Showing posts with label contagion. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2013

New Deadly Mystery Virus. New Pandemic?

If you'll recall, I reported on mass animal deaths back on April 12, 2013 (REFER TO POST HERE). One of the mass animal deaths listed was located in China, where there were bloated pigs floating in some waterways and the deaths were only explained as "respiratory failure due to inhaling toxic gas" (REFER TO CHINA NEWS POST HERE). Well, it turns out that the numbers of dead pigs were much higher than I first posted and there were dead dogs as well. Additionally, the local authorities could not determine for certain that the animals actually died because of inhalation of toxic gas and now there is more proof that they may have been sick with the newest mystery virus called H7N9.

The World Health Organization does not have a handle on this illness, except to say that it is not SARS, but is symptomatically similar to SARS and that it can be transmitted person-to-person. So far, this illness has spread in clusters in many countries.

Also, the WHO says that they (and we) are not ready for a mass flu outbreak. They said that one day and then the next said that they have the outbreak under control. Have you seen Survivors? This is so similar to that case scenario that it is somewhat nerve-racking. Do we trust that they have it under control, or do we trust that they have our panic under control?

Here is more information and commentary regarding this illness (H7N9). The information is suspect because it is not consistent, which makes the remarks that the World Health Organization said even harder to believe. As far as I am concerned, there is no panic. However, I don't trust that this new strain is under control.

Is this the next pandemic? Tale of mystery virus unfolds like a movie plot (Commentary)

A duck stands near a warning sign at an amusement park in Beijing, China, Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Scientists taking a first look at the genetics of the bird flu strain that recently killed two men in China said Wednesday the virus could be harder to track than its better-known cousin H5N1 because it might be able to spread silently among poultry without notice. The bird virus also seems to have adapted to be able to be able to sicken mammals like pigs. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)By Washington Post
on April 07, 2013 at 8:11 AM

By LAURIE GARRETT

WASHINGTON — Here’s how it would happen. Children playing along an urban river bank would spot hundreds of grotesque, bloated pig carcasses bobbing downstream. Hundreds of miles away, angry citizens would protest the rising stench from piles of dead ducks and swans, their rotting bodies collecting by the thousands along river banks. And three unrelated individuals would stagger into three different hospitals, gasping for air. Two would quickly die of severe pneumonia and the third would lay in critical condition in an intensive care unit for many days. Government officials would announce that a previously unknown virus had sickened three people, at least, and killed two of them. And while the world was left to wonder how the pigs, ducks, swans, and people might be connected, the World Health Organization would release deliberately terse statements, offering little insight.

It reads like a movie plot — I should know, as I was a consultant for Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion.” But the facts delineated are all true, and have transpired over the last six weeks in China.

The events could, indeed, be unrelated, and the new virus, a form of influenza denoted as H7N9, may have already run its course, infecting just three people and killing two.

Or this could be how pandemics begin.

On March 10, residents of China’s powerhouse metropolis, Shanghai, noticed some dead pigs floating among garbage flotsam in the city’s Huangpu River.

The vile carcasses appeared in Shanghai’s most important tributary of the mighty Yangtze, a 71-mile river that is edged by the Bund, the city’s main tourist area, and serves as the primary source of drinking water and ferry travel for the 23 million residents of the metropolis and its millions of visitors.

The vision of a few dead pigs on the surface of the Huangpu was every bit as jarring for local Chinese as porcine carcasses would be for French strolling the Seine, Londoners along the Thames, or New Yorkers looking from the Brooklyn Bridge down on the East River.

And the nightmarish sight soon worsened, with more than 900 animal bodies found by sunset on that Sunday evening.

The first few pig carcass numbers soon swelled into the thousands, turning Shanghai spring into a horror show that by March 20 would total more than 15,000 dead animals.

The river zigzags its way from Zhejiang province, just to the south of Shanghai, a farming region inhabited by some 54 million people, and a major pork-raising district of China. Due to scandals over recent years in the pork industry, including substitution of rendered pig intestines for a toxic chemical, sold as heparin blood thinner that proved lethal to American cardiac patients, Chinese authorities had put identity tags on pigs’ ears.

