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Posted by SiroccoPH on September 21, 2002 at 19:23:37:
In Reply to: aargh, left out words...... posted by LisaT on September 21, 2002 at 14:16:48:
::but since I've seen information that doesn't come close to that assertion, I figured that you must be mistaken.
::In addition to the information that Deerhounds posted, from the article GreatNSmall posted:
::Of these 164 horses, at least 42 of them have died.
::Uh, that certainly doesn't come close to the numbers that you quoted.
:
:
Since *I* did not post the "math" you originally asked about (I merely explained what the original poster meant), I can only explain my own previous quote, the rates of death vs. KNOWN infection range from 25%-75% depending on the area of the country. You must also remember that for every horse that dies where we get a definitive diagnosis of West Nile, there are many horses that die from neurologic disease where the owners either did not test pre or post mortem for anything, so cause of
death is unknown. It is believed by many that some of these horse does from WNV that went undiagnosed.
Now before everyone hops on the bandwagon of flames that seems to have started for no apparent reason that I can tell since everyone had been civil in their posts previous. Please remember that I have yet to tell ANYone that they are wrong for deciding, whatever their reasons may be, to NOT vaccinate their horse for WNV. I am simply stating that it is a fatal disease, and one that may be preventable through vaccination. We do not know yet if the vaccine is protective, but it is safe for use in horses. We see vaccine reactions sometimes to the "standard" vax for EEE, WEE, tetanus, and influenza. This is normal. It is unreasonable to expect that no horse will have a vaccine reaction to a WNV vaccine, however, the risk is no more significant than it would be to vax for any of the above diseases. Once again, the important thing to remember with vaccines is that their purpose may not always just be to prevent disease entirely, they can also function to lessen the severity of infection, reduce viral shedding by infected animals and decrease the possibility that they will potentially infect other animals. In the case of WNV we must also remember that as with any of the encephalopathies, permanent neurologic/musculoskeletal damage may result even if a horse recovers. The hope of some people that vaccinate their animals in this case (and the hope of the veterinarians prescribing the vaccine) is that 1)their animals will not become infected and 2)if they do become infected, their clinical signs will not be as severe. Now, interestingly enough, a side benefit of vaccination for WNV has been that people are becoming more educated about routine care for their horses and even those that have never had a tetanus vax (absolutely essential for horses) for their horses are crawling out of the woodwork, which enables us to better educate them on other management issues.
It is my OPINION that I would rather vaccinate my horse and try to prevent a horrible disease that to have to face the long treatment of him for said disease later on should he become infected. I live in an area where there have been several WNV cases confirmed and have seen atleast 5 horses with it, it is a terrible thing to watch a horse suffer from any neurologic disease. If you think watching a dog with epilepsy have a seizure is awful (which it is) imgaine a 1200 lb animal doing the same thing.
Lisa