Dick Thompson Quotations

The outbreaks in those areas are being contained, ... There's still disease, but the disease is largely contained in hospitals.

The outbreak is in northern Iraq. There are lots of challenges there, largely associated with terrain and weather. It's cold and wet, and there are steep sided valleys that the team is moving through.

We still urge the elderly and other high-risk groups to be vaccinated.

We believe those particles are inhaled and that's how people become infected.

We know we're overdue for an influenza pandemic strain, and we know it will occur, but we don't know when or even exactly what virus will cause it. It is possible that the virus won't be H5N1 at all or that this virus will change in a way so that the vaccine under development doesn't work against it.

We know from experience with this drug that it is most effective very shortly after symptoms develop.

Should this move from human to human -- and it hasn't yet, I want to stress that -- then it's going to be a real challenge.

Now we're dipping into other funds. Hopefully as more money comes in, we'll be able to carry on more activities.

But the risk is pretty much the same as it has been, it is very low to humans, but we're worried about the transformation of the virus into a human pandemic strain.

From our point of view, Iraqi authorities have done a very good job in responding to the outbreak and have been very transparent about what is known about the human disease.

We can confirm that the 15-year-old girl was infected with the H5N1 avian flu virus as a result of the London testing.

What would emerge would be a disease as deadly as avian influenza, which currently has a case fatality rate of over 50%, but that moves as easily as seasonal influenza does from person to person,

H5N1 has pandemic potential but it is not a pandemic virus.

There are a lot of scary stories out there about the next pandemic, but we have to make difficult decisions without a lot of information. The real answer is we don't know until the next pandemic virus appears.

I think it's significant because it draws our attention to the fact that this is a very, very difficult disease to get for humans.

It is always worrying to have a new case in a new country because it raises concerns among the public. But we have to understand that so far this is just one case.

Pigs are known to be able to be infected with both avian and human viruses, and they too can serve as mixing vessels, just like humans.

Surveillance and response of H5N1 in both animals and humans needs to be strengthened in all regions bordering countries where outbreaks have been identified.

That was an extreme of an already rare event. Pandemics normally have more modest death rates.

That's because we looked at what happened in the 1918 pandemic. That caused the greatest number of deaths ever recorded from an infectious disease in a single year, by far. More than the black plague, more than any other infectious disease,

We have totally discounted the possibility of an avian influenza infection. But we can't take away the possibility of an appearance in Iraq, as many cases have been reported in Turkey.

We need to identify the source of this child's exposure. It has to be in the environment somewhere and we need to identify that before going ahead in assessing control or (bird) elimination efforts.

We don't have positive confirmation of H5N1 in the girl yet. The laboratory samples should have reached the UK this morning.

The point was initially to allow us to have access to these samples. It's not like WHO is trying to prevent scientists everywhere from getting this information.

We are concerned that the virus infects a human that already has contracted a strain of normal influenza and this influenza will mix with this avian form. As a result, a new strain could be formed that the human immune system has never seen before and that would ignite a pandemic.

When the virus shows up in a new country, it doesn't mean that the pandemic has started, it means that the animal disease has spread.

We're not going to know how lethal the next pandemic is going to be until the pandemic begins. You could pick almost any number.

We believe and are very concerned that this virus -- which is now widely circulating in the environment and moving west -- has the potential to ignite a pandemic.

The crisis ... may seem more intense now because birds in Europe have become infected.

There have been something like 180 million birds that have died either directly from the disease or been culled because they were exposed to it. Yet it's taken us all this time -- more than two years, almost three years now -- to cross this barrier.

We keep encouraging countries to develop a plan because a pandemic is inevitable.

There is really no time frame. As long as the virus is circulating it could jump into humans.

There is definitely concern about Egypt. In a relatively short period of time we have what is really a large number of cases.

Those viruses are in a WHO reference laboratory and are being studied.

We cannot let our guard down until this disease is put back in a box.

What this virus can't do now is move easily from person to person. We worry that it could develop this characteristic of human-to-human transmission.

You have to put this in perspective: there have been 180 million birds that have been killed because of this disease and yet we've identified fewer than 200 human cases.

We think that this is the most reasoned position, ... you could pick almost any number.

There have been four, maybe five cases of humans getting it from other humans,

Bird flu is a disease among animals; it's very difficult for this virus to move from poultry into humans. Our concern is that it will change in a way that will allow it to easily move between humans, and that will trigger a pandemic.

The widespread concern may be bad communication on our part. Millions of animals have been infected and very rarely have humans been infected,

Tens of millions of birds have been affected. But there have been only about 117 human cases in two years, ... This is a very difficult disease to move from animals to humans.

People confuse it with pandemic influenza, but they're very different diseases,

During SARS, we worked like hell to contain a global outbreak. Now we're trying to feel our way through this next generation of problems.

As long as this disease exists anywhere that it's a threat everywhere,

This is not confirmation for us. We need to have samples sent to a certified laboratory.

This is progress and an important step in pandemic vaccine development.

This is a virus that isn't acting in a predictable way. It's unusual that cats would be infected at all. The range of hosts here is unusual for an avian virus.

There seems to be a heightened sense of concern about an extraordinarily rare disease. It is very, very, very difficult for humans to acquire, even with direct exposure.

There is very little science in this area. However, we know that people who have spent a great deal of time around infected chickens, for example, only rarely get infected themselves. If it is an extremely rare event to get infected from a flock of infected chickens, it is likely that infections from cats is even rarer still. But again, there is little real evidence to guide us.

There's an urgent need to sample and tag and track as many of these species as feasible, especially considering the narrow time frame that we've got available to do it. We need more information on the migratory routes regarding these birds.

Taking it on a trip is certainly not recommended.

It was not unexpected. There will be sporadic human cases as long as the virus is circulating in animals.

It was not unexpected, ... There will be sporadic human cases as long as the virus is circulating in animals.

The world is not very well prepared, ... We think pandemic preparedness is really essential.

I hope we are not creating a sense of panic... because we need the public's trust to encourage governments to begin or continue pandemic preparedness efforts.

You could pick any number?there's this vast range?and any of these numbers could be right,

You could pick almost any number. There is this vast range of numbers, absolutely. One of those numbers will turn out to be right. All of this is guesswork, nobody knows.

These are not our viruses and this isn't our information.

The genetically modified food industry recognizes that they need to have consumer confidence in order to push ahead. The failure of GM foods in Europe was directly linked to the consumers' lack of faith in their government food regulators.

All of these have been in Asia. But it is important to note that it was not passed on to more humans. The chain ended at those four or five who caught it.