The pig carcasses were swiftly traced back to key farms in Zhejiang, and terrified farmers admitted that they had dumped the dead animals into the Huangpu.

Few Chinese asked, “What killed the pigs?,” because river pollution is so heinous across China that today people simply assume manufacturing chemicals or pesticides fill the nation’s waterways, and are responsible for all such mysterious animals demises.

The Yangtze, which feeds Shanghai’s Huangpu, has copper pollution levels that are 100 times higher than U.S. safety standards, and leather tanning facilities along the river have notoriously been responsible for toxic waste, including chromium.

And across China — especially in Beijing — air pollution was so bad in January and February that pollution particulate levels routinely peaked at higher than 10 times the U.S. safety standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

When I was in Beijing in late January, the air pollution was so thick that it visually looked like fog, obscuring all sunlight and even skyscrapers located less than three city blocks away.

So, hideous as the pig carcasses might be, Shanghai residents tended to shrug them off as yet another example of the trade-offs China is making, pitting prosperity against pollution.

Mystery Coronavirus Renamed Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus As Two Saudi Healthcare Workers Fall Ill

As the new coronavirus spreads and infects more people, especially those who have traveled to Saudi Arabia, a formal name is finally given to the faceless killer.

Mystery virus

The Coronavirus seen under an electron miscroscope. Photo: AFP

The WHO's assistant director general for health security and the environment, Keiji Fukuda, told a Riyadh news conference on Sunday the new virus posed an "important and major challenge" for countries affected and the world generally.

He said experts were still grappling to understand all aspects of the virus and how humans become infected, stressing, however, that "this new virus is not the SARS virus."

"This is a new infection and there are also many gaps in our knowledge that will inevitably take time to fill in," a WHO statement cited Mr Fukuda as saying.

"Of most concern, however, is the fact that the different clusters seen in multiple countries increasingly support the hypothesis that when there is close contact this novel coronavirus can transmit from person-to-person," he said.

"This pattern of person-to-person transmission has remained limited to some small clusters, and so far, there is no evidence that this virus has the capacity to sustain generalised transmission in communities."

World not ready for mass flu outbreak, says WHO

WHO deputy chief Keiji Fukuda. Photo: AFP

The world is unprepared for a massive virus outbreak, the deputy chief of the World Health Organisation warned on Tuesday, amid fears that H7N9 bird flu striking China could morph into a form that spreads easily among people.

Keiji Fukuda told delegates at a WHO meeting that despite efforts since an outbreak of another form of avian influenza, H1N1, in 2009-10, far more contingency planning was essential.

Rapid-reaction systems were crucial, given that health authorities’ efforts are already hampered by lack of knowledge about such diseases, he insisted.“Even though work has been done since that time, the world is not ready for a large, severe outbreak,” Fukuda said.

“When people get hit with an emerging disease, you can’t just go to a book and know what to do,” he said.

According to the latest official data, H7N9 avian influenza has infected 130 people in China, and killed 35, since it was found in humans for the first time in March.

It is one of a vast array of flu viruses carried by birds, the overwhelming majority of which pose little or no risk to humans.

Experts are struggling to understand how it spread to people, amid fears that it could adapt into a form that can be transmitted easily from human to human.

READ MORE HERE

H7N9 bird flu appears contained, UN health experts say

International experts praise China's efforts, but note outbreak has cost economy US$6.5b

Chinese Health Mininster Li Bin. Photo: Xinhua

The H7N9 virus appears to have been brought under control in China largely due to restrictions at bird markets, but caused some US$6.5 billion in losses to the economy, UN experts said.

Health authorities worldwide must be on the lookout to detect the virus, which could still develop the ability to spread easily among humans and cause a deadly influenza pandemic, the experts said.

The new bird flu virus is known to have infected 130 people in mainland China since emerging in March, including 36 who died, but no cases have been detected since early May, Health Minister Li Bin told the World Health Organisation.

One case was found in Taiwan in April, making a total of 131.

"The immediate outbreak has been controlled, but it is also unlikely that virus has simply disappeared. We believe we need go another autumn/winter/spring season to know," said Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director general for health security.

"We also have high concern over the potential, I stress the potential, to gain the ability to sustain transmissibility."

