and all of lovely pharma makes money..and their wonderful investors. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2001416 WASHINGTON - Members of an Indonesian family who died of bird flu may have infected each other and health experts are tracing anyone who had contact with them, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday. The seven deaths in the family in Kubu Sembilang village in north Sumatra over the past few weeks is the largest family cluster off bird flu victims known to date. But villagers are now cooperating with health investigators and there is no sign that the H5N1 avian flu virus has infected anyone outside the family, said CDC Director Dr. Gerberding. Nonetheless, financial markets were jittery and buyers drove up stocks in companies working on influenza vaccines and drugs in what one analyst called a "knee-jerk reaction." World Health Organization and Indonesian health officials cannot find the source of the infection in Sumatra, but Gerberding said genetic sequencing shows the H5N1 virus has not mutated substantially. "The concern that has been raised ... is the potential for evidence for human-to-human transmission in this outbreak," Gerberding told reporters in a telephone briefing. "This is the leading hypothesis that is under investigation. The likely source was poultry exposure, as we have seen time and time again." LINE OF TRANSMISSION But the case may represent what is known as tertiary transmission -- someone may have been infected by a chicken and infected a relative, who in turn infected someone else. While rare cases of human-to-human transmission have been seen before -- in Thailand and Vietnam --

doctors believe that one person only infected one other in those instances and the chain of transmission stopped there. "A person to person-to-person transmission chain is very important ... that is why there has been such attention and such an effort," said Gerberding. Firdosi Mehta, acting representative of the WHO in Indonesia, said experts in Kubu Sembilang were acting to contain any further spread. "We are going wide, contacting the various contacts, putting on (anti-viral) Tamiflu whoever has had close contact, basically putting family members who have not been affected on Tamiflu as a precaution," Mehta told Reuters in Jakarta. "There is active surveillance in the village, fever surveillance to look for any more cases that are occurring outside this immediate family cluster," he said. Financial markets

were spooked by fears that the Indonesia cluster could be the start of a pandemic. Currencies in Asia fell. Shares in poultry industry companies like Tyson Foods,Pilgrim's Pride and Gold Kist and on Farms Inc. all declined and there was concern at the corn and soybean pits of the Chicago Board of Trade, the largest grain exchange. Buyers embraced companies working on bird flu vaccines -- which are years away from the market -- and influenza drugs. DAY TRADERS' DELIGHT Shares of Gilead Sciences Inc. closed up 3 percent. Gilead collects royalties on sales of Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu, which can both treat and prevent influenza. Shares of Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. , working on a new flu antiviral called peramivir, closed up more than 9 percent while Novavax Inc. and Vical Inc., which are developing an avian flu vaccines, both closed up 6 percent. "Right now you have reckless buying based on knee jerk reactions," said Steve Brozak, an analyst for WBB Securities, who referred to the stock moves as "day traders' delight." Bird flu has infected 218 people in 10 countries and has killed 124 since it re-emerged in Asia in 2003. It mostly infects birds, but if it changes into a form that easily passes from person to person it could touch off a deadly pandemic.

Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.