Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made “experimental virus material” based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company.

That company, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then disseminated the supposed H3N2 virus product to subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Authorities in the four European countries are looking into the incident, and their efforts are being closely watched by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
What do you think of the following recent news release?

Scientists close in on universal flu vaccine

Universal Vaccine Media Myths

The above headline and comment from media reports on the antibody treatment describe in today's Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, "Structural and functional bases for broad-spectrum neutralization of avian and human influenza A viruses" paper unrealistically raise expectations and misrepresent the data presented in the paper. These media myths are repeated and create many misconceptions, which can be significant downside in the management of seasonal and pandemic influenza. They create an illusion of a near term universal vaccine that can lead to a single injection that will give long term protection against a wide range of influenza's, including various seasonal flu serotypes and pandemic influenza.

...the paper does not describe a universal vaccine. It describes a panel of monoclonal antibodies that can provide protection from an influenza challenge in mice treated before or after infection. The data on treatment prior to infection is for one day, while the longest time period reported post infection was 3 days.

...The antibodies described in the paper are not vaccines. A vaccine would be the "Achilles heel" that would be injected into hosts to achieve long term immunity against a variety of challenges.

...However, the media myths suggest that a single injection can provide long term (lifetime?) protection, which is not supported by the data in the paper, or data for other therapeutic or prophylactic monoclonal antibodies. Similarly, the reduced activity against existing isolates suggests that resistance will develop.

It's spin and counterspin. Just like the title says.

Our governments have a choice:

a) Admit that far more people are infected with H5N1 bird flu than is acknowledged officially; OR

b) Get stuck with a 91% fatality rate.

But they can't have it both ways.

Bird Flu: More Common, Less Deadly than We Thought?

A new study suggests H5N1 is more easily spread and far less deadly than scientists believed. What does that mean for work on potentially lethal man-made versions of the virus?

Opinion: H5N1 Flu Is Just as Dangerous as Feared, Now Requires Action

In the mBio® commentary, Michael Osterholm* and Nicholas Kelley, of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, present their case that H5N1 is a very dangerous virus, based on their analysis of published studies of the seroepidemiology of H5N1 in humans. H5N1 flu infections have exceedingly high mortality, they say, and current vaccines and antiviral drugs will not pull us out of a global H5N1 pandemic.

"We believe that the assertion that the case-fatality rate of H5N1 influenza in humans may be overestimated is based on a flawed data analysis,"Osterholm said.

….Seroepidemiologic studies that have examined the exposure of various groups of people to H5N1 viruses only from 2004 onward indicate that only a small segment of the population has ever been exposed to H5N1, and that among those that have been exposed, many become seriously ill or die.

"The available seroepidemiologic data for human H5N1 infection support the current WHO reported case-fatality rates of 30% to 80%," Osterholm says. In the event of an H5N1 pandemic, they point out, if the virus is even one tenth or one twentieth as virulent as has been documented in these smaller outbreaks, the resulting fatality rate would be worse than in the 1918 pandemic, in which 2% of infected individuals died.

Vaccines will not head off an H5N1 pandemic either, the authors say, since the time required to develop and manufacture an influenza vaccine specific to new outbreak strain has resulted in "too little, too late" vaccine responses for the 1957, 1968, and 2009 influenza pandemics, and not much in the process has changed since 2009.

Bird flu more common, less deadly than believed

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, which studies threats of bioterrorism, says there are flaws in the methods used.

…..Taking an average of the studies Palese used, Osterholm said, is therefore misleading. "If you put your head in the freezer and your feet in the oven, of course the average temperature will be just right," he said.