Beach Bunghole wrote:
>> Associated Press
>> HOUSTON — A man from Great Britain who lived in Houston for four years
>> has been diagnosed with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human
>> form of mad cow disease, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
>> confirmed today.
>>
>> The 30-year-old man was diagnosed with the second U.S. case of variant
>> Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease because his symptoms began while he lived in
>> Houston.
>>
>> Earlier this year, he returned to Great Britain, where his disease
>> progressed and he is now receiving medical treatment for the fatal
>> illness.
>>
>> The U.K. National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit in
>> Edinburgh, Scotland, informed the Atlanta-based CDC of the probable
>> variant CJD diagnosis and told the disease center the case would need
>> to be reported as a U.S. case.
>>
>> The man was born in the United Kingdom and lived there from 1980-1996,
>> a period during which those living in the country were at risk of
>> exposure to beef products infected with bovine spongiform
>> encephalopathy, more commonly known as mad cow disease.
>>
>> The infected man's temporary stay in the U.S. has been deemed "too
>> brief relative to what is known about the incubation period for
>> variant CJD," the CDC said. It is believed he was infected in the
>> United Kingdom because the disease's incubation period can last years,
>> sometimes decades....
>>
>> A total of 185 people from 11 countries have been diagnosed with
>> variant CJD since 1996. A majority of the cases — 158 — have been
>> diagnosed in Great Britain, 15 in France, three in Ireland and two in
>> the United States. Canada, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal,
>> Saudi Arabia and Spain have each also reported a case.
>>
>> The initial U.S. case involved a woman from Great Britain who was
>> living in Florida. She died last year, Schonberger said.
>>
>> "They have been having cases in the United Kingdom on a regular
>> basis," he said. "From our perspective, this is just the continuation
>> of the ongoing outbreak in the United Kingdom."
>>
>> Rest of article:
>> http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printsto...onicle/3476565
>> ---------------------------------------
>> Note to Beach Bungler Bob: 185 cases over ~10 years isn't an outbreak,
>> an epidemic, or the tip of some kind of iceberg. It's no doubt a
>> tragedy, but it's very much isolated both geographically (85.4% of all
>> diagnosed in the UK, and 100% of US reported cases involved Britons as
>> well; the UK's population is 0.94% of the world's population) and to a
>> specific time frame (1980-1996). The number of new cases in the UK
>> continues to *decline*, which isn't what one would expect if it were
>> the tip of some iceberg.
>
> We don't know the full extent,

We know that the problem was isolated geographically and that it applied
to a specific period of time. The experts have, for the most part,
retracted their wildest forecasts and are increasingly skeptical that a
pandemic of vCJD will occur.

> or how contaminated the bovine food supply was

Wrong, we do know the extent. We also know that rendering in the US and
UK were different. Since the UK had more cases of BSE early on, and
since the UK rendered those animals, it stands to reason that rendered
feeds in the UK would have a greater rate of contamination. The other
nations with significant cases of BSE imported cattle and feeds from the
UK. The US was not a big importer of either UK feeds or UK cattle:
BSE has not occurred in the United States or other countries
that have historically imported little or no live cattle, beef
products, or livestock nutritional supplements from the UK. Even
though rendering procedures in other countries underwent changes
similar to those in the UK during the late 1970s, BSE has
apparently emerged solely within the UK. The most plausible
explanation is that the proportion of sheep in the mix of
rendered animal carcasses and the proportion of scrapie
infections in such sheep were probably higher in the UK than
elsewhere. These proportions were apparently sufficient to bring
very low levels of the etiologic agent in batches of rendered
carcasses over the threshold of transmission in the UK but not
in other countries.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol7no1/brown.htm

> and is for how many years.

The window isn't unlimited. Researchers are increasingly skeptical there
will be a pandemic or even significant increases in the number of new
cases because the data don't support it. The actions taken early on in
the UK -- specifically banning feeds made with rendered ruminants --
coincide with a peak of cases. Since that time, new cases have fallen
quickly.

> The long period it takes to emerge
> makes it impossible to predict the full outbreak.

The window from time of infection to detection appears to be within a
decade. Some new cases may occur from infection via blood transfusion,
medical instruments, etc., but the food supply has been shown to be very
safe.

>> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...610802,00.html
>> http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ew/2004/040513.asp#3

Did you even look at these, dummy?