This is the kind of information that makes epidemiologists turn different colors and either start washing their hands furiously or breathing deeply and fanning themselves. Or both.

New Scientist reports on China's sense of secrecy:

A man died of H5N1 flu in Beijing in November 2003 - two full years before China admitted any human cases of H5N1. The death of the 24-year-old from bird flu came months before China even admitted H5N1 was circulating in its poultry. The man was tested for respiratory illness because of concern in the wake of the SARS epidemic.

It is not clear when the Chinese scientists who reported the finding discovered this, but they tried to withdraw their paper from the New England Journal of Medicine at the last minute on Wednesday. It was too late to prevent publication.

The case suggests that, as has long been suspected, many more people have caught H5N1 flu in China than have been reported, and for a longer time. The more human cases there are, the more chances the virus has to evolve into a human pandemic strain of flu.

"It's a very important issue that needs to be clarified urgently,'' Roy Wadia, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said on Thursday in Beijing. "It raises questions as to how many other cases may not have been found at the time or may have been found retrospectively in testing."

...
Wu-Chun Cao of the State Key Laboratory of Pathogens and Biosecurity in Beijing and seven colleagues from four top medical and genomics institutes in Beijing report on 22 June that in November 2003 a man died in the city four days after being hospitalised for pneumonia and acute respiratory distress. These are symptoms both of H5N1 flu and SARS.

The worldwide SARS epidemic ended in July 2003. In November that year Chinese hospitals were testing all suspect cases for SARS for fear it would return. The man in Beijing tested negative for SARS.

You know, I was in Beijing in December 2003, and I came down with pneumonia -- and snuck myself through Customs by using baby wipes to foil the thermal sensors they'd set up in the airports. At the time, it was all about the SARS.

But reading this, I have to wonder if I could've been a bird flu carrier who just got better before sneezing on anyone. I could've been. It's not likely, but I could've been. And I was on an airplane flying through LAX on a holiday weekend.

Anyway, with this revelation, the World Health Organization is seriously ticked off. There's no telling what kind of declarations they'll make about travel recommendations and protocols for going into the Chinese countryside, but more than likely there'll be something.

So, travelling families, be aware. I doubt there's much to be worried about as far as actually getting sick goes -- keep your immune system boosted, sleep a lot, bring some Airborne or whatever and you should be fine -- but there may some strange repercussions as far as travel regulations and, possibly, traveler's medical insurance.