There was no evidence of sustained spread among people and "most cases probably resulted from infected poultry or perhaps contamination related to live poultry markets", Fukuda said.

Drug-resistant strains of H7N9 bird flu discovered

A worker catches a live chicken at a poultry market in Shanghai, China on April 5, 2013. / AP PHOTO

Drug-resistant cases of a deadly new strain of bird flu have been identified.

In a study published in The Lancet on May 28, researchers detailed three patients with the new avian flu strain that's hit China, known as H7N9, whose sickness could not be treated by Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and similar drugs.

"The apparent ease with which antiviral resistance emerges in A/H7N9 viruses is concerning; it needs to be closely monitored and considered in future pandemic response plans," the authors wrote.

Play VIDEO

Two new viruses threaten global outbreaks

H7N9 is the name for a subtype of influenza viruses that is often found in birds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, a new H7N9 strain discovered in China looks different from previous strains. Prior to this China strain, H7N9 had never been detected in humans. TheWorld Health Organization said 131 people have been infected with the new bird flu as of May 24, including 36 deaths.

There is no solid evidence yet of human-to-human transmission, though there is concern the virus can mutate to a strain spread more easily among people.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Greece Default. Will It Give New Meaning To Contagion? Will It Be The Next Greek Tragedy?

Greece: 5-Year CDS vs. 5-Year Note
click for larger chart

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/06/greek-default-and-the-markets/
Greek default: What it would mean
By Chris Isidore @CNNMoney September 19, 2011: 4:45 PM ET

Risk of a Greek default is 100% according to credit default swap traders, while the probability is rising in Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Experts agree it's almost certain that Greece will not be able to pay all of its debts. But if the country does default, what happens next?

Greek leaders are struggling to agree to a set of painful budget cuts, including layoffs and new taxes, in order to get the next round of bailout cash from its European partners. But Greece is in the midst of a painful recession, which is cutting tax collections and causing it to sink even deeper into the deficit hole.

And even if Greek and European officials can agree on deficit reduction measures, the bailout plans need to run a gauntlet of votes in 17 separate European parliaments. Last week, just the news that the Austrian parliament had failed to set a timetable for a vote sent European and U.S. markets sharply lower.

Meanwhile, investors trading in credit default swaps, which are essentially bets on whether or not there will be a default, are now pricing in nearly a 100% chance of default on Greek debt.

A default in Greece could cause investors to flee the debt of other troubled European economies, including Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Investors trading in credit default swaps are now placing the chance of default in those countries at between 28% to 66%.

While Greece has only about €300 billion ($411 billion) in outstanding debt, believed to be mostly in the hands of European banks, adding all five countries' debt together comes to €2.8 trillion ($3.8 trillion).

Spain and Italy are particularly worrisome. If those countries were to default, European authorities would not have enough money to bail them all out.

"They can survive a Greek default. They can arguably survive if Portugal and Ireland go down as well," said Jay Bryson, international economist with Wells Fargo Securities. "But you include Italy and Spain, now we're starting to talk some real money here. You could easily be talking €1 trillion in writedowns. That would be a disaster."

While some experts hope there can be an orderly, pre-approved default on Greek debt that wouldn't ripple through the financial system, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 proved no one can know what the implications of a default would be.

"I don't know if 'controlled default' is an oxymoron," said John Makin, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. "It's a very difficult situation to control. We're more ready for it this time than we were in 2008. U.S. banks are better capitalized, so we should be able avoid the seize-up scenario. But it's still touch and go."

And a wave of European debt defaults will topple Europe into recession, which would hit a U.S. economy already at risk of falling into a double-dip recession.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/19/news/international/greek_default/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

Greece Has 98% Chance of Default on Euro-Region Sovereign Woes

By Abigail Moses - Sep 13, 2011 7:06 AM MT

Greece has a 98 percent chance of defaulting on its debt in the next five years as Prime Minister George Papandreou fails to reassure investors his country can survive the euro-region crisis.

“Everyone’s pricing in a pretty near-term default and I think it’ll be a hard event,” said Peter Tchir, founder of hedge fund TF Market Advisors in New York. “Clearly this austerity plan is not working.”

