Roche: Enough Tamiflu for 55M This Year

[NVMojo]

BASEL, Switzerland (AP) - Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG sought to reassure governments concerned about bird flu, saying Wednesday it is producing enough of its antiviral drug Tamiflu to treat 55 million people this year.

But the company, under international pressure to ease its control on the manufacture of the drug, denied assertions by Vietnamese officials that it had given permission for that country to produce Tamiflu.

David Reddy, the company's influenza pandemic task force leader, said production will be nearly tripled next year - to 150 million treatments - and that will be doubled again the following year.

more...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/invest-corp/2005/nov/09/110906668.html

[soothsayer]

1. Tamiflu, that's rummy's drug, yeah? guess he can buy another

7 houses.

[toopers]

2. Of course, this drug may or may not work . . .

against the bird flu. Enjoy!

[Crayson]

3. Vaccine doesn't work... Tamiflu probably will

Just to get this right.
Vaccines (the so called flu shot) will moth probably NOT work für the H5N1 bird flu virus, because this is a different viral family.
Vaccines work by giving you "dead" viruses so that your immune system can learn and knows the virus.
"Here boy! Sniff. Find! Destroy!" kind of way.

Tamiflu is not a vaccine but a drug (as you stated correctly).
It works by chemically blocking crucial proteins that the virus needs to access your body cells wherein the virus multiplies.
It disrupts the reproductive chain of the virus.
And since this is a rather wellknown protein not of the virus but of human body cells, this will not change as opposed to viruses mutating all the time.
Therefor the drug will probably work against H5N1.
At least it's the best guess we have.

BUT!
Tamiflu must be used in the first 48 hours!!
Only then has it a reasonable chance to keep the virus from multiplying within you.
And that's the problems: The real obvious symptoms mostly come only days later (when your immune system is already hard at work and therefor you cough and sneeze and feel sick).

So my guess is that even with all those people who stocked Tamiflu in their refridgerator many won't notice and it might be too late to use it.

[Bridget Burke]

4. Or people will take Tamiflu when they don't have influenza....

Thinking that nasty cold they get every winter is the same thing. It isn't.

[zann725]

5. That's assuming the virus does NOT mutate. If it does...all those drugs

and money wasted.