Reply to “Studies on Influenza Virus Transmission between Ferrets: the Public Health Risks Revisited”

W e are gratified that Ron Fouchier has joined (1) the impor- tant effort to quantify the risks (2-5) of the creation of potential pandemic pathogens, including ferret-transmissible variants of influenza A/H5N1.However, we disagree with many aspects of his assessment.As in our article and Fouchier's letter, here we proceed through the calculation, starting with probability of laboratory-acquired infections and the conditional probability of sparking a pandemic given such an infection and concluding with the consequences thereof.We then discuss some more general considerations.

Abstract licence: CC BY

1. 6.

   Global Mortality Estimates for the 2009 Influenza Pandemic from the GLaMOR Project: A Modeling Study · 2013

36 more references, whose wording the paper’s licence keeps private.

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