It costs a record $5.8 million upfront and $100,000 annually to insure $10 million of Greece’s debt for five years using credit-default swaps, up from $5.5 million in advance on Sept. 9, according to CMA. Greek bonds plunged, sending the 10- year yield to 25 percent for the first time.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she won’t let Greece go into “uncontrolled insolvency” as politicians try to limit contagion to other euro members. Papandreou’s pledge to adhere to deficit targets that are conditions of the European Union and International Monetary Fund’s bailout were undermined by data showing his country’s budget gap widened 22 percent in the first eight months of the year.

The default probability for Greece is based on a standard pricing model that assumes investors would recover 40 percent of the bonds’ face value if the nation fails to meet its obligations. CMA, which is owned by CME Group Inc. and compiles prices quoted by dealers in the privately negotiated credit- swaps market, lowered its recovery assumption to 38 percent late yesterday, which would give Greece a 95 percent chance of default.

Economy to Shrink

Greece’s government now expects the economy to shrink more than 5 percent this year, more than the 3.8 percent forecast by the European Commission, as austerity measures deepen a three- year recession.

Papandreou approved a plan to help repair the budget deficit at the weekend amid swelling resistance from Greeks.

Greece’s 10-year bond yield rose 111 basis points, or 1.11 percentage points, to 24.65 percent as of 1:55 p.m. in London, after earlier climbing to a euro-era record of 25 percent. The two-year note yield increased 662 basis points to 76.17 percent, after rising to an all-time high.

Greek stocks fell, with the ASE Index tumbling as much as 1.2 percent to the lowest since 1995 and down more than a third from July 22.

The risk of contagion beyond Greece weakened the euro and boosted benchmark German bunds. The common currency fell toward its weakest level since 2001 against its Japanese counterpart, declining 0.6 percent to 104.99 yen.

Sovereign Record

An index measuring the cost of default protection on 15 European governments to a record. European bank debt risk also jumped to the highest ever amid speculation French lenders will be downgraded because of their holdings of Greek bonds.

The Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe Index of credit- default swaps climbed one basis points to 354, an all-time high based on closing prices. The Markit iTraxx Financial Index linked to the senior debt of 25 banks and insurers increased two basis points to 316, while a gauge of subordinated debt risk was up seven basis points at 557, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“The contagion impact of a default will be severe, because next in the firing line will be Italy, Spain and it will take in the whole of the European banking sector too,” Suki Mann, a strategist at Societe Generale SA in London, wrote in a note yesterday. “This trio are already under intense pressure, but it will get much worse.”

Euro-Region Nations

Credit-default swaps on Portugal, Italy and France rose to records, according to CMA. Portugal jumped nine basis points to 1,224, Italy rose four basis points to 510 and France was up 7.5 basis points at 196.5.
Germany’s government is debating how to support its nation’s banks should Greece fail to meet the budget-cutting terms of its rescue package, three coalition officials said Sept. 9. Merkel said in an interview with Berlin-based Inforadio that avoiding an “uncontrolled insolvency” was her “top priority” and that the region’s most indebted country is taking the right steps to getting its next bailout payment.

Credit-default swaps on BNP Paribas SA, Societe Generale SA and Credit Agricole SA, France’s largest banks, surged to all- time highs on bets they’ll have their ratings cut by Moody’s Investors Service this week.

French Banks

Swaps on SocGen were 14 basis points higher at 448.5, Credit Agricole increased 9.5 to 331.5 and BNP Paribas rose 16 basis points to 321, according to CMA.

Moody’s placed the three banks’ ratings on review in June to examine “the potential for inconsistency between the impact of a possible Greek default or restructuring and current rating levels,” the rating company said at the time. Downgrades are likely as the review period concludes, said people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified because the information is confidential.

A basis point on a credit-default swap protecting 10 million euros ($13.6 million) of debt from default for five years is equivalent to 1,000 euros a year. An increase signals declining perceptions of credit quality.

Swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-12/greece-s-risk-of-default-increases-to-98-as-european-debt-crisis-deepens.html

Is default the next Greek tragedy?

By Paul R. La Monica September 12, 2011: 4:30 PM ET

As awful as 2011 has been for big U.S. financial stocks, European banks have peformed even worse.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/12/markets/thebuzz/index.htm