The Monster at the Door

[OneBlueSky]

I know we don't need any more scares, but this is something to keep an eye on . . .

by Mike Davis
CommonDreams.org
September 30, 2004

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-16.htm

(snip)

The monster, of course, is H5N1, the lethal avian flu that first emerged in 1997 in Hong Kong and is now entrenched - in an even more lethal strain - in a half dozen Southeast Asian countries. It has recently killed scores of farmers and poultry workers who have had direct contact with sick birds.

For seven years researchers have warned that H5N1 would eventually fall in love with a human influenza virus in the body of sick person (or possibly a pig) and produce a mutant offspring that could travel at pandemic velocity from human to human.

(snip)

First of all, this flu - at least in its bird-to-human form - is a far more vicious killer. In 1918-19, 2.5 per cent of infected Americans died. In contrast, more than 70 per cent of this year's H5N1 cases (30 out of 42) have perished: a lethality comparable to ebola fever and other nightmare emergent diseases.

The Center for Disease Control has estimated that a new pandemic would infect 40 to 100 million Americans. Multiply that by a 70 per cent kill rate and ponder your family's future.

Secondly, as the WHO has repeatedly emphasized, the avian flu seems to have conquered an ecological niche of unprecedented dimension. The rise of factory poultry farming in Asia over the last decade, and the dangerously unhygienic conditions in farms and plants, have created a perfect incubator for the new virus.

- more . . .

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-16.htm

[JCMach1]

1. The first case of Human to Human transmission has taken place

in Thailand

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?storyID=3596642&thesection=news&thesubsection=world